SAME HAT!

EARLY MANGA DAYS: Takao Saito's Golgo 13 four graphic novels and 2 floppies (1988-1999)

2025-08-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

This post is the latest installment in Same Hat's long-running "early manga days" series, documenting the specific volumes and physical releases from the first 30 years of contemporary manga translation into English. If the images look fuzzy, click on them for the larger size (Blogger is still terrible at formatting embedded images and text, haha)

I've been procrastinating this post for about two weeks straight, despite having these volumes (in excellent condition and delicious print production) atop my desk staring me down. A variety of factors combine to make this sprawling, widely-adapted, long-running and beloved (in Japan) manga weirdly difficult to write about for me.

It basically comes down to two factors: I was never a huge Golgo 13 fan back in my formative years and manga-reading baptism in the mid-90s - although revisiting now immediately reveals their brilliance and storytelling muscle - and (more importantly), other writers like Jason Thompson and Ryan Holmberg have painstakingly and thoroughly covered the various pitstops and pitfalls in bringing this character and manga to English audiences between 1986-2012.

Before going any further reading my short dispatch, I strongly suggest you read Jason Thompson's fantastic column on Golgo 13 here - as part of his extensive House of 1000 Manga series for ANN.

Jason is an old friend of mine from when Same Hat first began, and an extremely influential manga editor through his work at Viz (and on the magazine Pulp). In that 2012 column, Jason covers everything I would have written and researched, including the multiple starts and attempts to bring Duke Togo to English audiences. Jason also shares first-hand experiences and anecdotes working with editor Carl Gustav Horn on the series. I will quote a few more times from that piece, but please simply go read it now!

For more on Takao Saito himself, I strongly recommend Ryan Holmberg's 2011 essay "Saitō Takao and the “Gekiga Factory” over on TCJ. Ryan details Takao Saito's place in the history of gekiga and his relationship with Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Osamu Tezuka and Kazuo Koike and others, focused on "Saito Pro" and how Takao Saito pioneered his own production model for serial manga in and around those explosively creative years of 1966-1970.

********

Here are the four paperbacks of the Golgo 13 Graphic Novel Series, published in 1986, 1987, and 1988. These editions are published in English, and feature a lot of lush print production. Each features a slipcover with an inside flap underlining just how popular Golgo 13 is in Japan ("Over 60 Million Copies in Print!!"). The books feature color opening sections of a story, with striking spot reds highlighting: spilled blood, a Nazi swastika, a red sunset over an African plain, and Duke Togo's impeccable 70s flared shirt collar.

The volumes feature that very specific mid-80s English typeface prevelant in Japanese works published in English in Japan; I have an immediate nostalgic fondness for this typeface, which Fred Schodt described to me over text recently as "weird kerning, no proportional spacing - classic stuff!" I use this exact typeface in some of my early zines, after encountering it in Japan as an exchange student in the late 90s. The volumes also include some incredibly lush and fantastic hand-lettering for SFX throughout.

As Jason describes in his essay, these editions are attributed to "Lead Publishing" in Nakano, Tokyo - the name of one arm of Saito Production Co. focused on proselytizing the good word of our international assassin. There are no translators or staff listed in the books, but a mini bio of Takao Saito graces the inside back cover.

As Jason outlined:

The books are nearly exactly the eventual Viz Signature format, and around 150 pages per book - including two multi-chapter stories each. One other detail I adore, the first volume "Into The Wolves' Lair" starts with a beautiful pull-out poster at the start of the book, a fictional dossier / interpol bulletin on our main character.

The stories included are absolute bangers, giving a great vantage point of what Duke Togo's adventures entail - and the consistently stunning and cinematic layouts of Takao Saito. We've got Duke fighting the "4th Reich" in a Boys From Brazil caper where he hunts down Hitler's successors across Germany, Argentina, and Brazil; infiltrating and killing poachers hunting elephants and lions in Sub-Saharan Africa; overthrowing S. American drug cartels, executing Apartheid flunkies, and helping a Mujahideen group interrupt a corrupt Russian arms deal.

Truly wild stuff, like if Tezuka's Black Jack was a murderous Day of the Jackal style Forrest Gump, appearing silently on the periphery of every 20th century conflict to solve diplomacy with bullets to the head. (Jason talks additionally about stories published by Viz in the 2010 releases where Duke kills Princess Di, inteferes in the Gore v. Bush election, and fights for (and against) a free Palestine at various times.

Here are photographs from the aforementioned two standalone Golgo 13 floppies, published a few years later in 1990 in conjunction with the Vic Tokai game releases. There is an air of "pick me" in these floppies, of grasping for the correct format that will finally entice American readers. The 1st issue is printed on thin paper with a rough, blurry mimeograph look, while the 2nd issue is a FULL COLOR book (and the cover price rises from $1.00 to $1.50 from The Impossible Hit to Hopper the Border, just . You get a sense of this floppy as Lead Publishing's hail mary pass, sandwiching a Golgo 13 chapter between Game Boy and Nintendo ads (Clash at Demonhead is advertised in the back of the issue).

