The Tortured Manga/Western Comics Connection
Many others have already picked out their favorite lines from
Grant
Morrison's latest interview, but for me the money quote was this
[emphasis mine]:
The threat is multi-fold in “Island of the Mighty,” using
the supercompressed Western manga style I’m trying to develop -
mad flesh-eating Gorilla Grodd has hijacked Superbia, the floating city
of the Ultramarine corps and plans on using the captured heroes as
unstoppable terror weapons in a war against civilization. To do this he
enlists the aid of a cosmic monster - a killer of superheroes named
Neh-Buh-Loh the Hunter, who ties directly into the upcoming Seven
Soldiers stuff...and finally there's Black Hand, the old Green Lantern
villain, who's invaded an experimental micro universe very much like
our own, where superheroes don't exist and he's the only supervillain.
It all happens very fast and very hard and leaves lots of damage.
Grant Morrison Gets It.
In other manga/Western comics crossover news, "Your Manga Minute"
columnist
Troy
Brownfield apparently Doesn't Get It when he considers why some
fans might not like
Identity Crisis. Now in
fairness to Troy, I should note that the closest he gets to naming any
specific source he's responding to is when he refers to "several
ill-conceived posts on the DC message boards," so perhaps Troy's weak
rejoinders are a result of only considering weak arguments. That
said, I think Troy's column would have been much stronger had he
attempted to address
more
sophisticated
criticisms
of
Identity Crisis. (For additional criticism of Troy's
piece, see David Welsh's thoughts
here.)
Finally, in news that's difficult to fit into this post's manga/Western
comics rubric, Broken Frontier columnist
Matt
Maxwell has joined the comics blogosphere with
Highway 62! I think
the fact that comic columnists are taking on blogs in addition to their
regular writing responsibilities is a sure sign that the comics
blogosphere is reaching critical mass. When
Augie De
Blieck starts his own comic blog, I'll really be worried.
Anyway, Matt's wondering what he'll write about without cannibalizing
column topics for "Full Bleed," so I'll offer a suggestion: Once
I send you the second volume of GYO, blog your thoughts on how the
story would have different if Ito had used birds instead of fish, had
set the whole story in a quiet American coastal town, and had cast
Tippi Hedren as the lead. Discuss!
