TCAF 2017 Roundup, Part 1: Everyone is Queer at TCAF

May 16th, 2017

Well hello again, Okazu readers! It has been a whirlwind week for me. As you all have been relaxing, reading reviews of great comics, I’ve been running around Toronto, moderating amazing panels, meeting extraordinary people, eating and drinking unspeakably well and, of course, talking about comics until I was hoarse. TCAF is always great and this year was sublime. You must join me there.

I’m going to do my round-up in pieces, so you can savor some of the individual parts that made it an incredible whole.

The first thing that I must tell you is about three must-have manga. The first was not a TCAF-related item, but with the animation clip-slash-teaser having gone up and Shinsokan being really enthusiastic and Seven Seas having done such a good job to get it to us, you really must have Kase-san and Morning Glories. This manga has likable and relatable characters.

If you are looking for a nice Yuri manga, and are kind of flailing right now – Kase-san and Morning Glories by Hiromi Takashima is absolutely a must-get. (I reviewed it here on Okazu in April.)

 

Now, on to TCAF. There were two manga that were the highlight of the show. EVERYONE was talking about them. 

The first and probably most anticipated, is Gengoroh Tagame’s My Brother’s Husband. This incredibly touching tale of a man who has traveled to Japan to discover his late husband’s life and meet his family, was the star of the show.

Tagame-sensei’s work is beautiful, the story is beautiful and, as I commented several times, is really about the passive homophobia of nice people, good people. Tagame-sensei was a Guest at TCAF and it was really lovely to see so many people lining up to get his book and his signature.

This will be a two-book series put out by Pantheon, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. It’s a game changer type book. It’s teachable, it’s teen-friendly and just extraordinarily good.

 

The other manga that was on everyone’s mind – and is sure to be a breakout hit – is Kabi Nagata’s comic essay My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness. It goes on sale in June, and everyone in the manga world was scrambling for a pre-release copy. I read it on the plane home and I think it’s going to be another game changer. It’s hard and honest but touches issues at the core of a lot of people’s lives – their detachment from their own needs and desires. 

It actually was a much better read than I remembered, which I’ll talk about when I review it. It’s is *currently* #1 on Amazon in the “Yaoi, Gay and Lesbian Manga” category and it hasn’t even been released! 

 

Secondly, I had the almost surreal pleasure of sharing a room with comic journalists Heidi MacDonald, Brigid Alverson and Deb Aoki. Heidi had a brilliant idea to do a podcast in our room at the end of the day. Here are the four episodes, you should totally listen to them, if only to learn about more comics per second than you can imagine, but also to see how often we ended up talking about queer content in our only 1/4 queer room. As Brigid pointed out, “Everyone is queer” these days and we’re just getting queerer.

Four Women in a Hotel Room At TCAF Episode 1 – In which we eat some potato chips

Four Women in a Hotel Room at TCAF Episode 2: Libraries, Croissants, Manga, Sana Takeda and Dave McKean

Six Women in a Hotel Room at TCAF Episode 3 – Rijsttafel, queer comics themes, and great books we picked up

Two Women in a Hotel Room at TCAF Episode 4 – Final thoughts on the book of the show

Enjoy some books and conversation about books, I’ll be back tomorrow to talk panels and people. ^_^

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Yuri Manga: Linkage Perfect Edition (リンケージ 完全版)

May 15th, 2017

In 2009, before the creation of Yuri Danshi, Kurata Uso was a regular artist for Yuri Hime magazine who actually drew Yuri. Yuri that Yuri readers enjoyed and which starred girls, falling for one another. The book Linkage was a lovely example of shorts that fulfilled these simple criteria.

It’s hard to imagine that we’re 8 years later, but we are and that book is being re-released as Linkage Perfect Edition (リンケージ 完全版). The stories remain the same as they did in the original edition (reviewed here on Okazu in September, 2009) with the addition of a new story “Pierce” about femininity and love in school. But I wanted to step back and sort of re-evaluate my original dismissal of the book as containing lightweight “girl meets girl” romances. 