At the close here, I must also share the anecdote that open's Ryan Holmberg's essay, a story transmitted as part of an essay by critic Osabe Hideo. This story certainly feeding into Takao Saito's own self-mythologizing, but shares that another Takao Saito's historical gekiga "Muyōnosuke" was nearly the first series translated into English by an American comics publisher:

Hope everyone is enjoying these photos and recaps. Please read Jason and Holmberg's linked pieces above if you want to learn more about Takao Saito and Golgo 13. I'll have a new Early Manga Days for you next week!

EARLY MANGA DAYS: RAW #7 (1985)

2025-07-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Managed to finally snag a copy of RAW #7 (May 1985), known as the “torn” issue with a hand-torn corner - but relevant here for the “TOKYO RAW” section. This section always loomed large in my mental imagination, as sorta THE moment of convergence between New York 80s indie (Beyer, Burns, Swart) intersecting with the core GARO team. Seeing it in person, it’s both striking in how contemporary and plugged into a shared aesthetic and moment it seems, while also having so much weird racialized anxiety throughout it.

While I see a straight line from this RAW issue with musings by Art Spiegelman to the essays and columns of Carl Gustav Horn and Kit Fox in Pulp (and the early manga musings of Eric Nakamura in Giant Robot), the Japan imagined in Raw #7 is held and viewed at arm’s length (or further) while the California Millennial vantage point in Viz’s PULP sees the indie manga contemporaries as adjacent, brothers-in-arms of a shared aesthetic (and politic?).

The main section is 12 pages and features King Terry, Yosuke Kawamura, and Sugiura Shigeru - as well as a special 12 page Tsuge Yoshiharu color ashcan of “Red Flowers.” The typesetting in this latter insert is impressive and extremely contemporary (done by Phil Felix) with a translation by Yoshiko Kasuga and Paul Karasik. This insert is the standout piece of the book - though now we are blessed with the 5 volume (and growing) anthology of Tsuge’s work thanks to D&Q and Ryan Holmberg.

The tabloid size of RAW #7 is the main arresting feature, giving King Terry’s strips a reverence that is deserved and playful. That same wealth of space in the introduction section is a curse - leaving lots of room for edgelord-esque columns and “Gung Ho” stereotypes that would have been wild even back in1985. As an object of history for the early days of manga, it’s a fascinating snapshot of how Art and the New York scene of art comix was observing and monitoring a slice of Japanese cartoonists from afar.

THE STRANGE TALE OF PANORAMA ISLAND: Now Available!

2013-05-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

Guys, oh my god Guysssssss. GUYS!

The Strange Tale of Panorama Island by Suehiro Maruo is now on sale and available direct from the publisher, Last Gasp!!!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

The book is hefty and sexy, and over-sized at 6" x 8.5" with gold-foil on the cover! 272 pages and hardcover, I'm SO EXCITED to share this book with the Same Hat crew. It was a long time in the making, but I am confident you will dig it.

Major thanks and adoration to Same Hat co-founder Evan Hayden for his masterful lettering and book design, and Colin at Last Gasp for believing in the project.

They are shipping direct orders now, and I understand book will be making their way to shops in the next 2 weeks in the United States, and then percolating out after that! If you'd like your local comics stop to carry the book, please have them contact Last Gasp directly via their site.

HERE ARE SOME PREVIEW PICS! (via our friend Deb Aoki's Twitter feed!)

STOKED, STOKED, STOKED.

Toren Smith, RIP (1960 - 2013)

2013-03-07T12:50:00.001-08:00

I learned the sad news today that Toren Smith has passed away at the young age of 52.

Toren was a fascinating guy, the founder of Studio Proteus and arguably one of the most important figures in the entire history of the English-language manga industry. Please take a few minutes to read this personal tribute from his friend Jonathen Clements - it paints a picture of a unique and exciting life, and fills in details about the earliest days of manga and anime fandom in America. The instrumental role Toren had in American comics history (alongside folks like Same Hat heroes Fred Schodt, Fred Patton, and others) can't be overstated.

If you were a manga/anime nerd in the '90s like me, and enjoyed any of the following Studio Proteus-powered titles, please remember Toren Smith today and keep his family and friends in your thoughts:

DID IT JUST GET HOT IN HERE?

2013-02-14T22:31:00.003-08:00

Hey guys, so um... I have been waiting to post news about this until it was really real, because of the near-mythical status is has accumulated after many false starts and anticipation over the last few years.

But listen up now finally:

THE STRANGE TALE OF PANORAMA ISLAND by Suehiro Maruo is coming soon from Last Gasp. I will have copies for sale at my booth at Toronto Comics Art (TCAF) in May! That's the cover above, except the actual book will have gold-foil printing for the text. And it's hardcover and 274 pages. Will be available online and through stores in the U.S. officially soon after, starting in late-June.

And in case you still don't believe me, here are some proofs from the overseas printer that we approved yesterday:

Also: I just posted on the Same Hat Tumblr the logo designed by my extremely talented friend Jillian Tamaki for "Frontier" - a quarterly art and comics zine I'll be putting out as part of my new publishing house I'm starting this year.

