Magnus (Roberto Raviola) (art) Max Bunker (writing) Satanik #38 • 1966 In Italy a new genre of dark, violent and erotic comics in the crime genre, called fumetti neri (“black comicsâ€), reflected the era’s cultural freedoms and the loosening moral grip of the Catholic Church. Another major fumetti neri was sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani’s Diabolik. (From the introduction to Comics: A Global History, 1960 to the Present )
Satanik #38, June 1966
Magnus (art) Max Bunker (writing), Satanik #38, June 1966
Fumetti neri  can certainly be seen in context of  the broader movement toward adult comics in Europe (where they’d been pigeonholed as a children’s medium for even longer than in the U.S.), which also included  Barbarella, The Adventures of Jodelle, the work of Guido Crepax, and journals like the Italian Linus.
Magnus (art) Max Bunker (writing), Satanik #29, Feb 1966
But fumetti neri were more disreputable than those high-toned examples: lurid, sexy, violent… trashy fun, definitely not for all-ages. I’m far from an expert on this stuff.  If you want to read up on Italian comics, I highly recommend Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s, by Simone Castaldi, one of the best books in English on European comics, with a lot of insight into Italian culture and politics as well.
The most striking work that I’ve seen in this genre is by Magnus (Roberto Raviola), who collaborated with writer Max Bunker (Luciano Secchi) on the titles Kriminal and Satanik (all the work in this post is by them).
Magnus (art) Max Bunker (writing), Satanik #38, June 1966
The rigid 2-panel-per-page format (printed as small, digest-size paperbacks) had the effect of a productive creative restraint on their composition and story-telling. Â Magnus did amazing things with blacks and sillhouettes, creating some very interesting layouts, with amazing use of negative space, and there’s some feathered inking in there that looks like it inspired Charles Burns.
Magnus (art) Max Bunker (writing), Satanik #38, June 1966
Page 10 of the project I’m working on for Jason Rodriguez’s Colonial Comics anthology from Fulcrum Press.
My outline-y script reads:
Eunice further assimilated into Kahnwake culture. Daily life centers very much around corn: planting, gathering, drying, grinding, cooking. Being invited with the women to the fields is a big moment.
The home life in the longhouse is warm and communal.
So this is essentially a non-sequential page, but a series of vignettes that add up to Eunice’s generally happy childhood at Kahnawake. Â It’s a matter of putting the anecdotes into an overall page design or architecture that really can be read in any order. Â Since she left no written record of her time there, it’s all made up.
I definitely wanted to make use of the very first sketch I did for the story:
Longhouse interior with Eunice and new family
Then  lot of scribbling to figure how to arrange things:
The thumbnail:
Eunice Williams story, page 10, thumbnail, Dan Mazur
The rough. I decided to curve the drawings in that middle tier around the “archway” of the bottom panel, giving it more of an architectural feel:
The final line art, with blue pencils showing. Â No real reason to show this, I just like the way the blue pencil looks (the scan’s patched together, hence the different coloring):
And the final:
Eunice Williams Story, p 10, Dan Mazur *(line art)
Leiji Matsumoto – Midori no tenshi (Green Angel) 1959, detail
Now available from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present,” written by Alexander Danner and me.  The book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 to 2010, with an  introduction providing some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s.  Here are some excerpts and expanded material, including some great images that couldn’t fit in the book. Text in italics is directly from the book.
Delving into the history of shÅjo manga was one of the most exciting parts of researching/writing this book.  The revolutionary material produced in the 1970s by the “Year 24 Group” — the first major wave of women mangaka — was a culmination of aesthetic and thematic developments of the previous 50 years.  I don’t think the term “genre,” as we generally use it, fits here; for me, shÅjo manga, as it has evolved, embodies a broad, complex aesthetic category, one that can accomodate many genres — maybe we can call shÅjo a gender of manga (regardless of the biological gender of its creators or readers — see ItÅ, KimiÅ, When a “Male” Reads ShÅjo Manga).
Macoto Takahashi, “Paris-Tokyo” (1959) p 9-8
Shouo represents an example of the power of a marginalized aesthetic, one of those cases in popular culture where a form designed to reinforce a power structure (in this case the gender roles of girls and women in Japan), can expose the conflicts and contradictions within that structure and have a destabilizing effect.
