Join me for The “Secret” History of Yaoi and Yuri panel at AnimeNEXT on Saturday, June 7, 2014 at 5:30!
We’ll be looking at Heian literature and art to find the earliest mentions of what we would now call Yaoi or Yuri. We’ll trace these elements from magazines for girls of the early 20th century to the shoujo manga revolution of the 1970s to explain all the most popular tropes of BL and Yuri manga and anime.
As usual, there will be prizes for good questions, so I hope you’ll drop in and say hi!
“Chika” from Golondrina by est em at TCAF
This year Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) was held on May 10 and 11 at the Toronto Reference Library and surrounding locations. As with last year, I bought good books, met amazing people and generally had a blast.
I arrived Friday and hooked up with my roommates for the weekend, Brigid Alverson of Mangablog and Robot 6 and Johanna Draper-Carlson from Good Comics Worth Reading. The weekend activities started for me with a reception at the Japan Foundation, where Japanese manga guests Moyocco Anno, creator of Sakuran and Happy Mania!, who was premiering her book Insufficient Direction, about her life with her husband, Neon Genesis Evangelion director Anno Hideaki; BL artist est em, creator of Golondrina, and the manga team who go by the name Himekawa Akira who are working on the My Little Pony ~ Friendship is Magic manga and are best known here for their Legend of Zelda manga adaptations, all introduced themselves to the audience, then we mixed and chatted. It was a pleasure to meet est em-sensei and also see Himekawa Akira-sensei again. ^_^
This was followed by a dinner of epic proportions, with Brigid, Johanna and myself joining fellow comics/manga journalists and reviewers, Deb Aoki of MangaComicsManga, Heidi MacDonald of The Beat, Robin Brenner from No Flying, No Tights and School Library Journal writer Eva Violin.
On Saturday, I moderated a relatively earlyish panel Art Theft! with Rachel Dukes and Katie Shanahan on how their art went from viral to stolen, what they did about it and what they might do differently knowing what they know now. It was well-attended for the venue and the panelists were great. At the end, we all agreed that we had learned something.
I hit the floor briefly between various panels and did dinner with friends, including manga blogger Sean Gaffney and a few other panels. The “Queering Comics” panel this year was *way* more balanced than last year, including at least one trans artist. I was a very little bit disappointed by the whiteness of the “Writing Comics for Women” panel, but that was remedied at the very excellent and nicely diverse “Women in Genre Comics” panel on Sunday. In fact, this last had me bolting for the floor again and buying up a bunch of the books I’ll mention in a sec.
I finished TCAF proper by moderating est em‘s Guest Panel, with translator Jocelyne Allen, followed by dinner with Sean, Johanna and Brigid, which was a terrific way to end the event!
The people are great, the panels are great, the venues are great, the food is great, Toronto is great, but the star of the show are the comics, and I thought you might want to know what I picked up while I was there. ^_^
The first thing I snatched up were the first two issues of Sanya Anwar‘s zOMG gorgeous, throat-grabbingly compelling 1001. This is a re-thinking of the famous A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, with a more active Scheherazade. Issues 1 and 2 are up online and Sanya has said Volume 3 will be up in about a month. Her art is stunning, the story really grips you hard and shakes you up a bit and I cannot wait to read the next chapter!
Sanya also participated in the “Women in Genre Comics” panel. One of the questions specifically asked about re-telling old myths and stories to create them in our own image. I’m excited to see what Sanya has planned for Scheherezade.
I’ve *finally* had a chance to read The Lumberjanes, Issue 1, courtesy of Brigid, and I have every intention of nabbing up Issue 2 in which a relationship begins to happen in between following bearwomen into the woods and fighting wolves. And other things. This is an action-packed, gosh-I wish-it-were-longer type story that I gift to my inner 11 year old.
Issue 1 starts right in the middle of an adventure and the tension doesn’t really let up, so readers are left chasing the story right from the get-go, which I completely approve of. No slow build to a thing happening here.
Sasha Steinberg and April Malig were next to each other, so while I was chatting with them, I picked up the first of Sasha’s Stonewall series, and the first issue of April’s Magical Bitches series. This is a sarcastic send-up of the magical girl genre and the first issue is a prelude to what I hope will be a great story.
I asked Sasha about Stonewall and he said he’s working on a multi-part series detailing the weekend when the Stonewall bar became the turning point for American sexual and gender minorities. Each issue will follow a different character. Issue one starts off with Miss Venus, a teenage drag queen. The art for this issue is very mid-century American romance comics…the color choices, in particular, are stellar. Sasha discusses his influences in the back of the comic, from content to art and even has footnotes on the historical facts. Totally swoon-making. ^_^ His first two arcs, Miss Venus and Mark are available for purchase on his shop.