Holy hell, YES -- I'm finally taking the plunge and becoming "a publisher"...!?
I'm currently busy working on all the mundane and exciting preparations to make everything happen; I have very limited and modest goals for release in the first year or so of doing this, and I still am keeping my full time day job and Same Hat going all the while. I am extremely excited to be able to share more details on the company and first issue of this new series in the coming months. The current plan is to debut Frontier #1 at TCAF alongside The Strange Tale of Panorama Island. You should come to the festival... It's gonna be a doozy!

HIDESHI HINO & KAZUO UMEZU... JAM COMIC?

2013-01-25T13:08:00.001-08:00

Just in: delightful news, sent to us from Same Hat reader cat-heaven! Did you know that the NHK has a program called Renman that features professional artists facing off in a jam comic competition?? Where they meet and draw together on the same sheet of paper, then are judged by a panel of critics and television personalities?

And did you know... the January 6th episode of Renman featured a friendly faceoff between HIDESHI HINO and KAZUO UMEZU!?!?

NHK is notoriously on point about removing uploaded videos of their content, and the clips online of this episode have been taken down... but I was able to grab some promotional images from their site, for your viewing pleasure!

The comic's theme was 初夢 (hatsuyume - "First dream of the new year") and the competition uses a chess clock approach, with 30 total minutes for each cartoonist. They start it off with a game of janken and Hideshi Hino wins, electing for Umezu to draw first.

OUR CHALLENGERS!...
Kazuo Umezu!!

And his opponent... Hideshi Hino!!

The episode's judges (Simon, Randy, Paula, Randy 2)

Umezu remains the happiest and sweetest person I've ever met

Hideshi Hino's horrible horror-drawing hands. I actually met him at ComicCon 2005 too, he was very sweet but much less friendly.

The Laughing Vampire/Grandpa

Facing off in their fancy, signature looks.

This is a scene from an imagined buddy film in my mind: "Grumpy Old Mangakas."

And finally, here is their comic! HIDESHI HINO vs. KAZUO UMEZU:

The winner as decided by the judges on the show: KAZUO UMEZU

PICTUREBOX LAUNCHING A HOLMBERG-EDITED MANGA LINE

2013-01-22T12:11:00.003-08:00

Exciting news comes to us from Comic Reporter's Tom Spurgeon, as we embark upon a 2013 full of strange and unexpected comics. He reports that PictureBox is launching a new manga line featuring old , called "Ten Cent Manga." The line (imprint?) will feature titles edited and translated by manga expert and Garoholic, Ryan Holmberg.

Head over to Comic Reporter's post for the full details. They have announced the following two titles will be released in 2013!

Last Of The Mohicans by Shigero Sugiura - May 2013

The Mysterious Underground Men (地底国の怪人) by Osamu Tezuka - October 2013

Below are some pages I dug up from Japanese edition of "Mysterious Underground Men"... I am extremely excited to see where the combined sensibilities of PB's Dan Nadel and Holmberg go in the coming months with this line... very good news for the Same Hat community.

(click for bigger versions)

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013!

2013-01-03T13:49:00.002-08:00

Happy New Year to everyone from your absent editor, Ryan!

("Friends of Same Hat" by our friend Jillian Tamaki)

I posted two short posts on the SH Tumblr: here and here, showing off your handsome faces!

FOR REAL, SOME GREAT THINGS AHEAD IN 2013: More posts, new contributors, print zines, a new t-shirt, a hosted Forum for us!

GOING TO BROOKLYN FEST THIS WEEKEND

2012-11-05T11:08:00.006-08:00

I'll be in New York this coming weekend-- flying our Thursday for a getaway trip with my GF for her birthday. I will be stopping by the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival on Saturday, and slinging comics for a while.

I don't have my own table this time, but will be bringing comics printed at Mission Risoplex (my Risograph print shop). You can pick up the comics at these tables:

Koyama Press table (U16-17): SF #1 by Ryan Cecil Smith and Thickness #3!
PictureBox table (D1-2): Glacier/Glazier #1 by Jonny Negron

(click for big versions of each)

I'll be hanging out at the Koyama Press table with Michael DeForge, and wearing my Same Hat t-shirt! Come say hello!

Details!

BCGF, noon - 7pm at

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church

275 North 8th Street

Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY

NEW RISOGRAPH ZINES FROM JAPAN MAKE ME WEAK (WITH JEALOUSY)

2012-10-31T11:20:00.001-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I was perusing the TACO che blog (as I do when I'm looking for some inspiration) and came across this beautiful Risograph-printed comics zine, 土星 (Dosei - "Saturn").

This is the 4th issue of Dosei (The HOW-TO issue), and includes a number of exciting cartoonists and graphic designers. I'm not familiar with any of these artists, but have a hit list of folks to Google and track down (and share with the Same Hat Community in the coming weeks).

Check out these beautiful, two-color spreads from the issue; this stuff is extremely inspiring to me (and makes me feel bad about all the work I've done so far):

The previous issue, Dosei #3, was also printed on Risograph and is equally lush. Here are some (smaller) spreads from the TACO che shop:

I'll work on more posts/details about Dosei and other self-published zines from Japan. These are our Risograph/zine peers and I wanna work on connecting the loose circuit of creators in the US and Euope with these folks over in Japan.

