APE festival 2008 AX/Gekiga talk

The above images are the cover and back for the 16 page sampler of the AX collection book, 100 copies were given away at APE in SF. Below it is the cover for issue 26 of KAGE (Shadow), an early Gekiga anthology, from 1957 that I mention in the talk. Then a page from the AX collection in English by Shinichi Abe. Check the post title to go to the APE website

This is a step in the process of promoting the new book that I am editing now, AX collection, which is really getting a lot of attention and exciting fans of mature manga. The book will be a 400 page collection, from Top Shelf in the USA. It will features various alternative style manga from the ten year archive of the Japanese AX anthology. This will be, we hope, a big step forward in increasing appreciation of alternative/indy/mature style manga for English language readers. Yatta!

The excellent blog by Ryan Sands, Same Hat!, Same Hat!, has on ongoing consideration of the AX book on it, plus Tatsumi's books with D&Q. see here:
http://samehat.blogspot.com/2009/02/preview-of-tatsumis-drifting-life.html

Plus they have even started a 'Ax anthology research project' to garner more info on the various Japanese manga ka that will be featured in the book. Now that's dedication for you! See it here:
http://blog.electricantzine.com/tag/ax


I was in San Francisco Nov 1st and 2nd 2008, attending the APE comic book festival there as a guest. I was sitting at the Fanfare booth 249 with Deb Aoki (sse pic of her here) and also giving a talk, this one:

"5:00-5:45 AX and Gekiga: Alternative Manga in Japan—Sean Michael Wilson looks at the roots and contemporary state of indy/alternative manga in Japan, using rare and unseen visuals supplied by the original Gekiga creators of the 1950s and 1960s and info from the editors of AX, the premier alternative anthology in Japan today. Plus, a preview of the upcoming book AX Collection (Top Shelf), which presents a selection of this indy manga for the first time in English."

I enjoyed this convention... sales were less than i thought, but the talk went well, the invited me back for next year to Wondercon and San Diego. I did two interviews about the AX collection, including one for Publishers Weekly... and i got to meet many interesting folk and made friends with several great homo sapiens of the SF breed, broadened my experience of this little world. Oh, and I single handedly brought in the first black president of the USA during my stay there! (out of interest how many Scottish or Irish presidents have there been? - most of them i guess!). Photo above is me in the LAST GASP publishers gallery room, which is an amazing collection of art oddities of various kinds.

UPDATE: I've since found out that 17 of America's 43 presidents were Scots-Irish, AND that Barack Obama is too! - partly anyway, via his maternal ancestor, Edward FitzRandolph. There's even been a call for him to have his own tartan made! Well, why not? Go on yersel big man!

QUOTE TODAY:
"MAN COMES IN THE END TO LOOK LIKE THE IDEAL IMAGE OF HIMSELF."
- Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern life, 1st section.