The Sorceresses Next Door by Chad Sells and Jay Fuller got me all choked up. Read it here and see why.
Reading Jessi Zabarsky’s Witchlight, I remembered why pamphlet comics drive me bat shit crazy. JUST as the story gets good, it ends and you have to wait for the next chapter!!
A teaser for Liz Prince’s Tomboy made me wish it was September already. Anyone who grew up as a tomboy will remember these situations. It’s not all bad…but it wasn’t all good, either.
I bought an artbook so beautiful I literally said to the artist, “Take my money. Immediately.” Breathtaking work by Shilin Huang based on her original comic Carciphona. There were some Yuri images, but really, it would not matter, the work hit my sweet spot for art. Check out the first page of Carciphona and see what I mean.
Matthew Hoddy and Caitlin Major, who work as team Space Pyrates, had a fun little two-story collection called Time Travel Magic. Both protagonists were terrific female characters and one story has a little Yuri.
The next purchase I made comes with a somewhat strange story:
Some years ago, I was at the MoCCA event in New York City and an acquaintance mentioned that her friends had put together a collection I might like. The book was called Jardin des Lunettes. I wrote about the anthology in 2009, because I did indeed like it.
5 years later, I am standing in another country in front of the same circle and we all have a “Really!?!” moment as I realize I am holding the sequel to that anthology, by the circle now known as Love Love Hill.
The new anthology is called Love Lens and again, Kim Hoang has created a lovely Yuri story for the collection. Do get this if you have any interest in original Yuri and want to support Western comics creators! The Yuri story really is awfully sweet. ^_^
The same circle were also selling a BL sports anthology called Fujo Sports. I read it last night and it was cute,; all the stories except one were kind of the same story…but it still was an entertaining read. ^_^
There was one Yuri story in the collection, as well. And, honestly, the cover was worth the price. ^_^
The last pamphlet comic I want to mention comes from the pages of Sparkler Monthly, the English language Shoujo/Josei manga magazine put out by ex-Tokyopop folks and great ladies Lillian Diaz-Przybyl and Lianne Sentar. They are doing *amazing* work, getting original English-language and translated short stories, manga-inspired comics, manga and voice dramas. One of their short series is recently published Yuri story Before You Go (which you can preview here and you can buy on the Sparkler shop – thanks wandering dreamer for the heads up!) I picked up an extra copy to give away in a future contest, as well. ^_^
This story is a pretty straightforward “Story A” girl meets girls story, but it’s always lovely to have a sweet Yuri story in among all the angsty BL. ^_^
The last two books I have to mention, I have not finished yet, but they are both oh so good.
Tara Tallan‘s Galaxion, which is a story that got its start in 1983 when Tara was in 7th grade and is now on it’s 4th iteration or so as a fully drawn and written space epic graphic novel series that passes the Bechdel Test and the Friedman addendum with flying colors.
Women are leaders and fully formed and people have conversations with other people the way they do and then a plot happens! And there’s space ships and people relationships and politics and a plot. I’m really enjoying the book so far.
My last purchase of the show I have not yet had a chance to read, but I was so impressed by one of the creators at the “Women in Genre Comics” panel, I wanted to get it. Namesake by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton. I’m at the end of a long post, so I’ll steal the synopsis from the comic’s website: “Namesake is the story of Emma Crewe, a woman who discovers she can visit other worlds. She finds out that these are places she already knows – fantasy and fairy lands made famous through the spoken word, literature and cinema. Her power as a Namesake forces her to act as a protagonist in these familiar stories as she figures out how to get home.” Another strong female protagonist, another compelling story.
So, here’s my takeaway…again…from TCAF. When you are looking for amazing female characters, warriors, adventurers, time-travelers, sorcerers, scouts, captains and leaders, look at the amazing work of the women and men who are making comics not necessarily carried at your local comic shop or bookstore. Check out the YA sections, look for good comics for kids, get to local comic shows (not comic collecting or collectables; the small local comics shows that are popping up everywhere, MECAF, MoCCA, Stumptown, and more. Don’t know where to start? Heidi MacDonald does “coming up this weekend” round ups on The Comics Beat and so does Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter.)
And…if you can manage it, make it to TCAF, where the world comes to sell terrific comics to people who want to read them.
It was my honor to moderate the panel for Featured Guest est em (えすと えむ) at Toronto Comics Art Festival .