UPDATE: Thanks to the internet sleuthing of Niki, we now have a listing of artists published in Dosei and their personal sites!

有延和磨

http://www5.pf-x.net/~arinobe-kazuma/

アレッサンドロ・ビオレッティ

http://alessandrobioletti.com/

池谷なつみ

http://claydot.jimdo.com/

石山さやか

http://drowingdrowing.blog88.fc2.com/

鈴木菜々

http://suzukinana.ohuda.com

タコ25

http://taco25.com/

田雜芳一

http://www.yoshikazutazo.com/

玉川桜

http://konnichiwasayonara.blog36.fc2.com/

なかじまかえ

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/addgift0427/

長瀬泰理

http://nagase.iiyudana.net/

junpei

http://www.junpppei.com/

ひぐちよしの

http://bluegold22.web.fc2.com/

ひしだようこ

http://clap-clap.oops.jp/

Hironaka

http://allgoodspinario.blogspot.com/

藤原佳代子

http://kayopiso.net/

白身さかな

http://yoriuchiyoriko.web.fc2.com/

松尾モノ

http://2style.jp/gm0327/

高旗将雄

http://masaox2006.xxxxxxxx.jp/

石垣裕太郎

http://stonekid.cho-chin.com/

QUICK PICS FROM KINOKUNIYA

2012-10-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

I have a confession (of sorts) to make to the Same Hat community: Until this weekend, I think I hadn't bought/read any new, non-Tezuka manga in the last seven or eight months?!

A travesty, right? As folks who follow my other random projects have gathered, I've been focusing a lot of my free time on creating zines and anthologies, hanging out with minicomics folks, and printing comics for friends at my little Risograph print shop. Perhaps it's a sign I'm getting older/lamer/jaded, but I simply got majorly burnt out on manga for a while there, and am just now coming back to the fold.

In re-starting Same Hat, I've been working to catch back up and rectify this... Sunday, I stopped by my local Kinokuniya, and picked up a series about which I heard great things: Flowers of Evil by Shuzo Oshimi. I read the first volume last night and found it fun, deceptively simple and... psychologically disturbing. I'm stoked to read the next book tonight.

Do you have a suggestion for a manga I need to read, that came out in 2012? Please school me, my friends!

Okay, so while shopping I snapped a few pics around Kinokuniya of things I like:

Magic Point and River's Edge, by the incredible Kyoko Okazaki. Her amazing body-horror/gender mindfuck comic HELTER SKELTER was licensed this summer by Vertical... it's one of my all-time favorite manga, and I'm stoked to get to read it in non-illegal, Vertical-ized format soon!

The reprints from 2010 of the late Satoshi Kon's manga, "Opus". I love the design of these two soft covers. Detailed scans here:

Ad for Usamaru Furuya's ongoing web serial "Bokuran no Hikari KURABU", on the back of the anthology Manga Erotics F. Pages from the series are online via the Japanese webcomic portal Poco Poco:

[Upcoming SH! posts: details on AkoTako, Poco Poco, and working with Gengoroh Tagame to publish his first ever licensed translation in English!]

MORE MANGA PAGES FROM CTJ

2012-10-23T09:47:00.006-07:00

Here's a quick follow-up for folks that haven't dug into my overview post on the great Concerned Theatre Japan, which ran from 1969 to 1973.

I separated out the first five pages from each of the three manga in that issue, arguably the first manga ever translated into English! If you dig these teasers, you can download the entire issue below as a convenient PDF:

Sakura Illustrated ("Sakura Gaho") by Akasegawa Genpei [1971]

Red Eye ("Akame") by Shirato Sampei [1969]

The Stopcock ("Nejishiki") by Tsuge Yoshiharu [1969]

[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE PDF]

FAVORITE SAME HAT SISTER TUMBLRS?

2012-10-18T15:40:00.004-07:00

While SAME HAT (the blog) has been on temporary hiatus, SAME HAT TUMBLR has continued going strong. I have some theories (capital-T "THEORIES") about TumblrGeneration and the Tumblrfication of how youth discoveries artifacts of cultural history -- theories that come out mostly once I've had a few glasses of whisky. All that considered, and aside, Tumblr is one of the most interesting and jarring places for discovering new artists (duh, right?).

Rather than attempt a list of ALL TUMBLRS SPANNING ALL ASSORTED INTERESTS INCLUDING-BUT-NOT-LIMITED-TO COMICS (exhausting and unfocused!), I thought It'd be more fun to toss up a quick post of our favorite "SAME HAT-esque" Tumblrs we are following and enjoying. I'll start with a few that feel like "siblings" to Same Hat... if you don't mind adding your faves to the comments, I'll go ahead and build out a community list!!

NOTE: Special points to Tumblrs that actually scan/post new, additive materials to the Tumblrverse. Tumblrs that ONLY EVER RT images are weak/lame.

(To note, I see posts from all of these fleetingly via Dashboard and haven't read all their posts, so apologies if I accidentally linked to gross/intense stuff here!)

