I continue my sporadic exploration of old shoujo manga through obscure (to me, anyway) books obtained through Yahoo Japan auctions.  I got my hands on this ShÅjo Club “supplement” from 1956.  It’s a tiny paperback (4′ by 6″), poorly stapled (I basically had to pull the thing apart to get usable scans, which I hate to do).  That contains a single long story, Yukimura izumi chan monogatari  (Yukimura Izumi’s Story).
The artist is Nakazawa Shigeo (ä¸æ²¢ã—ã’ãŠ).  I assume artist-writer, since there’s only one name credited.  I don’t know anything about him, but there is some quite nice work here, with that introspective shÅjo mood (see my previous post).
I like the heavy line around the characters, and the nicely detailed settings, with various textures. Â Also, I would say it’s a pretty sophisticated use of “camera angles,” for a kids’ comic from the mid-50s.
Also, notice that they were still numbering the individual panels at this point.
And I love the panel with Izumi’s reflection in the teacup as she’s thinking!
Coming in June from publisher Thames and Hudson, “Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present,” written by Alexander Danner and me.   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.
The decision to start the book in 1968, to define it as a sort of “comics come of age” narrative, sprung from the idea of “watershed” events like the appearance of Zap in the U.S., of Tsuge’s Nejishiki (Screw Style) in Japan, and, in Europe, and the changes seen in the pages of Pilote all taking place in that same year. In all these cases, of course, the breakthroughs of ’68 had been brewing throughout the earlier years of the decade. Â As it says in the introduction…
This Norman Rockwell hommage (or is it a parody) encapsulates the position of the early Pilote perfectly: still depicted in a classical mode, young French children gazing at the (mildly) rebellious future as symbolized by French rock star Johnny Hallyday.Cabu – cover, Pilote 179, 1963. Cabu’s insouciant teenage character “Le Grand Duduche,” is another indicator of Pilote’s trajectory toward youth culture and unconventional graphic styles.
In its first few years, Pilote’s content was only subtly different from that of  Spirou and Tintin.  Though the tone was perhaps a bit breezier, Pilote, like its Belgian elders, featured articles on current events, sports, pop culture and exotic cultures.
From March 1963, “Les Jeudis de Pilote,” a feature that included letters to the editor, articles on sports and pop music, and a contest for readers to send in photos of friends who were “sosies” (lookalikes) for celebrities like Sir Edmund Hillary, Charlie Chaplin, Ian Fleming or the Prince of Wales (below)
What soon set Pilote apart, and what set it on course to surpass its Belgian rivals, was the strip by founders Goscinny and Uderzo. Â Like any other strip in the journal, Asterix was serialized one page per week:
Goscinny & Uderzo, Asterix, September 1962
Asterix’ combination of slapstick comedy and anachronistic satire were two of the elements that made it a sensation:
Goscinny & Uderzo, Asterix et le combat des chefs, 1964Giscinny & Uderzo – Asterix chez les Bretons, 1965
The second pillar of Pilote’s success came in 1965 with Lieutenant Blueberry, written by Charlier and drawn by newcomer Jean Giraud.  In its early years, Giraud’s art for Blueberry was often stiff and undistinguished when compared with other Franco-Belgian westerns:
Giraud & Charlier, Fort Navajo 1965; page four of the first Blueberry story.Fronval , “Jeff Stevens” from Pilote, 1962
From the start however, Charlier and Giraud brought a refreshing, contemporary rebelliousness to the protagonist of their strip, a quality reinforced by Giraud’s depiction of Blueberry as a sosie for New Wave film star Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Within a few years, though, Giraud’s style would progress astonishingly, just one of the many major developments that Pilote would undergo during the eventful late ’60s-early ’70s period.
A photo feature on the Hara Kiri staff, from 1966. The satirical self-presentation was a factor in breaking down the “fourth wall” of bande dessinee, establishing a hip, knowing camaraderie between creators and readers.Fred, Hara Kiri #10, cover, 1961
Early covers featured illustrations, but these were soon replaced by infamous staged photographs that demonstrated the magazine’s sensibility: gross-out humor and political/social satire, often completely sexist (you’ll have to google it yourself to see the worst ones).
Hara Kiri #59, 1966Resier, Hara Kiri #86, 1968. His style became looser, his jokes wilder and grosser. 1: I’m fed up, I’m a loser, a nothing. 2: I’m not good for anything in this life. 3. Nothing, nothing, nothing at all 4. I’m only good for cooking, buying the groceries… 5. Nothing! I never make anything of beauty in life! 6. Dammit! I’d rather throw myself in front of a bus!
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Sick humor in a Hara Kiri photo-funnies feature from 1965, asking the question, “If your wife cut your child’s throat, would you forgive her?” (Based on a real incident from the headlines of the day!)
Most of the bd  in Hara Kiri were panel gags and short humor strips, but there were some important longer series as well, such as Fred’s Le Petit Cirque, Guy Peellaert’s Pravda, and a little-known but fascinating collaboration, in which American expatriate writer Melvin Van Peebles collaborated with cartoonist Wolinski to adapt the Chester Himes crime novel, “A Rage in Harlem” (known in French as La Reine des pommes)
Wolinsk (art) Melvin Van Peebles (writing), La Reine des pommes, adapted from the novel “Rage in Harlem” by Chester Himes. Hara Kiri #51, 1965One tactic employed by Hara Kiri’s publishers to get around the censors who’d banned the magazine, was simply to start a new one, such as “L’Hebdo Hara Kiri” (Hara Kiri Weekly) which appeared in a tabloid format. Here, Reiser’s cover mocks Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s reaction to the death of Egypian leader Nasser (“He was a loyal adversary and a great head of state. He leaves a great emptiness in the middle-east.â€)
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
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.
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?
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:
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”
And I love the panel with Izumi’s reflection in the teacup as she’s thinking!
