Sam Kusek

Excerpt from review copy: 

Matt Naismith is a college sophomore. He’s recently been paired (as a lab partner) with the girls of his dreams, K.T. Delaney. With the help of his friends and resident advisor, Will Simers, Matt hopes to win the heart of the fair K.T. Unfortunately for Matt, Will needs a little help with his graduate thesis…

Zombie Outlaw Issue #1 by writer Brian J. Apocada and B. Paul Jordan was a real mixed bag of a read for me. While I enjoy pieces of the artwork and the ideas that were presented in the book and its attempts at giving a fresher look at the zombie genre, I have some very specific qualms with how the story pans out and exactly what it is supposed to entail.

Tonally, this book doesn’t know what it wants to be. It sets the stage as your atypical college, wrought with young (and horny) coeds yet splices in violent depictions of zombie fights. While the fight scenes were tremendously engrossing, visually appealing and well put together graphically, I found it difficult to transition from a comedic college classic tale to an action-packed zombie thriller within the confines of this short first issue. I found the book rather unclear in its message and direction, leaving me as a reader, puzzled at the end of the first issue, instead of excited for more.

This unclear nature echoes my main problem with the writing of the story, which concerns the unexplained, randomly placed plot elements throughout the book. As an example, one of our heroes, Will Simers, upon finding the zombie corpse he has been hunting, professes, “This could be the key to landing that internship!” , a motivation which wasn’t made clear in any part of the story leading up to that point, making it extremely difficult to assess Will as a character. We don’t know where he is coming from, thought-wise, and while this could be used to paint him as a carefree adventurer with a hidden agenda, it just comes off as annoying and unrealistic. Another example is the ending of the first book, which states, “So it begins again!” What begins? How is this curse repetitious? Very little of the zombie part of this book is explained and while it meets the minimum requirement to peak someone’s interest, it makes you wonder how long we might get strung along on small bites of information. The book suffers dearly from unexplained plot devices, character elements and just a general coherent story all together. We don’t know much about these characters, their school, the legend of Dransby or much of anything, which didn’t help me to develop any emotional attachment to the story. It feels as though it is trying to be so much at once that it loses all of its key elements and meaning in the final product, which is unfortunate.

Just to briefly cover the artwork, I felt mixed about it as well. As I mentioned beforehand, the scenes depicting zombies or any Dransby back-story artwork come off as fantastically crafted. They elicit a wonderful sense of fear, confusion and general creepiness that goes along well with the subject matter, however, the rest of the artwork takes a bit getting used to. The characters all sport larger than life forearms and are oddly proportioned all around, often changing shape as the story progressed. I understand the artwork is meant to create a bright, fun and cartoony depiction but I found this to be disorienting as it created inconsistency across the book. As my one glaring example, when Will is introduced, he has very apparent bags under his eyes and definitive cheekbones that just seem to disappear on the next page and then reappears pages later.

To wrap things up, as much as I have picked at this book, I firmly believe that it has a lot of potential to either find its footing or change itself completely. What initially attracted me to this book is the idea of becoming a zombie as a part-time curse, rather than a full-time, can’t-come-back-from-it change. I think it is fresh, great build on the pre-existing zombie material and setting the story in a college environment is smart. I would just encourage the duo to pick a direction and stay with it because I think they could have something really good on their hands.

A review copy was supplied by the author. For more information on where to purchase the book, please visit the Comixpress link (which can be found here) or contact Brian J. Apocada via Twitter: @Capn_Midnight

Hey howdy everyone.

Thanks for all the great contributions to the Barefoot Gen MMF! I had a fantastic time hosting it and hope to do it again in the future. As of now, I have become extremely busy with some work related stuff but wanted to keep this blog updated so I am going to post links to all the podcasts that I’ve done, just so you can check out more about me, if you are interested in learning about the personality behind this blog.

Episode #31 of the Manga Out Loud podcast, talking about the Barefoot Gen MMF with Ed Sizemore, Rob McMonigal and Patrick Jones.

Episode #25 of the Manga Out Loud podcast, talking about Twin Spica with Ed Sizemore, Johanna Draper Carlson, Daniella Orihuela Gruber and Tim Maughan.

Episode #20 of the Manga Out Loud podcast, talking about Batman: the Brave & the Bold with Ed Sizemore.

Jammer’s Animovie Podcast #16 with Daniella Orihuela Gruber and Doctor  talking about the Manga Publisher’s Coalition.

Jammer’s Animovie Podcast #9 with Daniella Orihuela Gruber, Mikey D. Pirate and Pwngoatjunkie talking about the whole new world of manga!

Enjoy!

Ed Sizemore of Manga Worth Reading offers us a fantastic review of the entirety of the series.

Jason Yadao (Otaku Ohana) revisits not only the series, but his reviewing chops in his MMF entry.