In the pre-Second World War period, when most Japanese comics had been aimed at very young readers, the main vehicles for popular culture designed for adolescent girls had been shÅjo literary magazines and novels. This material reinforced prevailing notions of proper feminine roles and characteristics in Japanese society, which was extremely restrictive. Heterosexual romance was rarely depicted; the literature focused primarily on the all-female world of girls’ schools, and on female friendships, often in a dreamy and flowery literary style (the term shojo carries connotations of cloistered maidenhood, not captured by the usual translation as “girlâ€).
Jun’ichi Nakahara, cover for Hana Monogotari (Flower Stories) by Yoshiya Nobuko
ShÅjo shÅsetsu was, for the most part, “highly formulaic and didactic, inculcating the cardinal virtues of girlhood.”(1)  But this literature, while ostensibly supporting the  proscribed role of girls and women in the broader society, could also express rebellion against it.  One of the most popular writers in the genre was Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973), who lived openly in a romantic relationship with another woman for more than 50 years and whose shÅjo writing  reflected her sexual politics.
Yoshiya Nobuko
The Japanese girls schools of the day were intended to steer young shÅjos toward “the dream of becoming happy future brides, isolated from the real-life public world outside the family.”(2)  But Nobuko’s work, “defying masculine domination and feminine submission…, constructs two radically opposed universes: on the one hand, the dreamy, fantasizing world of young girls, where they carry out their amorous intrigues, elevated by their purity and erotic beauty. … On the other, the adult world, where young girls become women, torn from their universe of innocence by men and confronted with a painful reality…. Homosexual love, idealized and constructed on a basis of equality between the two lovers, is constantly opposed to heterosexual love, which can only be built on the subjugation of women by men.”(3) The style of illustration that accompanied these stories, known as jojo-ga (å™æƒ…ç”»), “lyrical drawing,†matched the tone of the prose. Lyric painting and illustration depicted women and girls of  slender, ethereal beauty.  The eyes, in particular, were emphasized: the large, liquid eyes suggested deep inner emotions; this treatment of the eyes would become an essential characteristic of shÅjo manga.
Yumeji Takehisa, painter and illustrator, was one of the key figures in the lyric style that adorned the early shÅjo magazines and novels.Junichi Nakahara, cover for ShÅjo no tomo, 1939 (source: http://showamodern.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-268.html)Hiroshi Katsuyama, cover for a post-war edition of Nobuko’s “Mitsu no hana.” Â According to manga blogger Matt Thorn: “Katsuyama was hugely popular in the 50s as an illustrator and creator of shojo emonogatari [picture stories – a precursor of story manga]”
Takarazuka Kagekidan
The other pop-cultural phenomenon that should be noted in the “pre-history” of shÅjo manga is the popular Takarazuka Kagekidan theatre company, founded in 1913. The  company put on lavish musical spectacles full of action and romance, with women playing all the roles, including the “male” heroes. Some members of the company — known as otoko yaku — specialized in playing the male roles, essaying them with macho swagger.  The company was especially popular with female audiences; some women reportedly sent love letters to their favorite otoko yaku performers.
A Takarazuka spectacle from 1930
This spirit of spectacle, adventure, and gender masquerade, was perhaps an influence on one of the earliest examples of shÅjo manga — Nazo no Clover (Mysterious Clover) (1934) by Katsuji Matsumoto, in which a young girl dons Scarlet Pimpernel-like disguise to fight wicked nobles. Â
More notably, the Takarazuka revue was a definite influence on Osamu Tezuka, who lived in the city of Takarazuka where it was based, and was a fan of the troupe. Tezuka’s Ribon no kishi (Princess Knight) (1953), an epic tale of a princess who is accidentally given both female and male “hearts” in heaven before birth, represented the most sustained narrative in the shÅjo form and gave shÅjo manga a huge boost in popularity.
