Skip to main content

Popular posts from this blog

FLESH + BLOOD mini-review (Rutger Hauer, Verhoeven)

I'm trying out a new format for talking about movies.

It's a work in progress. I actually want to do more illustration and the sketch of Jennifer Jason Leigh doesn't do her any justice. Once I turned on this movie, I wanted to look into Susan Tyrrell as she always plays highly-interesting broken characters. I plan to rewatch her in Angel (1984) sometime soon.
She has a great quote on IMDB:
I'm a loner. I don't like beautiful people, but I find beauty in the grotesque. And in the sweet soul inside someone who has been able to get through their life without being a rat's ass. I love all the connections that I listed up here. Hauer is one of my absolute favorite actors and I can't believe I waited so long to see him in this. Or maybe I saw the casting and ran far away, cuz this is some bizarre casting!

Verhoeven is a very interesting director as in he's not afraid to do things differently. He apparently experimented while making this film and wasn't ha…
Post a Comment
Read more

Karate Kid, IF "Similar" and SCBWI Tokyo Art Show

The Karate Kid changed my life.
The movie, of course. Not the Legion of Superheroes comic character.
I'm watching it right now as I type this blog and I was thinking about how many of my perceptions about karate were shaped by Mr. Miyagi. I was never big on "sports" movies, I never saw Rocky.
But I knew what it was like to be the little guy. The new kid on the block. And I knew what it was like going up against an institutionalized system of separating the "winners" from the "losers".
Luckily, I had friends in and out of school that liked me for who I was and not for who I desperately thought I wanted to be. It took me a little while and Karate Kid 2 to realize what I did want. The summer that KK2 was the summer where I decided to take control of my life and stopped worrying about what the @$$holes thought. It wasn't even a gradual thing. Once I had made that decision, suddenly things started changing around me. I had confidence and that made it easie…
4 comments
Read more

Ninjas vs Cowboys, Top 10 Cowboy Manga

I talk about US ninja comics and Japanese cowboy comics on Tim Young's Deconstructing Comics.
Listen to it here!


I based on the lecture I gave last year at the Koshi Manga Museum.
Here are my Top 10 Cowboy Manga:

10.Bullet Tommy 『弾丸トミー』by Shige SUGIURA
This is a classic, one of the earliest comics. It's a "gag manga" for kids and so pokes fun at the various Western movie tropes. The art resembles Shoney's Big Boy, doesn't it?


9. The Cactus Kid 『サボテン君』by Osamu TEZUKA
This is one of Tezuka's early Western manga when he had only seen a few westerns at the time. I like the idea of a guy who wants to turn his parents' saloon into a milk bar.

8.The Belle Starr Gang 『ベル☆スタア強盗団』by Akihiro ITO
Ito is known for his Geobreeders saga, but this is his take on the real-life outlaw Belle Starr and her gang. I like the art and the attempt to incorporate real-life events into the comic.

7.Isamu of the Wastelands 『荒野の少年イサム』by Noboru KAWASAKI
A popular manga in Shonen J…
Post a Comment
Read more