Rob McMonigal of Panel Patter provides us with some insights on his thoughts the series as a whole, opposed to his previous individual reviews.

Hi folks, unfortunately, I am again with limited internet so I am posting today’s entires a bit early.

As you can see below, I am hosting a posting by Patrick Jones, better known as Johnny_Jobbs on Twitter. He takes on the daunting task of comparing Barefoot Gen and Grave of Fireflies.

ABCBTom gives us a tour of the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

Finally, Last Gasp has provided us with a statement from the venerable Project Gen, the team behind the translation of the series.

Enjoy, our monthly feast ends tomorrow!

Day Six Postings

Patrick Jones is a guy, that happens to be on the internet, you can find him on twitter by the username @Johnny_Jobbs.

If you’re reading this, then there is a chance that you probably have heard of Barefoot Gen and a higher chance of knowing Grave of The Fireflies due to the prestige that it has garnered by Studio Ghibli & Roget Ebert and other people. You are most likely reading this during or because of the Manga Movable Feast since its hosted on the MMF site, as such I will save you the effort of telling you what these movies are about. The point of this article is that while Barefoot Gen is a phenomenal piece of work, reviewing or looking at Barefoot Gen in a vacuum is not just how we, Teh Internet, do things nowadays. We always make comparisons to other stuff whether it is for criticism or to get other people to watch it etc. It is simply a simpler way to convey things. Therefore a comparison MUST be made and I CHOOSE

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, THE MOST HORRIFYINGLY DEPRESSING MOVIE EVER MADE (Claimed by me, Patrick Jones….the writer of this article)

To go against

BAREFOOT GEN, THE MOST TERRIFYING SERIES EVAR! (Second verse same as the first)

WARNING: the following content bellow does not contain BRUTAL IMAGES AND CONTENT. Viewer discretion is not needed.

Now to start at the painfully obvious comparison, Barefoot Gen & Grave of the Fireflies are both Japanese stories made by Japanese people that take place in Japan around World War 2. Barefoot Gen & Grave of the Fireflies are both based on real stories. Akiyuki Nosaka and Keiji Nakazawa both experienced to an extent the bad things in the two stories.

Please note that I said to an extent. The two stories have changes to what actually happened in real life, similar to what Tim O’Brien did with his experience in Vietnam in the semi-autobiography turned Fiction, The Things They Carried , they changed around stuff to make the story better and to portray what Tim O’Brien names in The Things They Carried the “Story Truth” which according to Tim, is what “truly” happens or what the person who wrote the story felt what happened, While The Things They Carried came after the two stories were written. I (teh writer, Patrick Jones) believe that Akiyuki Nosaka and Keiji Nakazawa had a prototype of that idea while they wrote down their stories While Akiyuki didn’t actually die (that’s how he was even able to write the story in the first place….whoops SPOILERZ) Akiyuki wrote the story as an apology to his sister because he feels guilty about her death. To Akiyuki, he felt like he died when her sister died (At least that’s what I think…you might want to take that with a grain of salt). And Keiji did not actually help give birth to his mother’s child during the aftermath of the atomic bomb , but in Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen Keiji says that he was told about his mother’s birth in such exquisite detail that he felt like he was there helping give birth to his sister. This in my mind and hopefully your mind shows that the two authors had some prototype of the “Story Truth”…or not, but that would destroy my argument.

There are numerous other comparisons that can be made between the two; I can hit some out right now. They are both had live-action movies, they both were written by male, Japanese authors and they both were targeted to all audiences. But another important comparison that MUST BE MADE is symbolism. The two stories are heavily reliant on symbolism whether its B-29 bombers to Gen’s barefoot feet or to the bomb (or bombs in Grave of the Fireflies case) that was dropped on the main characters town, the two have symbols, but so does almost every story ever. What is truly notable about these two is that they use one BIG symbol that they use to HAMMER THE MESSAGE OF THE STORY INTO YOUR BRAIN. In Barefoot Gen, the main symbol is Wheat, that delicious delectable food that completes our sandwiches and makes most cereal possible, is used to tell Gen and the audience to be strong and to stick to what you believe in. In Grave of the Fireflies the main symbol is, of course, Fireflies, that blinking insect, is used to portray the brief life of innocence and to respect the dead soldiers, which brings me and you to another comparison that can be made, they are both staunchly anti-war, to what severity can be debated endlessly but it’s there, and it’s loud and it is understandable. Most, if not all, the bad things that happened to the characters in both stories can be attributed to World War Two.