1. AANNIIMMEE

http://aanniimmee.tumblr.com/

2. Feh Yes Vintage Manga

http://fehyesvintagemanga.tumblr.com/

3. Goth Summer

http://gothsummer.tumblr.com

4. Vagabonded Life

http://vagabondedlife.tumblr.com/

5. Corporal Steiner

http://corporalsteiner.tumblr.com

6. Acid Eater

http://acid-eater.tumblr.com/

7. Otomblr

http://otomblr.tumblr.com/

8. Fuck Yeah, Hideshi Hino!

http://fuckyeahhideshihino.tumblr.com/

9. Conspirators of Pleasure

http://conspirators-of-pleasure.tumblr.com/

10. HIMIZU

http://hi-mi-zu.tumblr.com/

11. panzer

http://de-maupin.tumblr.com/

12. TigerRoll

http://sinyasiki.tumblr.com/

13. Cave of the Troglodyte

http://troglodytespacebird.tumblr.com/

14. chi-mi-do-ro

http://neonburg.tumblr.com/

15. Tokyo Scum Brigade

http://tokyoscum.tumblr.com/

16. Kurutta

http://kurutta.tumblr.com/

17. Space Leech

http://spaceleech.tumblr.com/

18. Gurafiku

http://gurafiku.tumblr.com/

[PS: The other things about the SAME HAT TUMBLR is that you can ask any random question you might have and I'll probably answer it! Just click Ask me anything! and submit.]

SUEHIRO MARUO DESKTOP & IPHONE WALLPAPERS

2012-10-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I followed the strange instructions on Suehiro Maruo's semi-recently redesigned official website, Maruo Jigoku, and was rewarded with a link to download these rad wallpapers for desktop and iPhone. For your pleasure, here they are:

2025 Update: The underlying large files are no longer hosted on Maruo's site, which has been stripped down to just the BBS.

For the iPhone:

MORE GENPEI AKASEGAWA ART FROM 1971

2012-10-16T09:18:00.002-07:00

Hot on the heels of the return post about Concernted Theatre Japan's special manga issue, I'm posting more images of work by Genpei Akasegawa from 1971.

These images come from the pages of 「黒い手帖ブラックユーモア」 ("kuro no techo burakku yuumoa" - Black Memo/Black Humor), from May 1971. Doing a little digging, I found an interesting post (in Japanese) about the publication on the Komiyama Shoten bookstore blog. Thanks for the scans go to the fantastic Will of the great 50 WATTS blog.

You can find more about Akasegawa's work and his "Hyperart" movement/experiment with found objects in this Amazon listing for his Hyperart: Thomasson book.

INCREDIBLE FIRST-EVER MANGA TRANSLATED IN 1971

2012-10-14T21:05:00.002-07:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English. Click all images for big versions!)

A new renewal for Same Hat? I've been meaning to write for a few months now, but I found myself continuing to delay compiling all my shreds of random thoughts together until I could find time to attack it properly. I think you'll find the materials discussed in this post live up to the hype, and I'm hoping this will lead to a few more interesting posts and interviews being unearthed in the near future.

Concerned Theatre Journal (CTJ) debuted in October 1969, and was conceived of, coordinated, and translated by David. G. Goodman. In 1971, CTJ released the first issue of its second volume as a double-sized "cartoon special". The 116 page issue featured the following three stories:

Sakura Illustrated ("Sakura Gaho") by Akasegawa Genpei [1971]
Red Eye ("Akame") by Shirato Sampei [1969]
The Stopcock ("Nejishiki") by Tsuge Yoshiharu [1969]

As nerds who've seen our ramshackle "Early Manga Days: Chronology" post, this predates the publication of translation of Barefoot Gen by seven years, and the short story "The Bushi" (written by Satoshi Hirota and art by Masaichi Mukaide) appearing in Star*Reach #7. Between 1969 and 1973, nine issues were released by Goodman and his collaborators totaling "nearly thirteen hundred pages of translated plays, criticism, and scholarship." It's an amazing treasure trove of politically-active, internationally-minded theater criticism and translations from an exciting time in Japanese history.

From the first "Special Introductory Issue":

A great overview of the entire life of Concerned Theatre Japan can be found in Virtual CTJ, an essay which was written in early 2005. In this retrospective, Prof. Goodman explained their perspective:

The mentality was different, too. Much of what is said today about Japan’s historical amnesia, its failure to confront the legacy of the Asia-Pacific War, was not true of CTJ. Our contributors were mostly in their late twenties or very early thirties; and, like the first postwar generation in other countries, they were actively interrogating their parents’ generation and the aftermath of the war. The plays and articles in CTJ continue to be trenchant critiques of Japan’s wartime behavior.

Goodman was a senior at Yale in fall of 1968, and writing about / documenting new theatre groups visiting America at the time. He explains the genesis of an English language magazine:

I learned through our correspondence of the ambitious program the June Theatre was planning in a new alliance to be called Theatre Center 68/69. The program included a plan to publish a magazine, and I proposed that an English-language sister publication be issued as well. What was needed, I argued, was a vehicle that would allow Japanese artists, writers, and scholars to participate fully in global intellectual discourse that would empower them to engage their peers around the world and be engaged by them. Tsuno responded that it was an ambitious idea, that no one knew the first thing about publishing such a magazine, and that no money was available to support it, but if I was prepared to edit it, I was welcome to do so. I decided to go ahead.

