Friday, October 10, 2003
Happenings of the day...
So, how was my birthday? Relatively good actually. Got some cards today and yesterday, a coworker (hi Deb!) gave me A Prayer for Own Meany by John Irving. To tell you the truth, I didn't even know the name Irving until Cider House Rules was mentioned, but I haven't seen the movie either..heh. I'll have to give it a good read when I get some time...
Yesterday I picked up more comic stuff from the library and made an very lucky find. The library is giving away some of their books for free (seems to be a combo of books that have dated info., are duplicated in better editions, or just weren't popular). I don't really like the thought of old books drifting away like that, but I ended up with a sack of books. One of them was Japan Inc., a manga that I will write up a bit more on in a future entry. I scored a beat-up volume of DBZ like a month ago the same way, but this was a pretty unique find and in good condition.
The CD-ROM side of a program for the Infusion Nurses Society that I've been working on at work is almost done (and my first major project after one of the other programmers left the company), so that's good. Hopefully the web side will be done tomorrow (am using Authorware and ASP For anyone curious).
I also had the chance to do more yo-yoing than usual for some of my co-workers and it was nice to see them genuinely impressed. I don't have the greatest self-esteem in the world, so little things like that are nice (if a bit odd feeling) for me... =)
A very cool thing that happened today was a strange little insect appearing on the front porch of the house. I don't know what the real name of it is, but it has legs like a big grasshopper but has a body that looks like a leaf, and it was green. It moved around pretty slowly and almost in a human way (especially the front legs that it moved around like arms). Disappeared once and then came back and then was gone again. We were careful to watch out for it when going in and out of the house... I would have taken a picture but no film left in the house. I want to get a digital camera, which would help with moments like this... Some insects can be a bit freaky, but this little guy just extruded good vibes.. =)
The other event for the day was that I was going to go to the UMass juggling club tonight, and we got off on the Hadley exit and were going to turn right for the bridge, but it was packed. I don't know if UMass had some sports game going on or what, but we decided to bail on the club and instead go to a certain comic shop I haven't made it to in a while, Modern Myths in Norhampton. It really is a great shop with an awe-inspiring number of graphic novels.
A couple of new things I noticed... he recently re-did the manga racks so that weren't as deep. He mentioned that that gave more room around the rack and also made the smaller manga volumes less lost inside of huge shelves. A very nice idea... He also has a bunch of longboxes that have entire runs of comics together in packs, which I think is a great idea. Mom ended up buying packs of the Last Starfighter (3 for $1), Tick and Aurthur (3 for $5), and Shaman's Tears (13 for $10). I was temped for Groo 1-20 for $20 and some of the Sandman stuff (something Doll series), but opted to leave them for another time or go the GN versions instead... And he also has some other longboxes with 3 comics for $1. Cool stuff...
Now that I've been reading up on so many comics lately, there was a ton of stuff I want to get. I almost went for the first Vogelein or Private Beach, but ended up with manga like usual..heh... Jane, I promise to buy Vogelein eventually, though!
As always, I have a huge amount of trouble deciding on what stuff to get. I pretty much find a bunch of possiblities and make myself ill trying to pare it down. I almost went for Uzumaki 1 or Petshop of Horrors 2 or Vampire Princess Miyu 1 to keep in the horror theme of the month, but didn't do it..heh
So, what did I get? X-Day 2, Planetes 1, and Cyborg 009 1. I haven't even read X-Day 1 yet, but I am pretty sure I'll like it and figured since it is only two volumes, this way I can get it all at once. For those that don't know, X-Day is about a group of four disaffected kids who talk online and decide to blow up their school while no one is inside of it...
Planetes I hadn't even heard of before, but was impressed enough just by flipping through it to buy it on the spot. It seems like a serious sci-fi story in the near future (some space stations.. a couple of cities on the moon) involving three people whose job it is to clean up space debri from orbit that has been littered over the years. The artwork is great, with very detailed space hardware, and I like the character designs on the people a lot. They are in a somewhat realistic style with decent sized oval eyes. A little like Yoshitoshi Abe's work (Lain, Niea_7, Haibane Renmei) with maybe some Patlabor in there... If you aren't used to manga, this artwork would probably not put you off at all... It even has a text page at the end giving a brief history of modern rocket science (non-ficional).