If you had read or watched Barefoot Gen or Grave of the Fireflies which you probably have if you are reading this article (If not…then why are you reading this; You’re ruining yourself on a madding, depressing trip through hell and back) you may have noticed the passion, the people who have wrote these stories were driven to tell them, if it was not for that then who knows if we would have ever gotten these magnificent pieces of work, works so deep with symbolism and meaning that one could endlessly debate about the works and the similarities about the two, which means that this article could technically go on for hundreds or thousands of pages about the similarities and why that may be, but who has the time or the patience to read or listen to something that is complementary to the works that is longer than those two works combined. It is highly likely that few people will read this whole article in the first place so why even bother writing this article? Because I am DRIVEN BY MY PASSION FOR THESE WORKS SO MUCH THAT I WROTE A WHOLE ARTICLE COMPARING THE TWO, EVEN KNOWING THAT FEW PEOPLE WILL READ IT BECAUSE I LOVE THESE WORKS THAT RIPS OUT MY HEARTSTRINGS. But I am not talented,disciplined,nor driven enough to write about all the similarities between Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies, there’s just so many. I don’t how they can be so similar but somehow they are and even more bewildering is that they can be unique and good enough that I would recommend both to anyone.

See what I did there? I took a whole paragraph to tell you that I can’t write down more stuff about this while simultaneously writing down more stuff, I’m sorry, this article needs to be handed in on time. I give apologies to Sam Kusek and Edward Sizemore, who gave me this opportunity and I am sorry for this train wreck( but not sorry enough to stop this train wreck but I’m still pretty sorry). I also give a big apology to Thomas (a.k.a. @ABCBTom on twitter) He was supposed to do this article and would have done a much better job than me and yet CRUEL FATE caused him to be unable to do his article in time for the Manga Movable Feast causing me to pick up the torch; to him I am truly sorry. Since I am being so meta right now I might as well give credit where credit is due at this point. Thanks to Sam Kusek (@SamKusek on twitter) for creating the Manga Movable Feast and having this one be about Barefoot Gen. hopefully the MMF will spread awareness of this piece of work and I also give him thanks for giving me (Patrick Jones @Johnny_Jobbs on twitter) my chance to shine…and fail miserably. I also give thanks to Edward Sizemore(@edsizemore on twitter) for talking Sam Kusek into letting me write for the MMF. But I give BIG thanks to Akiyuki Nosaka and Keiji Nakazawa for creating In my humble opinion what is essential read/watching to anyone and is something that everyone should read before they die( you can find Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies and Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen and purchase them by clinking the clicky links in this sentence). Now that I’m done I need some way to end this article………………………………………………Hm………………………………………………………….

P.S. I don’t  own any of the photos used in this article; now you know.

Rob McMonigal over at Panel Patter is working on a newer posting for the Feast but in the mean time, wanted to share his reviews for volumes one, two, three, four, five, six and seven respectively.

Anna of Manga Report, talks about an excerpt from the classic Frederik L. Schodt book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics and how it introduced her to our choice this month.

Michelle Smith, Soliloquy in Blue, shows us her stuff with a review of volume one, where she speaks more to her reactions to the Nakaoka family pre-bomb.

John Thomas at the Manga Village compares Barefoot Gen to The Drifting Classroom in his review of volume one.

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber of All About Manga talks about her atypical reaction to the series, due to her upbringing & experiences at a private Jewish school.

Ash Brown at Experiments in Manga brings another review of volume one to the table.

That’s all the postings for today. I will leave you with the banner from the live action Barefoot Gen film.

Day Five Postings

Ash Brown (Experiments in Manga) was kind enough to enlighten me to an extensive preview of Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen

Tony Yao (Manga Therapy) examines the psychological effects nuclear weapons can have, even when not used.

Angela Eastman (Anglynn) provides another account of the emotional toil Gen can have on readers.

Two more days left everyone! Don’t forget, you can email me your entries at skusek at yahoo dot com or by using the #MMF hashtag on Twitter!

Day Four Links Here

Barefoot Gen MMF Archive

Alexander Hoffman of Mangawidget speaks to the emotional stresses that reading Gen can bring.

Lori Henderson’s (Manga Xanadu) provides an in-depth review of the darker elements found in volume one.

Ash Brown (Experiments in Manga) takes a different route, instead reviewing Keiji Nakazawa’s more personal, Hiroshima: the Autobiography of Barefoot Gen.

I revisit and expand upon old college paper  in Retelling Trauma through Panels and Word Bubbles (Revisited).