In addition to the original essays and translations of contemporary plays (and the manga issue!), TCJ features rad graphic design and interesting ads from shops and brands eager to align to themselves with the dramatic, visual, and envelope-pushing theater productions of the time:

For (much) more on the visual culture of the theater, you must check out another book edited/curated by Prof. Goodman: "ANGURA: Posters of the Japanese Avant-Garde," a book documenting the posters by Tadanori Yokoo, Hirano Koga, Shinohara Katsuyuki, and their contemporaries.

Writing specifically about CTJ's manga special, Prof. Goodman said:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese popular culture was not yet a global phenomenon. No one had ever heard of manga, much less video games and animé. The graphics we published by Akasegawa Genpei, Tsuge Yoshiharu, and Shirato Sampei were, as far as I know, the first manga ever to appear in English.

I'm least familiar with Genpei Akasegawa's work, but his satirical newspaper opens up the book with a bang and firmly ties the contents that follow to the 1969 Tokyo University Protests and the aftermath of their failures and co-option.

Next up in the issue is "Red Eyes" by Shirato Sanpei, a powerful and intense period piece by one of the originators of gekiga. Sanpei is best known, in Japan and English-speaking readerships, for creating The Legend of Kamui. The manga "Red Eyes" was later adapted by Saitô Ren, and published in Concerned Theatre Japan.

Finally, on that last but not least tip, we have a translation of "Nejishiki" by Yoshiharu Tsuge -- named here as "The Stopcock"(!). This would appear 32 years later as "Screw-Style" in The Comics Journal #250. It seems silly to add much commentary to such an important and pioneering work, but it is an obvious must-read for any Same Hat fan of alternative manga-- the linchpin/shared ancestor of a lot of our favorite manga!

[ --> CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE PDF <-- ]
PDF hosted via the University of Michigan "Center for Japanese Studies Publications" page.

Please enjoy this incredible collection of early manga. Friend of Same Hat and manga-in-America pioneer Fred Schodt sent this thoughts in response to seeing the Concerned Theatre Japan's manga issue:

It definitely predates Gen by nearly 10 years. Whether it's the first manga translated or not, I'm not sure, because it depends on how you define manga. Short manga were being translated in Tokyo Puck at the beginning of the 20th Century, and even in Maru Maru Chinbun at the end of the 19th Century. But I've never seen these pseudo story-manga done so early. And they're all great favorites of mine. In fact, it reminded me how powerful manga were in that period. More powerful than most today, I venture, simply because of the political intensity of the period, and the radical-ness of using manga to transmit such sophisticated ideas.

[Many thanks to Paul for initially tipping me off to the existence of these online archives. Professor Goodman now teaches at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I'm contacting him for an interview in the coming weeks.]

SAME HAT T-SHIRT NOW ON SALE!

2011-11-20T15:31:00.001-08:00

The Same Hat t-shirt is now on sale! Wear your allegiance to indie/weirdo/horror manga loud and proud with this dorky thing celebrating our blog and community.

2025 Update: OUT OF PRINT!

It's on sale for $16 (+ shipping) to anywhere in the world, and features a design by JONNY NEGRON, and lettering by MICHAEL DEFORGE. The shirt is available in sizes XS to XXXL on that familiar high-grade American Apparel Men's tee. White ink on black shirt, printed locally in the Bay Area with assistance from our buddy SEIBEI. All orders ship within 2-3 business days, and there should be enough for folks who want one to get them without problems. I'll have some shirts at my table at Brooklyn Fest on 12/3 as well. If you have any question, leave a comment or hit me up at samehat @ gmail.

HALLOWEEN MANGA MAKE-UP 2011

2011-10-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, it's time again! Halloween is upon us and like every year I wanna know... is anyone dressing up as anything horror-manga related?

In previous years, the Same Hat community has shared some intense and rad costumes. If you bust out a manga-related costume and wanna share, please send it to SAMEHAT at GMAIL doot COM and I'll post it after the weekend! Can't wait to see what folks come up with... I wonder what the Tokyo Scum guys will bust out this year?

THE INAUGURAL SAME HAT SHIRT!

2011-10-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

DETAILS:

(click for bigger versions)

This shirt features a design by JONNY NEGRON, and lettering by MICHAEL DEFORGE. I’m planning to sell it in sizes XS -XXXL depending on what you want, and it’s looking like it will be around $16-18 bucks depending on how many we print. I’m getting printing help from apparel wizard/buddy SEIBEI, and he says the shirts will be a supersoft print on a high-grade American Apparel Men's tee.

I am planning to have the shirts at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival on December 3 (where DeForge/Negron will be in person too) and then selling via this site right beforehand!

And yes, creating an actual t-shirt means that I plan to fully revive Same Hat with regular posting!

WHILE THIS BLOG LANGUISHED, THE TUMBLR LIVED!

2011-10-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back on the scene, and working for you to keep Same Hat rolling and interesting. I'm happy to report that while the blog was in temporary haitus, the SAME HAT TUMBLR has continued serving up the goods!