I haven’t seen any other coverage of the panel so far and while it may be unusual to do this, I thought the conversation we had really interesting and want to share.
est em, translator Jocelyne Allen, who was fantastic, and I had a terrific discussion about her work. She ‘s best known for her BL works, and debuted professionally in 2006 with what was licensed in English as Seduce Me After The Show (which is one of the several things I read in preparation for the panel.)
est em started off in doujinshi and I asked her how she transitioned to professional. She said that she was scouted by a publisher who asked her if she’d be interested in drawing BL and she replied, “Yeah, sure.” She hadn’t really read any before that, so she did some research and started drawing. Later on, I asked her about the quirky content of her stories; they have elements like bullfighting, bespoke shoe making, centaurs… and she said one of the nice things about BL is that she doesn’t have to go into a lot of details, as long as the content is BL, she can just draw whatever interests her. Also because they tend to be short vignettes she doesn’t have to really explain anything about, say bullfighting, it’s more or less “this guy is a bullfighter”, whereas in something long-form like Golondrina, she needs to add in the jargon, the details of the culture and the techniques.
I asked her about her attention to movement and line, and how she expresses such things through depictions of Flamenco and bullfighting and she mentioned that the flow of line extends to her drawing of bespoke shoes and how really good shoes look beautiful. She talked about her time in Spain doing research – although she didn’t think she had any Spanish fans. (An audience member later said that she had a friend in Spain who is a fan, so she’s got at least one!)
The questions from the audience were great! Nathan, a TCAF staffer, asked her opinion of Hemingway, who is of course well-known for his writing on bullfighting and Spanish life. est em-sensei replied that she had read Hemingway, but thought he was “too macho.” She said she felt he wrote as if he was looking down from heaven on bullfighting, as well.
Another great question asked about the response she’s received from the gay community in Japan, what they think of her work. She said she hadn’t really gotten any negative comments, and wasn’t sure if there was a dichotomy between fans of BL and the gay community, which prompted me to note that her work was mostly unlike other BL, by having characters who are adults and have relationships without coercion, denial, non-con or incest. She joked that by drawing such unconventional BL, maybe that was why her books didn’t sell as well as others!
Another audience member asked whether she’s planning on doing more doujinshi, and she said it always comes down to time, she has to produce 60-70 pages a month and when she does doujinshi, it’s always in, like, the last 2 days. But the fan had specifically asked about a piece of Attack on Titan fanart, and est em-sensei said she wouldn’t be doing derivative work.
Another question asked her opinion of scanlations. She was really honest and said she thinks they are okay as a starting off point for fans, but really, in order to be okay, at some point they have to transition to actually buying the book in some language otherwise, she won’t be able to continue drawing.
I had asked her at the very beginning to ask the audience a question and so, she asked them this: she feels it’s weird sometimes to see Japanese culture as written by foreigners, so did they think it was weird to see a Japanese person writing overseas culture? The audience said, nah, it was cool and I added that it gives us another viewpoint of ourselves, through a slightly distorted lens. It’s good for us to see that image and know what people think of us.
And with that, we wrapped up a great hour, with a terrific manga artist, est em. Several of her other BL books have been translated into English by DMP, Deux, Netcomics and now Viz’s SuBLime has just published her newest book, Tableau No. 20. If you’re ever looking for non-trope-y BL with mature themes, but also mature characters, I strongly recommend her work. In Japanese her current series are Golondrina (which I am reviewing here, as the main character is a lesbian), and IPPO. If you’ve read any of her work in scanlation form, buying her work that is available in English is a great way to say thanks.)
On a personal note, I asked her to add in a few fangirls for Chika when she next bullfights in Golondrina. Jocelyne and I joked that if she just explained to her editor a promise made in Canada is like a contract, she should be okay. ^_^
Thanks to est em-sensei, Jocelyne and the great audience for a really fantastic panel!
As con season starts to pick up, I’m making a point of trying to get to shows and once again, Toronto Comic Arts Festival is on my radar. Last year, I told you what a great show it is and why. This year I want you all to join us, so here’s some highlights.
Guests include Trina Robbins, whose life work is to study and promote women in comics, and Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, co-creator of the magnificent LGBTQ comic Skim.
Manga Guests include Moyoco Anno, creator of Sakuran, which is being published by Vertical Publishing. It’s a stunningly fabulous story (by which I mean that it is sublimely full of incandescent anger that I find absolutely beautiful). And please allow me to indulge a moment of fangirly squeeing, as another manga guest this year is est em, creator of the wonderfully intense Golondrina, about a young lesbian who is training to be a matador. This is especially exciting for me, as I have the honor of moderating her guest panel on Sunday, May 11, along with translator Jocelyne Allen. I’m terribly excited about this. ^_^
Also attending is the 2-woman team known as Akira Himekawa, who are working on the My Little Pony ~Friendship is Magic manga. They are absolutely lovely.