I was wrong. 

This collection is not just a series of small occurrences that bring people together for that moment when they suddenly realize 1) their feelings and that, 2) the other girl’s feelings are the same. The linkage I missed was NOT between Girl A and Girl B, but between Girl A and herself. And those moments of profound self-recognition (a theme we will return to several times in the next week) is the first, critical link made. Only then can a person find connection to others. 

The story in this collection that I like best is “Present” in which an alienated and conflicted (and subsequently disengaged) girl meets and befriends…and ultimately loves and is profoundly changed by…a blind girl. It’s a beautiful story and I can understand why I dismissed it as a frivol originally, but my perspective has changed. I can now see that the linkage Haruka drives is in Keiko’s relationship with herself and her detachment from her own life. From there she frees herself to be open to sharing her feelings with Haruka. It’s a quiet story with so little conflict it almost seems superficial but, for Linkage, it’s the perfect metaphor.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Stories – Average 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Ironically, my original review ended with “I would very much like to see a longer story by Kurata. I think there’s some solid story-telling potential in there, and hope to see something beyond just a one-shot.”  Then I got my wish and it was Yuri Danshi and I hated it. Hah. ^_^;

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Western Comic: The Black Feather Falls

May 14th, 2017

Having fun at a comic show is a matter of making fun for yourself. If you like celebrity and media premieres, the big Comic-Con shows are a good bet. If you like spending time with comic artists you like, smaller shows are the way to go. And if you, like me, rejoice in explosions of creativity in independent comics, then shows that celebrate people who make, read and love comics are  a lot of fun. Of all the shows I attend, Comitia, TCAF, MoCCA and Queers & Comics are the ones that I enjoy the most. Not because I don’t love a three-ring media circus or 10,000 vendors all crammed into a huge space, but because of the sheer energy of creativity.

Today I am enjoying the final day of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival in Toronto and thought it a great day to speak of a comic I picked up at the MoCCA Fest in NYC,  sponsored by the Society of Illustrators after they acquired the titular Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. 

This year I went primarily to see a lot of people I already knew and throw money at them. I picked up the print version of Power & Magic there and literally spent my last few buck on today’s acquisition. 

Ellen Lindner’s The Black Feather Falls, is the Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery comic with a team of women leads that I needed. 

Tina Swift is an American living in 1920s London, in hopes of avoiding familial pressure to marry and  to get herself a career. Tina is working as a shopgirl, but hopes to become a newspaper reporter. When she attempts to see a man about a newspaper job, she encounters a dead man on the street, next to which a black feather has fallen.  Also strangely, she cannot find the man with whom she was supposed to meet at the paper. Instead she encounters his snarky, somewhat bitter secretary, Miss MacInteer. 

The absence of MacInteer’s boss and the black feather, launch Swift and MacInteer into a massive mystery that involves strangely insular islands off the coast of Scotland and the London underworld. The two women come to rely on and trust one another and, in the end turn up to be a great team of reporters…and detectives.

There isn’t any relationship developing between Swift and MacInteer in this story. The book itself is rated appropriate for all ages, and lacks significant violence or sex. That said, don’t underestimate the power of fandelusion. I could easily see them having an ill-advised fling. ^_^

But, more importantly, a team of adventuress-detectives have been born and I know I need more of those!

Ratings:

Art – 7 Not sophisticated, but fun
Story – 8 We all need a little female detective teamwork from time to time
Characters – 8 They rub each other the wrong way, but make a good team, just the way they should
Yuri – 0 for real, 2 inside my head
Service – 0

Overall – 8

So if you too enjoy a spot of original comics story-telling and all the 1920’s detective pairs you can get, you’ll want to take a look at The Black Feather Falls. 

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LGBTQ Comic: Princess Princess Ever After

May 12th, 2017

There is a (probably apocryphal) story about the late Joseph Campbell, when teaching a class about his now-classic Hero’s Journey Monomyth. The story says that at the end of a lecture on the Arthurian quest legends about the Holy Grail, one of his students asked why there were no roles in the legends with which women could identify. Campbell was puzzled and pointed out that women are present as the hero’s mother, the hero’s queen, and the damsel-in-distress. “What more do you want?” he asked. “I want to be the hero.” the student replied.”