Finally, we have a statement that was prepared by Last Gasp, in conjunction with the MMF that can be found here on their blog. Here’s a preview of what they had to say:

“We are extremely proud to publish Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen series. Last Gasp has always championed autobiographical comics because of their emotional honesty. Many of the comics and graphic novels we have published are drawn from authors’ life stories, ranging from Justin Green‘s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary to Toufic El Rassi’s Arab in America. Gen fits into the same category, but also speaks to other themes that have been an important part Last Gasp’s publishing from the very beginning—environmentalism and anti-war protest…”

Day Three Links

Awhile ago, while I was still in school at Emerson College, I wrote a paper for a class called On Death and Dying, that explored different aspects of how we as people portray and ultimately deal with the inevitable ending of our lives. My case for this paper was to argue that the Comics medium, in the past few decades, has the ability to hold the same sense of emotional significance and conveyance when portraying traumatic events or wrongdoings that other media, like print and television, have. While I made my point, providing seemingly endless examples like Denny O’Neil’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow and specifically, a comparison of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, a true exploration of the content was never fully realized. I was merely stating facts about how books conveyed emotion and trauma but not how they helped us to learn from the events.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I hope to accomplish with this posting: a comparative look at how Maus and Barefoot Gen, two outstanding works about horribly traumatic events, show us the basic human levels of survival and how trauma ultimately affects the rest of the world around us.

To start, I want to get my artistic points out there, before I get to the meat and potatoes of the discussion. I think Barefoot Gen‘s artwork really detracts the stories more serious elements for me. I have never seen this specific point brought up before, instead the opposite (that the artwork is frighteningly horrific) has, but I find the artwork a little too cartoony; almost in a Disney-esque sense. It really takes me out of the context of the story and we all know for a fact that this wasn’t Nakazawa’s intention. His images have struck chords with other artists, including Spiegelman who states “I will never forget the people dragging their own melted skin as they walk through the ruins of Hiroshima, the panic-stricken horse on fire galloping through the city, the maggots crawling out of the sores of a young girl’s ruined face.” Maus on the other hand, takes the cake in this aspect, creating a clever method of representing race and prejudice through the guise of animals, intentionally taking a less harsh route artistically. The Jewish people are mice, with their German hunters portrayed as cats; feeble mice powerless in the face of their predator. It creates this fantastic, easily accessible imagery that allows the reader to understand the realty of the situation by an extremely commong association. Maybe its because I’ve never been in any traumatic accident myself (godbless) but for me, a cat chasing a mouse is more representative an image than a city in flames.

When you boil both stories down, looking past all the agonizing moments of each book, both works place a large emphasis on the importance of familial connections. Throughout Barefoot Gen, the main character, Gen, is almost always surrounded by a larger group of people and no matter who they are, whether blood relatives or other bomb orphans, he regards them as family. There is that real sense of community in that respect; that sticking together and utilizing their unique strengths to survive is the best option. It is also allegorical to how Japan, a nation who had its spirit broken by the effects of the bomb, has to now piece together what they have left and rebuild, creating a wonderfully universal lesson that can be taken away from the work.

The idea of family exists in Maus in a very different way. Maus is a story that focuses much more on the individual experience of dealing with Trauma, both in actual victims and how it extends to their next generations. In fact, by sharing with the younger generation, survivors teach them to appreciate what they have and what their ancestors went through to pave the road for their future, however, this constant reminder cane create a severe implication upon 2G’s or second-generation survivors. Many 2G’s try to separate themselves from their parents and the holocaust experience. It is a scar on their mind, letting them know that “there is nothing we can ever do that will be as important as our parents suffering.” For 2G’s to forget what they were told about the experience is awful; almost a sin. Forgetting brings shame and anxiety to second-generation survivors. Thus they strive to remember, to understand and build upon the teachings of their ancestors. To remember these experiences is to discover a part of themselves; to understand their heritage. Just like their parents, second generation survivors forge the road for the future by remembering the past.

Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman conveys his struggle to deal with the past, especially as a child. Growing up with the memory of the Holocaust in his house, something he could never understand or share with his parents unlike his brother Richeu. Art sees this “ghost brother”, his actual biological brother who died in the holocaust, as “the ideal kid” who “never threw tantrums or got in any kind of trouble. He would’ve become a doctor and married a wealthy Jewish girl…the creep.”  This whole book is a result of Art’s attempt to reconcile these feelings of guilt he gets from his survivor parents, by understanding his father’s struggle, which I think within itself is an interesting contrast of Barefoot Gen. While Maus deals with the Holocaust, it is never really about the effect it had globally or on a historical level; if you look closely, there isn’t even a Hitler figure in the book. It focuses solely on individual experiences; Vladek’s survival in the camps, Art’s understanding of his father’s struggles and still dealing with unexpected suicide of his mother. The book takes a more indirect approach at how trauma affects people by exploring those intricate subtleties in how everyday is changed, over an extended period of time. Barefoot Gen is about a once proud nation struck down in their prime. Through Gen’s eyes, the reader experiences the immediate effects of tragedy; we are living in the present with him. We, as viewers, see Japanese families torn apart, talented artists and writers afflicted by disease, the rising of gangs and black market goods, famine, poverty, drug abuse and countless, endless deaths. It is the most direct way of discuss the effects of the bomb, by showing us how it effected the nation as a whole.