Attention Vertical: ComiPress posts a review of a Japanese illustration book of Osamu Tezuka’s work. What’s interesting about the book is that it shows how much Tezuka revised his art.
Whenever an original picture was to be published in book form, it was reconstructed by Tezuka like a puzzle, with a great many number of retouching, cutting, and pasting.
The review cites several examples of this from the book. The painter Matisse once commented that he had to work very hard to make his paintings look so easy; this book seems to illustrate that point.
In other art book news, Newsarama interviews Tania del Rio about Mangaka America, which comes out tomorrow. Del Rio co-authored the book with her husband, Will Staehle. It’s a nice solid interview with plenty of sample art, and it’s nice to hear del Rio directly address the biggest criticism of the book so far: the title.
Some will say that Americans automatically cannot be considered mangaka because they’re not Japanese. However, we disagree. The title alone is intended to express the fusion of East and West into a new style. We’re treating it as a loan word that is given new meaning by our own culture. Also, it’s interesting to note that the original books that inspired us, Japanese Comikers 1 & 2, use an English loanword, “comics” to describe their Japanese artists. It works both ways!
At MangaCast, Ed was only able to record part of the Broccoli panel at Yaoi-Con, but to make up for it he’s giving away a Disgaea calendar. And he also posts audio of the 801 Media launch panel.
Tangognat gives three out of five stars to Good Witch of the West but admits she probably liked it less because she saw the anime first.