I recall that it was Bill Moyers telling that story, but itw as also a long time ago and I could be so very wrong. But the story itself, when I heard it had me nodding like a melodramatic bobble head. Of course, you stupid-smart old man. OF COURSE we want to be the hero. How and why this confused Campbell and still confuses an awful lot of men is the history of western civilization and beyond the scope of this blog. But, what is dead-center in this blog’s wheelhouse is a story that does not need to be convinced of this simple truth. Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill is a lifetime’s worth of itch-scratching and fantasy fulfillment suitable for the youngest or oldest child you know.

Princess Amira cuts a fine figure in uniform, with her fabulous hair, riding on her unicorn mount, Celeste. And when she encounters Sadie, a princess who has been imprisoned in a tall tower, she’s sure that’s she’s found both the perfect monumental adventure, and princess, for her. But first, she has to convince Sadie to be rescued. And then both Sadie and Armina must work together to face challenges and ogres and traumatic pasts. But since they do it together, you just know they’ll triumph in the end.

Although my childhood self might have scoffed at the simplicity of the tale here (she was prone to reading the story of Marco Polo, tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur in overblown faux-medieval prose) she would definitely, positively appreciated Armina’s uniform, her unicorn and her love for Sadie.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Fun and comic strip-y
Characters – 9 Ogres and unicorns and dragons and princesses. I’m all in.
Story – 9 Ichijinsha needs to read this, then take another crack at Yuri Light Novels. See? It’s easy!
Yuri – 9 and utterly adorable
Service – Nope. Well, there’s Armina in a uniform….

Overall – 9

Do the adventurous girl children you know a favor and buy them an early holiday present. Heck, buy them a not-holiday present. And get a copy of Princess Princess Ever After for yourself, so you can dream of dancing with ogres and facing bullies down and give ole misogynist Joseph Campbell the finger. ^_^

Posted in LGBTQ, Western Comic/Comix | 10 Comments »


Marine Corps Yumi Manga, Volume 5 (まりんこゆみ)

May 11th, 2017

I made it all the way to the end of Marine Corps Yumi, Volume 5 (まりんこゆみ) before completely losing my shit.

In Volume 5,we start getting into the nitty gritty of non-com life as an American marine stationed in Japan. A large portion of the book is about joint training with the Navy, Army Air Force and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, which includes a discussion for the Japanese readership of the crucial difference between the pronunciation of “Corps” and “corpse.”

Of course the reactions to the quarters and food vary significantly and some of the best bit are when the Marines look at their new space and think “Kkay” while the Army begins to complain and the Navy women are like “Cool! Look at all the SPACE!” 

Yumi acquits herself so well she’s “traded” to the JSDF for a while and we get important, super critical analyses on Japanese and American junk food (apparently we die without donuts,) and the rituals that accompany the ends of joint training, such as trading clothing items, like overshirts.

We get to see corpsman Erica Bush be actively horrible to anyone who needs help (“I’ve been cut.” “Here’s a bottle of water, now get lost.” “I have a broken bone.” “Here’s a bottle of water, now get lost!”) except Linda to whom she is overattentive. ^_^ 

Rita meets a guy working for the JSDF and there were more than a few autobiographical shades in that story. ^_^

It was all very amusing and I didn’t get choked up once.

Until the final pages, which included pictures from Ana’s memorial service, including – and this is where I lost it – a display of her challenge coins.  That was it. Goddammit, Ana. Seriously pissed you’re not here.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8 This volume had a lot of laugh-out-loud moments
Characters – 8
Yuri – 3, But Erica’s a complete dick about it. ^_^
Service – 5 

Overall – 9

Marine Corps Yumi is still ongoing in Japanese and I’m still tuning in regularly. It’s funny and poignant. Thank you Nogami-sensei for keeping it going. 

 

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