The third is Cyborg 009. This is an old comic that stared in 1963. I'd been watching the anime on Toonami and enjoyed it. I think that is actually the third time the series has been animated. It striked me as one of the few anime that really was like a superhero comic. It involves a group of people that have been modified against their will by an evil organization to be cyborg weapons. Each has a different power like flight or telepathy or speed or even shapeshifting and they escape and team up to try to fight the bad guys (who send more cyborgs after them). Each of the characters is of a different nationality and has a different past...
So, I was curious about the manga, but didn't think I'd actually buy it. When I started to actually read through it, though, I was very impressed. It actually goes into the past of the characters a bit right up front and doesn't pull punches. One of the first scenes has Jet as a gang member in New York that gets into knife fight with a rival puerto rican gang, stabbing (maybe killing?) him, and getting conviced to go with Black Ghost's men as an escape.
There is a note at the beginning talking about how some of the characters seem to have racial stereotypes (the native american character with painted lines on his face and a mohawk, the african character with white lips, etc), but it is pointed out that the author shatters stereotypes and shows the characters as individuals. That he is actually using the art as a foil against racism. On the surface that sounds like a cop-out, but from what I can see, it does seem like it could be the reality. This book seems to have some strong statements about war, racism, etc. in it. The anime seems very much watered down compared to the original manga.
One other interesting thing. The head bad guy is Black Ghost, and he wears this black outfit with a black helmet and black cape and is perhaps a cyborg himself... This series predates Star Wars by 14 years, and I can't help wondering if somehow it inspired Darth Vador. I suppose it could be pure coincidence, but they do have a lot of similarities between them...
There is also a lot of different stuff done with paneling. Everything from a couple of two-page spreads at the beginning, to as many as 13 panels per page. Definitely check this out if you want an interesting superhero type story with lots of serious themes in it from one of the forefathers of manga. Shotaro Ishinomori is called the King of Manga (just below Tezuka's God of Manga status), produced over 70,000 pages of artwork in 30 years (rumored that he did 500 pages a month at some point), including Kamen Rider (Masked Rider), Skull Man (out in the US), and Japan Inc. (that library freebie that I'll talk about later on)...
Yesterday I picked up more comic stuff from the library and made an very lucky find. The library is giving away some of their books for free (seems to be a combo of books that have dated info., are duplicated in better editions, or just weren't popular). I don't really like the thought of old books drifting away like that, but I ended up with a sack of books. One of them was Japan Inc., a manga that I will write up a bit more on in a future entry. I scored a beat-up volume of DBZ like a month ago the same way, but this was a pretty unique find and in good condition.
The CD-ROM side of a program for the Infusion Nurses Society that I've been working on at work is almost done (and my first major project after one of the other programmers left the company), so that's good. Hopefully the web side will be done tomorrow (am using Authorware and ASP For anyone curious).
I also had the chance to do more yo-yoing than usual for some of my co-workers and it was nice to see them genuinely impressed. I don't have the greatest self-esteem in the world, so little things like that are nice (if a bit odd feeling) for me... =)
A very cool thing that happened today was a strange little insect appearing on the front porch of the house. I don't know what the real name of it is, but it has legs like a big grasshopper but has a body that looks like a leaf, and it was green. It moved around pretty slowly and almost in a human way (especially the front legs that it moved around like arms). Disappeared once and then came back and then was gone again. We were careful to watch out for it when going in and out of the house... I would have taken a picture but no film left in the house. I want to get a digital camera, which would help with moments like this... Some insects can be a bit freaky, but this little guy just extruded good vibes.. =)
The other event for the day was that I was going to go to the UMass juggling club tonight, and we got off on the Hadley exit and were going to turn right for the bridge, but it was packed. I don't know if UMass had some sports game going on or what, but we decided to bail on the club and instead go to a certain comic shop I haven't made it to in a while, Modern Myths in Norhampton. It really is a great shop with an awe-inspiring number of graphic novels.