Osamu Tezuka, scan from the original printing of the 1953 “Ribon no kishi” (source: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/tamatyannanatyan/6865155.html)
With themes and atmospherics deriving from Takarazuka, Ribon no kishi was stylistically in line with the Disney-influenced, dynamically paced manga that Tezuka had been producing in the shonen field for the previous six or seven years, with little relation to the tradition of lyric illustration. The Tezukean style would  be a major current in shÅjo manga for the next several decades, as would the gender-shifting and masquerade themes inspired in part by the Takarazuka revue.
Osamu Tezuka, scan from the original printing of the 1953 “Ribon no kishi” (source: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/tamatyannanatyan/6865155.html)
Macoto Takahashi
Macoto Takahashi, Paris-Tokyo, 1959: the dreamy face, existing outside of the panel grid, defining the comics narrative in terms of emotion rather than panel-to-panel sequence, is a typical, early shÅjo manga innovation of Takahashi’s.
The jojoga aesthetic, meanwhile, was carried forward by other shÅjo artists, especially Macoto Takahashi. Though Takahashi’s work appeared in the early gekiga anthology Kage (1956; see previous post), he would be primarily known as a shÅjo manga artist; he brought the dreamy, lyric style of art to the medium, developing comics-specific narrative techniques that grew from the delicate, emotion-driven content of shÅjo literature (such as the “style figure” and  other devices that paved the way for the collage-like page composition that would become characteristic of shÅjo manga in the 1970s).
“Sakura namiki” (The Rows of Cherry Trees): Takahashi uses the motif of the round ping-pong ball as a visual narrative element.
Sakura namiki (The Rows of Cherry Trees) (1957) is firmly in the tradition of shÅjo shosetsu, an almost painfully sensitive meditation on friendship, set in a girls school.  Though structured around two excitingly staged ping-pong matches, the manga dwells almost entirely in the realm of emotions and subtle social interaction. The protagonist, Atsuko, after losing in a match to the older girl she loves, suffers the suspicions of her schoolmates that she’s lost on purpose and wonders if she truly understands her own motives. Much emphasis is put on ambiguous glances and shifting emotions; the atmosphere is suffused with beauty and chaste tristesse.
Macoto Takahashi — “Sakura namiki” (The Rows of Cherry Trees) 1957Macoto Takahashi — “Sakura namiki” (The Rows of Cherry Trees) 1957Macoto Takahashi — an innovative “musical” page design from “Paris-Tokyo” (1958)
Miyako Maki
Miyako Maki — “Maki’s Whistle” (1960)
Maki was one of the handful of pioneering women manga creators of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Following Takahashi’s lead, she continued the tradition of the lyric style in shÅjo manga. Â Maki’s Whistle (1960) is voluptuously sentimental, a mother-daughter love story set in the world of ballet and film, with emotions flowing through the large expressive eyes of the characters. Maki was another important artist in the development of the archetypal shÅjo approach to page layout, often emphasizing feelings and atmosphere over forward-driving narrative.
Hideko Mizuno, “Gin no habira” (Silver Petals) 1960Hideko Mizuno, “Gin no habira” (Silver Petals) 1960Hideko Mizuno, “Gin no habira” (Silver Petals) 1960
Though the majority of shÅjo creators of the ’50s and early ’60s were men, there was a considerable and growing number of women as well: Chieko Hokosawa
Chieko Hosokawa — “Naku na parikko” 1963
Setsuko Akamatsu
Setsuko Akamatsu — “Apprentice Angel” 1963
These and others (such as Toshiko Ueda, Yoko Imamura, Masako Watanabe, Yoshiko Nishitani) paved the way for the great period of shÅjo manga that would begin with the emergence in the early 1970s of the Year 24 Group, a generation of women artists, born in or around Showa year 24 (1949), who made use of the traditions of lyric illustration, shÅjo shosetsu, Takarazuka and Tezukean manga, in effecting a radical transformation of the entire medium.
The next page for this story, about the aftermath of the Indian raid on Deerfield Mass. in 1704, which I’m working on for the Colonial Comics anthology from Fulcrum Press, was originally scripted like this:
Â
PAGE 9Â
Page to be divided diagonally, maybe.