I’ll also be moderating a few other panels: Art Theft! on Saturday and The New Small Press on Sunday. There is a LGBTQ mixer on Saturday, check the events page for details. This show is very LGBTQ friendly, so expect to find some queer comics and comics artists! And there is a Women in Manga panel on Saturday. You can be sure I’ll be there.
TCAF is free to the public (with a few special events that require tickets, check the website) – it is held in the Toronto Reference Library, so I hope that all my Toronto-area friends will stop by and join me for one of the most fun manga, comics, and bande dessinee’ events in North America. ^_^
See you in Toronto!
I had such grandiose plans for MoCCA this year. I was gonna go to all sorts of parties, hang out with some amazing people. On Thursday, I was so stoked. I felt great, had energy and money…and then I woke up Friday with that stomach bug that was going around. So Friday was killed dead as I spent the day feverish and sick, really hoping that I still could make it in for a bit Saturday.
Three cheers for clean living. I woke Saturday feel perfectly fine, just a bit tired and amazingly managed to survive the longest train ride of my life into the city. (I did not actually think it was possible to take that long on the train into New York from my town.) Ran up to Book-Off, ran down to the 69th regiment armory, ran in to be instantly reminded of why I like MoCCA ArtFest so much. Like TCAF, the focus is on original work, like the best corners of Comiket, there is a lively, thriving community around those original works. Walking through MoCCA there’s a whole lot of people smiling, laughing, hugging and talking…about comics. It’s a kind of nerdvana. ^_^
To paraphrase Marguerite Dabaie, from whom I bought some lovely coasters from her Pajikant series, MoCCA isn’t really about “comics comics” – it’s about stories that have to be told and comics is the tool, rather than merely a media.
MoCCA redefines itself a bit every year. This year it was organized almost topically, with “larger” publishers up at the front. By larger, I still mean pretty small, Fantagraphics, First Second, and the like.
Like Comiket, the side rows are peopled by larger small presses, notable names and bigger draws. Also like Comiket, the ever-growing selection of “goods” is sometimes as good or better than the actual comics. Speaking to my wife about it, we decided that goods are a genuinely fabulous way to really engage and “own” the story that you like so much.
It was an incredible pleasure to once again have a chance to catch up with Jennifer Hayden, with whom I had an amazing conversation about her illustration for the kid’s book The Liberty Cafe. Because I had been really sick the day before, I just felt absolutely obliged to not touch anything or look through anyone’s books, so Jennifer walked me through the story, commenting on her comic within the illustration technique to keep the reader connected with the protagonist until they “arrive” in the story. It was a terrific conversation with a stellar artist. Jennifer, too, is expanding out into goods, and has an awesome selection of individual original panels of her work, as well as necklaces and other coolness.
I caught up very briefly with Jennifer Camper, who is working on an upcoming queer comics conference (hopefully, I’ll have more info in future days about that for you) and was able to catch some of the ‘How Are Comics Queer’ panel, with Gay Comix pioneer Howard Cruse.
I stopped by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s table, which is hosting a number of top names at the event and had a quick chat with Charles Brownstein, the Executive Director about how busy the organization has been already this year advocating for first-amendment rights. I was – at last! – able to get a copy of the CBLDF Presents Manga: Introduction, Challenges, and Best Practices to which I contributed two chapters. I started reading the book on the way home and I really think the entire team did a fantastic job. If you want a solid overview of Manga history, the demographic genres and/or a guide for your teachers and librarians I absolutely think this book is top-notch. We done good. Charles said he hopes for a revised edition in the future with illustrations.
Lastly, just before I left I made my way to the kids section, (where I was really careful to touch nothing), to the Boom! Studios table, where I had a chance to meet Shannon Watters, one of the creators of the LumberJanes! Squee! Unfortunately for me, they were sold out, so no review until I get a copy, but this comic is one I have been waiting for with great anticipation.
In case you’ve missed the buzz, the LumberJanes is about “Five best friends spending the summer at Lumberjane scout camp…defeating yetis, three-eyed wolves, and giant falcons”. You understand why I want to read this, yes?
About this time, I felt fairly wiped, dragged my butt back onto the train and spent the ride home speaking with a lovely young woman for whom the world is her oyster. In fact, the entire day was basically filled with people, young and old who make their worlds for themselves. And that is exactly why I like MoCCA so much.
Next year, I promise to be healthy and may very well get a room in the city, so I can go to the damn parties. Who’s coming with me?
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