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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 . First slide from my Ninjas vs Cowboys presentation. 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
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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 ea
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Francophilia

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] Since my kindergarten class where we had a guest teacher with a monkey puppet that spoke only French, I've been interested in the French language. My interest never went as deep as my interest in Asian languages, but deep enough that I have several dozens of books in or about French. My first French movie exposure was the stylish thriller DIVA . The opening opera scene still gives me goosebumps just due to the amazing singing of Wilhelminia Wiggins Fernandez . It would be another few years before I got to see Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita . A few years after that I saw the fantastic comedic horror (or horrific comedy)  Delicatessen , and the classic slapstick spy comedy, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe .   I really enjoyed these two genres of French film, the comedy and the action thriller and always looked forward to finding new works by these actors and directors. T
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