The esteem Paul Gravett will be making a talk about Manga on the 23rd of October, from 7 to 9.30pm at St Albans Centre, Leigh Place, Baldwin Gardens, London, EC1N 7AB.
He also has an article of mine on his website, that I wrote about the process of turning 'Classics into Comics' - meaning adapting Classic Novels into Comic book versions. Since I have now done this with four books for Classical Comics I thought I would have a go at considering the steps of the process
Click the post link to go to Paul's website.
Image: character sketch for SWEENEY TODD, to come from Classical Comics, 2010, written by myself, art by Declan Shalvey.
QUOTE TODAY:
"Rigidity and hardness are the stigmata of death; elasticity and adaptability of life."
-Chinese classic Dao De Jing by Lao Zi.
4 comments:
hello Sean Michael,
I read the very interesting article relating to the book about manga written by Paul Gravett, by chance I read today on an Italian comic book an article about the great success of manga in the world specifically referring to naruto by Masashi Kishimoto, this article aims attention to a typical aspect of manga that italian publishing lost, describing naruto as an initiation saga that follows the evolutionary path of the protagonist. to summarize naruto is a No-one that becomes Someone, just as happened in almost all the nineteenth century books for children mainly composed from "novels training", a genre decreasingly fashionable in the West but still present in the east.the article end with a question: is also in that specific tract the success of Japanese manga and anime ?
I think that somehow this is a very interesting subject for you that work both for high quality manga and for the readjustment of the great classics ...what do you think about that?
my dearest greetings
erika
ps declan shalvey makes an amzing sketch about sweeney todd!
gambatte!(for sweeney todd!!)
Thanks for the interesting comment Erika... I dont know about this much. sound reasonable to say that some manga are about 'initiation saga that follows the evolutionary path of the protagonist'. Many of the popular ones i can think about seem to follow that path yes. But is this out of fashion in 'the west'? Sound to me like the classic hero quest type stories that Joseph Campbell talks of in his 'The hero with a 1000 faces.' Which are, according to him, univeral features of stories across this little world of ours. This one we're standing in right now i mean!
hello Sean Michael,
I have read some information about the book "the hero with a thousand faces", and I agree on the theory of the author, because it is based on Greek myths and other cultural references that are really focused on the figure of the hero that follows a path of growth based on events that involve him, but the book was written in 1949 (with various readjustments over time of course). Naruto and many other heroes of the Japanese series re-enter in that canon, as all the heroes of the american or italian series (unfortunately i do not know so much about other European comic books!) I think the greatest difference between the western to eastern heroes nowadays is in the structure of the series itself. for example in bleach or naruto or nana or dragonball there is a continuity of time that bind an episode to the other from start to finish in the series, while regarding batman, spiderman, or dylan dog, Tex, Zagor (famous Italian series) is more like a format applicable to various adventures that are not connected with each other through the temporal continuity and that up to run for four episodes before reaching the final epilogue. batman as Mikey mouse, are fully described as perfect heroes exactly as naruto or Ichigo Kurosaki from bleach, but remain a stable point of reference that never changes (from 1939 to now in what batman character, batman point of view or batman target has changed? which is the story of batman? or spiderman?) from my point of view they are well constructed characters who base their success on "repetition", to put it better in any adventure we find our heroes who fought against enemies always different and in the end of it we find the same heroes waiting for a new enemy, and that is all ... Can you imagine a batman aged? no, no one wants ... ... so in conclusion I think the main difference between the two cultures is in narrative structure and not in the picture of the heroes themselves .that big difference makes it easier to identify with naruto (which at the beginning of the series and has 12 years currently has 17) or son-goku (who starts as a child, becomes an adult, get married, had children and even die!) rather than the immutable Western heroes.
I hope I do not have you bored with my arguments, among other I identify you as a writer of sagas initiatory…or am I wrong!?
I offer you my best wishes
With regard
Erika
Hi again Erika,
Thanks for a long consideration of that topic, nice to see some people still think deeply! right now I dont have time to reply deeply though...
The hero with a 1000 faces influenced my first book 'Angel of the woods' - which was, as you say, exactly a story of the initiatory process. He goes from blind innocent, to facing fear/death to becoming transformed into a shaman type character who feels more 'whole'. Though admittedly it was my first book and perhaps i did not do it very well! - I will try more!
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