I've continued to post at least a few times a week, and the other super contributors like Jim, Olivia, Caroline, Mis Nas, and the crew have been keeping it fresh. Here are a few highlights recently:

Stills from the new Gyo adaptation!? - Even Junji Ito is excited about this one
SleepyTezuka, the hottest new meme (also as an animated .gif)
Anna Tsubaki punk scans
Kaneda by Jonny Negron
and much, much more!

Please follow this thing and contribute links if you aren't already!

RIP JERRY FELLOWS

2011-10-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

[My first post back! I've been working on zines and translations and mostly my day job, but have plans to get this jam up and rolling again--- with guest posts and some long-planned essay posts. We are also just about a month away from finally releasing our first Same Hat shirt--- a joint-design by Michael DeForge and Jonny Negron that I think you will love. My goal is to get posting regularly on here again before that happens, so you and I won't be ashamed to don the shirt!]

I read last month that early fandom contributor and zinester Jerry Fellows passed away -- my condolences go out to his friends and family. I never had the chance to meet Jerry, but he sounds like a dude after our own hearts and the kind of person I'd like to highlight here on Same Hat.

Jerry came to my attention a few years back, when I was reading Fred Patten's personal history of the development of Anime/Manga fandom in America, "Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews". In Patten's timeline of anime fandom, he noted the following about February 1983 (the same month that Nakazawa's I Saw It was published in English by Educomics):

Space Fanzine Yamato is published by Steve Harrison, Ardith Carlton, and Jerry Fellows in Michigan as "the ultimate information source" on Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers. This is the first American fan effort to produce a "Roman Album"-style complete information guide to a particular anime title.

Manga fandom is a strange and fascinating thing to me, and treads somewhere between the two (formerly-overlapping) worlds of early SF fandom and comic book fandom. Manga (and more specifically, Anime) fandom developed along similar timeframes as the SF scene, but remained the realm of very devoted enthusiasts for a long time; the scene was, perhaps happily, kept small initially by the double-whammy limitations of 1) a physical barrier to getting your hands on the actual media you wanted to consume-- first 16mm films, then later more easily VHS tapes-- and 2) a language barrier to understanding the anime/manga, in a time before the "boom" in Japanese Language programs at US universities that happened alongside the Japanese economic bubble of the mid-to-late 80s.

Interestingly enough, a "collector" market of manga/anime (as distinct from toys, models, vinyl) remains mostly non-existent to this day; you can find old VHS tapes and 1st editions of early Viz floppies for under a buck easily at used book shops. The fan translations, early dubs, and fanzines at the start of the scene were simply labors of love, currency of in-group identification between folks "in the know" but mostly invisible and valueless to folks outside of fandom--- and now mostly forgotten to all but the hardest core/weirdest of current anime/manga fans.

In the context of typewriters and expensive/early Xerox technology (and no access to things like InDesign or um, the internet), the gleeful and thorough devotion of fans like Steve, Ardith and Jerry impresses me and inspires the little zine projects I want to work on. Steve wrote a detailed and very personal recounting of the experience creating Space Fanzine Yamato on his blog, Let's Anime!, and it details the dorky/poignant way in which friendships blossom and wither over the course of a long project. Please take a second to read it!

This excerpt from my interview with Fred Schodt in 2007 gives a little more context to the scene that Jerry was a part of, the pioneers of fandom from which all weeaboos are descended:

ANT: There’s some stuff written about other early fandoms – whether it’s science fiction fandom or American comic book fandom – that thing when a sub-culture scene later turns into a big business. I’m always curious about how that gets started. The people you knew in the US who read your first book were probably part of a sort of vanguard of manga or anime fans. Who were those people? Were they science fiction fans? Dungeons and Dragons people? Or Japanophiles?

FRED: I knew a lot of those people in the very beginning, the people from the really enthusiastic manga and anime fans were very unusual people. Jared and I were actually working and interpreting for Tezuka on an early trip – I think ’79 or 1980, I don’t remember the exact date, but I know that we went to see the C/FO folks (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) and I had never met people like that in my life. It was almost frightening. [LAUGHS] I had never met people who were so dedicated to something which was so obscure in the United States at the time, and it was a very small group. But they were people who became quite big in fandom, such as Fred Patton in particular, he was a real central figure in American fandom, and still is.
They were people who were obsessed with anime – more anime than manga, very few people could read it because there weren’t any English manga available. So their entry point had been actually the early 60s anime that was shown in the United States, such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Fred Patten's good friend Robin Leyden from the C/FO was a huge Astro Boy fan, the likes of which you’d rarely see. He later on became a special effects animator. Robyn actually made a model of Astro Boy and presented it to Tezuka...

ANT: What was Tezuka’s reaction to that, to these strange American anime fans?

FRED: Oh, he was overwhelmed. [Tezuka] had been in contact with some of them even before Jared and I met him. But they were the first Anime fans in the US, to such a serious degree. Almost scary. These were not people who were interested in Japanese business or technology or anything like that. They were just focused on anime, the characters and the stories, they just loved it. So it was actually very touching.