JOHN HALF: John returns to Boston. He becomes a celebrity, delivering sermons on his captivity. His book is a colonial best-seller. He continues his efforts to redeem Eunice.Â
EUNICE HALF Eunice further assimilated into Kahnwake culture. Daily life centers very much around corn: planting, gathering, drying, grinding, cooking.
Being invited with the women to the fields is a big moment.
The home life in the longhouse is warm and communal. Â
Thumbnailed like so:
But if felt like too much story to pack into an 8×8 page — at least with the kind of storytelling I’m going for. Â This was going to be too dense a page to be easily read. Â I asked the editor if it was okay to make the story 2 pages longer (it has to stay an odd number for the book layout, and I could use an extra page at the end as well).
So, the story will now run 13 pages and here’s the thumbnal of the new page 9, Â just the “John” part of the old page 9:
As you can see, I changed the text on the last panel. Â I liked the juxtaposition of ‘not giving up hope” with the burning-down candle, but… as you WILL see in the next page, it needed a line more suited to the transition back to Eunice at Kahnawake. Â So I ended the page on the notion of not knowing what was going on with her… and now we shall see!
The next page in the story I’m drawing for Fulcrum Press‘ Colonial Comics anthology.
My “script” for the page:
PAGE 8
The Mohawk children have an easy life. Running around and playing. Eunice watches shyly as they play. They call her over. Then she is playing with them. Â
Thumbnail:
As you can see I added in the element of Eunice’s Indian mother intervening on her behalf with the other kids.
 I also realized that the transition from the narrated/dialogue pages (John’s story) to the wordless pages (Eunice’s story), needed to be smoothed out with a line of narration.  Otherwise it seemed too abrupt.  The rough pencils:
The square format lets you do some fun things that wouldn’t be possible in a conventional rectangular page. Here I tried to play with the two diagonal axes of a page divided into four equal quarters. Â So there’s the parallel/contrast between the lonely girl in the first panel and the playing children in the last, in the axis running top left-bottom right between two square panels. Â And then the opposite, axis – top right to bottom left – Â in which we “ride” a rough diagonal through the series looks from one character to the others:
Does that make sense?
Final inks:
The line of narration, by the way, is invented, not from John’s book. Â I don’t want to take cheap shots to exaggerate John’s anti-Indian attitude. Â But he was quoted (I didn’t make a note of where, but probably in John Demos’ The Unredeemed Captive), referring to the Indians as “wretched.” Â So I thought it fair enough to use the word here.Thanks!
Upcoming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: a Global History, 1968-present,” written by Alexander Danner and me.  Here are some excerpts, and additional material including some great comics images  that we couldn’t fit in the book. Â
As the title suggests, the book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 until 2010. The introduction, though, provides some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s. Â Text in italics is directly from the book.
Continuing with the post-war Franco-Belgian comics, and focusing on the two cornerstone comics periodicals of the era, we move from Le Journal de Tintin to:
Franquin’s creation Marsupilami, the unspecified-species sidekick of Spirou is one of the most popular characters in Franco-Belgian comics
While there’s much in common between L’Ecoles Bruxelles and Marcinelle (particularly on the level of composition and layout), in Franquin’s work the differences become apparent. Instead of the cool clarity of the ligne claire style, we have here a more energetic approach to line and shading, a rounded cartooning style that owes more to the Disney model, but also a more nervous, even violent “graphism” as the French call it (a great word that means more than simply “graphic style,” I think, implying greater depths of content and meaning in the way an artist composes and draws).
Franquin – Modeste et Pompom, the only strip he did  for Le Journal De Tintin (from 1955-58)
Maurice Tillieux
 In his private-eye series Gil Jourdan, Tillieux combined the elegance of the ligne claire with the expressive elasticity of L’ecole de Marcinelle, moving easily from comedy to action and drama, with a great sense of atmosphere.  You can see the influence of Tillieux’s  suave but comical style  on Yves Chaland,  one of the best artists in the revival of the Tintin / Spirou styles in the 198os (more on that in later posts).
Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – Spirou 1228 1961Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – le grand souffle – spirou 1560 1968Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – Spirou 1480 1966Tillieux – Gil Jourdan – Spirou 1231 1961
The Atom Style
In my opinion, while the Journal de Tintin / ligne claire style reached its peak in the early-mid ’50s., the archetypal Spirou look emerged slightly later, as the cartoonists working in the Charleroi/Marcinelle style fully embraced the aesthetic of 1950s-early 60s Atom-age design.  Joost Swart (another key artist in the 1980s stylistic revival, who also coined the term ligne claire),  later referred to the Spirou sensibility as the “Atom Style,” with reference to this cartoony modernism.
Even a middle-ages-set gag strip can have that “Atom style” look:
Noel Bissot – Les Hallucinations Du Baron – Spirou #1440, 1965 (detail)
Not all the content of Spirou was comical. Â There was also a large component of muscular action comics, the best featuring the heavy-lined exaggerated styles of Eddie Pappe and Jiji. Two examples, 20 years apart, of the two artists work on the long-running strip Jean Valhardi:
Eddie Paape – Jean Valhardi – Spirou 436, 1946
Jije – Jaen Valhardi – 1961 Jiji (Joseph Gillain), joined Spirou in the late 1930s and drew the title strip before handing it over to Franquin. Working for the journal through the 1970s, he was a mentor and stylistic influence on artists as diverse as Franquin, Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Yves Chaland.
Jije – Jean Valhardi – L’affair Barnes, 1957. Scan of original art, source: Galerie Laqua
As for covers, since the Spirou approach was generally to run a comic page on the cover, they weren’t as dazzling as in Le Journal de Tintin. Â By the late 60s, though, Spirou shifted to a more conventional approach to cover, with some wonderful results:
Roba – Spirou 144, 1965Berck – Spirou #1600, 1968Will – Spirou 1480, 1966. The word balloon reads “That noise – t’s coming from pages 8 and 9!” Do I detect an echo of MAD #1?
Continuing the process of drawing a short comic about John and Eunice Williams and the Deerfield Raid of 1704, for Colonial Comics anthology from Fulcrum Press…
Where the first 5 pages were primarily visual, these two switch to a dialogue mode. Â The majority of the dialogue is taken from John Williams’ text, some of it moved around from different parts of the book. Â For instance, the story John tells Eunice of the girl who’s forced to wear the cross, was actually a story told to John by his son (who was also captured) in a letter. Â I’m not sure if John had heard this story when he met with Eunice for the first time at Kahnwake, but I thought it presented his attitude toward children in captivity pretty well.
My script:
PAGE 6.
The Jesuits attempt to get John to convert (“by all means of flatteries and threats). Some of the following text to be used:
 I had many disputes with the priests who came thither; and when I used their own authors to confute some of their positions, my books, borrowed of them, were taken away from me, for they said, I made an ill use of them.
It was propounded to me, if I would stay among them, and be of their religion, I should have a great and honourable pension from the king every year. The superiour of the Jesuits said, “Sir, you have manifested much grief and sorrow for your separation from so many of your neighhours and children; if you will now comply with this offer and proposal, you may have all your children with you; and here will be enough for an honourable maintenance for you and them.†(and never expect to have them on any other terms)I told them, my children were dearer to me than all the world, but I would not deny Christ and his truths for the having of them with me.  What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
 “After much supplication, Governour de Vaudreuil (of New France), arranged for me to see my youngest daughter.â€
 John is brought to Kahnawake see Eunice. Before he sees her, the Mohawk tell him that “they would as soon part with their hearts as my child.â€
 PAGE 7
The first meeting between John and Eunice, in the church at Kahnawake, with Jesuits present.
EUNICE: Father! Have you come to take me home?
JOHN: God has not willed that yet. Are you well?Â
She looks downcast.
EUNICE: Yes, father.
JOHN: Have you been mistreated?
JOHN: Do you remember to say your catechism?
EUNICE: Yes! But they make me say prayers in Latin, father! I don’t understand a word. Will it do me harm?
JOHN: Be strong: I have been told of an English girl bid to take and wear the cross, and cross her self: She refused; they threatened her: either to cross herself, or be whipt, she chose to be whipt; but seeing her choosing indeed to suffer rather than comply, they desisted.Â
Eunice doesn’t seem encouraged.Â
The layouts of these pages are fairly straightforward, my thumbnails were loose — extremely so in the case of page 7. Â I didn’t bother scanning the roughs, which I usually only do if I’m piecing them together from sketches and other attempts.
