In the midst of rushing up to Seattle and rushing back to Portland for a SEKRIT PROJEKT!, Required Reading fell by the wayside-- but I have a few interesting pieces just begging to be read still, so I thought I'd go ahead and hand 'em over. It's never late for a bit of reading, after all!
David Welsh profiles
Monster and
20th Century Boys creator
Naoki Urasawa. I know I blather about how amazing his work is all the time, so you may already know a lot of it— but if you've been skimming past my raving,
here's your chance to give Urasawa a once-over. Trust me, you won't regret it.
Vertical's Yani Mentzas
poses a unique question at Words Without Borders: Is
Tezuka God? It's a question less about Tezuka himself and more about a Japanese habit of referring to amazing talents of yesteryear as the “god of ________,” but it's an interesting cultural piece.
I've talked about Felipe Smith, creator of
TOKYOPOP's
MBQ (now being published in Japan by Softbank) and
Peepo Choo (whose first run is in Japan), a few times lately-- now
get all the details from ANN's Evan Miller, who chats up Smith in Tokyo.
And finally, this isn't really a manga-specific debate, but Scott McCloud argues that the basic design of the Kindle and other e-readers is silly:
print isn't actually done taller than wide, he says, it's wider than tall-- because it's in two-page spreads. The comments are actually a fascinating debate on this issue, which is more important than it sounds when you talk about the design of, say, the Kindle and other e-readers and the like.
HOMEWORK:
Just one question this week: I want you guys to get in on that last debate.
Do you think that readers lean more towards “tall” layouts, or “wide” layouts? Do you think this differs with Japanese readers? (After all, traditional Japanese scrolls read top to bottom, right to left-- but on the other hand, they generally rolled out sideways...)