ANT: It seems like a lot of those people in the early 80s were the ones that eventually drummed up interest in anime, and a lot of them were the people who first ones that did fan subtitles.

FRED: That’s right. And organized the first conventions.

Here are a few more images from Steve's post, I gotta take a minute and track down a PDF/scans of this great piece of fandom history sometime soon.

RIP, Jerry Fellows... and hats off to all the early fandom pioneers!

(The staff of Space Fanzine Yamato)

[More soon: Gyo manga, tons of Vertical releases, my dumb projects, Umezz Carnival 2011, etc!]

ULTIMATE SUEHIRO MARUO TATTOO?

2011-06-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

Longtime reader and Suehiro Maruo superfan Suzanne just sent us pics of her RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME tattoos. For her sleeve piece, Suzanne worked to carefully compile images from a number of Suehiro Maruo works, including panels from The Laughing Vampire and illustration work featured in his Maruograph art books.

If you can believe it, she says it's still an in-progress piece, with further details to be added to her arm(!!). The tattoo artist was Piotrek Taton at Good Times in London.

Suzanne, and our previously-mentioned friend Beth... you are the queens of Maruo fandom!

To see all of the Same Hat community's awesome manga tattoo, simply click the "tattoo" label.

DANG, LOOK AT THIS MANGA INK!

2011-06-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

Over on the Same Hat Tumblr, I restarted an open call for pictures of your manga-related tattoos... These are to add to our growing archive of tattoos (depicting the works of Kazuo Umezu, Shintaro Kago, Suehiro Maruo, and others!)

The lovely secretcat's amazing NEKOJIRU tattoo!

teendrama's crazy GURREN LAGANN tattoo!

UPDATE:

Jake's UZUMAKI tattoo!

UPDATE 2:

Jeremy's GETTER ROBO tattoo!

UPDATE 3:

If you have a picture to share, send me an email at SAMEHAT [at] GMAIL [dot] COM.

LOOKING BACK AT SECRET COMICS JAPAN

2011-06-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent a lovely couple of hours re-reading back issues of PULP off my shelves (for research for my Usamaru Furuya post). While most all of the series that ran in PULP have been collected in their own trade paperbacks (though I believe they are all out of print other than Uzumaki), and some of the best essays and columns were collected in "Fresh Pulp", there really is nothing quite as fun as reading these comics in serialized form, running alongside each other!

As an extension of the PULP experiment/enterprise, the editors (including Jason Thompson, Izumi Evers, Carl Gustav Horn and others I'm surely forgetting) worked with Chikao Shiratori (an ex-GARO editor) to put together an anthology called Secret Comics Japan. I've previously posted about this important collection which (along with Comics Underground Japan and, to a lesser degree, Sake Jock) is a key piece of reading for any Same Hat reader.

I have really distinct memories of first encountering this book when Evan brought it along on our cross-country road trip to get me out to Stanford in 2001. This book is where I first encountered Shintaro Kago, as well as Furuya's PALEPOLI strips and Makoto Aida's groundbreaking MUTANT HANAKO. At the time of Secret Comics Japan's publication, PULP ran an overview of the state of "indie manga" in Japan in the early-2000s, as well as detailed notes on each story included in the anthology. I found it pretty fascinating to revisit this stuff, and have included large scans for your reading pleasure below:

CLICK EACH PAGE FOR THE FULL-SIZE IMAGE:

(Interview about PULP x SECRET COMICS JAPAN, page 1)

(Interview about PULP x SECRET COMICS JAPAN, page 2)

(LOOKING AT: The Life of Momongo, Gedatsu Man)

(LOOKING AT: Swing Shell, JR.)

(LOOKING AT: Heartless Bitch/Painful Love, Punctures)

(LOOKING AT: Mutant Hanako)

(LOOKING AT: Editor Woman, Palepoli)

(A hilarious "rating" of each story in terms of Gore, Porn-ness, Huh?, Laffs, and other traits)

JUNJI ITO'S "CAT DIARIES"

2011-06-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

This quick post was spurred by a question asked over on the Same Hat TUMBLR (which, by the way, has remained very active the past two months even as Same Hat proper was languishing). strangeandstranger asked about finding evidence online of Junji Ito's "CAT DIARIES"...?

Somehow I'd missed this manga's release, but it turns out it is a real thing that actually exists!

There book is called 伊藤潤二の猫日記　よん＆むー ("Junji Ito's Cat Diaries: Yon & Muu"), and here is the listing on Amazon.co.jp. It looks like the book is about 116 pages and pretty cheap, a one-off collection published by Kodansha.

I dug around the internets and found some panels to share. Enjoy!

There's more about Junji Ito's cat insanity here on this Japanese blog about cats and this other blog by a Junji Ito fan.

And in case you've forgotten who we are dealing with, hear is a wonderfully eerie (and oddly romantic) photograph of Junji Ito:

[As a final piece of Junji Ito miscellany, here is some Ito ASCII art I found on a Japanese message board!]

UPDATE!: Lovely readers of the Same Hat Tumblr have alerted me to the fact that a Yon & Muu scanlation does exist (and was posted recently). If you feel so include you can check it out at MANGA READER and MANGAFOX.