Thumbnail for page 6 – pretty loose.Thumbnail for page 7 – extremely loose!
Drawing these two pages was much faster than the previous ones. My main focus was on the stylization/schematization of the characters. Â The style of drawing the two characters turns out to be different. John is more of a caricature style – almost Mort Drucker-ish at times , while Eunice is more of a Manga-influenced indie-comics look, that’s a little new for me; I’m really enjoying the simplicity and expressiveness this approach to her character allows. Even so, keeping the depiction of the characters consistent from page to page is proving a challenge.
The final line art:
The Eunice Williams story, page 6 final line artThe Eunice Williams story – p 7 final line art
Upcoming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: a Global History, 1968-present,” written by Alexander Danner and me.  I want to post some snippets from the book, including some great comics images (from foreign lands and bygone days) that we couldn’t quite fit in the book. Â
As the title suggests, the book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 until 2010. The introduction, though, provides some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s. Â Text in italics is directly from the book.
Postwar European  Comics
Edgar P. Jacobs, from Blake et Mortimer, “Le Marque Jaune.’
 This classicism also expressed itself in a sort of playfully reassuring cartoon modernism, brimming with optimism about technology and progress.
Bob De Moor, 1955
What I love most about the ’40s and ’50s Tintin are the covers.  Can you  imagine being a French or Belgian kid, running to the newsstand kiosque every week for one of these jewels of color and drama?
Willy Vandersteen
Jacques Laudy is a neglected artist from this period. Â He did some breathtaking covers:
More Laudy, from his fanciful, Orientalist series Hassan et Kadour:
Bob De Moor’s style was the closest of all the Journal de Tintin artists to that of Herge.
For French comics critic Lecigne, this stylistic simulacrum is what reveals the essence of the Hergean ligne claire:
I don’t guess the following merits the word “script,” but this is what I was working from for this page:
PAGE 5
At Kahnawake, Eunice is welcomed warmly, embraced by her Indian “mother.â€Â Her rags are taken off and she is dressed in a new outfit, in the style of the Mohawk girls.
NOTES: Â The Iroquois nation at the time practiced the “Mourning War,” in which captives were taken for the purpose of replacing members of the tribe that had died, to ease the grief of their loved ones. Â “Captives could be adopted as a family member, literally taking the name and social position of the deceased” * Â It’s unknown whether Eunice was captured for this purpose, but possible, and I’m playing it that way.
The action of this page was also inspired by a passage in a book I read for research, “The Indian Captive,” by Lois Lenski, a fictionalized account (written for children in 1942) of a similar historical case.  The sensual appeal of the Indian clothes, faciliatate the  symbolic “changing of the skin” into that of an adopted culture.
I also thought  of the early shojo manga device of the “style picture.”  Shojo manga was aimed at young female readers, and the presentation of clothing and costume was an important element.  Often, an entire vertical section of the page was devoted to showing a character’s costume, in a panel that was often only loosely connected to the narrative flow of the comic, and using a decorative background rather than spatial continuity with the story:
Miyako Maki, “Maki’s Whistle” 1960
I wanted to get something of that feeling of that for this page.
The rough version:
Dan Mazur, Eunice Williams story, p 5 rough
The final (so far):
Since Eunice obviously can’t understand the language of the Mohawks, I thought of getting the dialogue translated, so that readers couldn’t understand it either. Â I emailed the tribal council at Kahnawake to see about a translation, but haven’t heard back. Â In the meantime, I think the blank balloons might be a good solution!
The decorative pattern around Eunice in the “style picture” is based on the Iroquois “three sisters” of beans, corn and squash. Â My friend EJ Barnes, however, has since pointed out to me that, because I’m an idiot, I drew gourds instead of squashes (EJ didn’t call me an idiot, that’s my term). Â So that will have to be re-drawn.
*Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield
Upcoming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: a Global History, 1968-present,” written by Alexander Danner and me. Â I want to post some snippets from the book, including some great comics images (from foreign lands and bygone days) that we couldn’t quite fit in the book. Â
As the title suggests, the book covers the period from, roughly, 1968 until 2010. The introduction, though, provides some background on the development of comics around the world (focusing mainly on Europe, Japan and the U.S.) during the post-war era through the mid-60s.
In the Japanese section, after exploring Osamu Tezuka’s breakthrough work of the late 40s and early 50s, we move on to the 1950s gekiga movement:
By 1956 or so, a small rebellion against Tezukian hegemony was stirring in Osaka, led by a group of young up-and-comers including Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Takao Saito¯ and Masahiko Matsumoto. Reverent admirers of Tezuka, they nonetheless felt the need for more bite in their manga, and hence gekiga (meaning “dramatic pictures†as opposed to manga, “playful pictureâ€) was created to, as Tatsumi put it, provide “material for those in the transitional period between childhood and adulthood.†* Distributed through the inexpensive rental library—or kashihon—market, the early gekiga stories were mostly thrillers and mysteries for adolescent male readers, with cinematic paneling and lighting effects inspired by French and American film noir.
Matsuhiko Matsumoto – Rinshitsu no otoko (The Man Next Door) – 1956 from Kage #1
The young gekiga artists of the 1950s, like Matsumoto, were great fans of Osamu Tezuka, and their cartooning style owed much to his. They pushed his “cinematicâ€Â qualities a little further, with more use of angles and of “aspect-to-aspect†paneling (images of details within a scene, employed to build atmosphere or, in the case of this page, suspense), and in general brought a darker, tougher mood to juvenile thrillers  and mysteries.
The covers the first issues of Kage (Shadow) and Machi (City). The manga anthologies that marked the beginnings of what would be called gekiga.  The covers are unsigned.  I’ve seen them attributed to Ryota Masami
This first wave of gekiga** creators collaborated on two anthology periodicals, Kage (“Shadow”) was launched in 1956. The magazine was a success, sparking a boom in crime-themed, short story manga collections for the inexpensive kashihon market. But Kage’s small Osaka publisher, Hinomaru Bunko, was in perpetual financial straits, and when in the following year it appeared that the firm would go under, Matsumoto and Tatsumi accepted an offer from a rival to start a second, noir-ish anthology, Machi (“City”).***  Here are some images scanned from facsimile editions of the first issue of each of those titles:
Yoshihiro Tatsumi , ç§ã¯è¦‹ãŸ Watashi wa Mita  from Kage #1, 1956
An early page by Takao Saito – later of Golgo 13 fame – from Kage 1
Masaaki Sato – Hakaba kara ki ta otoko” (The Man from the Grave) from Machi 1, 1957
Makoto Takahashi, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” from Kage 1, 1956. Interestingly, Takahashi, one of the most important creators of early shoujo (girls’) manga, also appeared in the noir-ish Kage.Fumiyashu Ishikawa, “Bullet of Fear” from Machi 1, 1957
Shoichi Sakurai. from Kage 1, 1956 (Sakurai was Tatsumi’s elder brother; see Tatsumi’s “A Drifting Life”)
Mitsuko Kuroda (?) from Kage 1, 1956Masahiko Matsumoto “Jigoku Karaki ta tenshi” (Angel from Hell), from Machi 1, 1957
*Quoted in “God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga” by Natsu Onoda Power
** The term “gekiga” wasn’t yet used during the heyday of Kage and Machi. Â Matsumoto favored the term “Komaga” to differentiate their work, geared for older readers, from manga, which was still thought of as a children’s form. Tatsumi coined the term “gekiga” a few years later.
***As recounted by Matsumoto in his autobiographical “Gekiga Fanatics”
Magnus (Roberto Raviola) (art) Max Bunker (writing) Satanik #38 • 1966 In Italy a new genre of dark, violent and erotic comics in the crime genre, called fumetti neri (“black comicsâ€), reflected the era’s cultural freedoms and the loosening moral grip of the Catholic Church. Another major fumetti neri was sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani’s Diabolik.
Magnus (art) Max Bunker (writing), Satanik #38, June 1966