A couple of new things I noticed... he recently re-did the manga racks so that weren't as deep. He mentioned that that gave more room around the rack and also made the smaller manga volumes less lost inside of huge shelves. A very nice idea... He also has a bunch of longboxes that have entire runs of comics together in packs, which I think is a great idea. Mom ended up buying packs of the Last Starfighter (3 for $1), Tick and Aurthur (3 for $5), and Shaman's Tears (13 for $10). I was temped for Groo 1-20 for $20 and some of the Sandman stuff (something Doll series), but opted to leave them for another time or go the GN versions instead... And he also has some other longboxes with 3 comics for $1. Cool stuff...
Now that I've been reading up on so many comics lately, there was a ton of stuff I want to get. I almost went for the first Vogelein or Private Beach, but ended up with manga like usual..heh... Jane, I promise to buy Vogelein eventually, though!
As always, I have a huge amount of trouble deciding on what stuff to get. I pretty much find a bunch of possiblities and make myself ill trying to pare it down. I almost went for Uzumaki 1 or Petshop of Horrors 2 or Vampire Princess Miyu 1 to keep in the horror theme of the month, but didn't do it..heh
So, what did I get? X-Day 2, Planetes 1, and Cyborg 009 1. I haven't even read X-Day 1 yet, but I am pretty sure I'll like it and figured since it is only two volumes, this way I can get it all at once. For those that don't know, X-Day is about a group of four disaffected kids who talk online and decide to blow up their school while no one is inside of it...
Planetes I hadn't even heard of before, but was impressed enough just by flipping through it to buy it on the spot. It seems like a serious sci-fi story in the near future (some space stations.. a couple of cities on the moon) involving three people whose job it is to clean up space debri from orbit that has been littered over the years. The artwork is great, with very detailed space hardware, and I like the character designs on the people a lot. They are in a somewhat realistic style with decent sized oval eyes. A little like Yoshitoshi Abe's work (Lain, Niea_7, Haibane Renmei) with maybe some Patlabor in there... If you aren't used to manga, this artwork would probably not put you off at all... It even has a text page at the end giving a brief history of modern rocket science (non-ficional).
The third is Cyborg 009. This is an old comic that stared in 1963. I'd been watching the anime on Toonami and enjoyed it. I think that is actually the third time the series has been animated. It striked me as one of the few anime that really was like a superhero comic. It involves a group of people that have been modified against their will by an evil organization to be cyborg weapons. Each has a different power like flight or telepathy or speed or even shapeshifting and they escape and team up to try to fight the bad guys (who send more cyborgs after them). Each of the characters is of a different nationality and has a different past...
So, I was curious about the manga, but didn't think I'd actually buy it. When I started to actually read through it, though, I was very impressed. It actually goes into the past of the characters a bit right up front and doesn't pull punches. One of the first scenes has Jet as a gang member in New York that gets into knife fight with a rival puerto rican gang, stabbing (maybe killing?) him, and getting conviced to go with Black Ghost's men as an escape.
There is a note at the beginning talking about how some of the characters seem to have racial stereotypes (the native american character with painted lines on his face and a mohawk, the african character with white lips, etc), but it is pointed out that the author shatters stereotypes and shows the characters as individuals. That he is actually using the art as a foil against racism. On the surface that sounds like a cop-out, but from what I can see, it does seem like it could be the reality. This book seems to have some strong statements about war, racism, etc. in it. The anime seems very much watered down compared to the original manga.
One other interesting thing. The head bad guy is Black Ghost, and he wears this black outfit with a black helmet and black cape and is perhaps a cyborg himself... This series predates Star Wars by 14 years, and I can't help wondering if somehow it inspired Darth Vador. I suppose it could be pure coincidence, but they do have a lot of similarities between them...
There is also a lot of different stuff done with paneling. Everything from a couple of two-page spreads at the beginning, to as many as 13 panels per page. Definitely check this out if you want an interesting superhero type story with lots of serious themes in it from one of the forefathers of manga. Shotaro Ishinomori is called the King of Manga (just below Tezuka's God of Manga status), produced over 70,000 pages of artwork in 30 years (rumored that he did 500 pages a month at some point), including Kamen Rider (Masked Rider), Skull Man (out in the US), and Japan Inc. (that library freebie that I'll talk about later on)...
