Month: December 2017

VÉRITÉ 01

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“The spirit of Japanese magazines GARO and AX can really be felt in this significant new venue for Indian, Japanese and international comics to meet and mingle. You need VÉRITÉ and that’s the truth!”          – Paul Gravett, comics journalist and historian

On New Year Day 2018, we announce VÉRITÉ, the new magazine from the people who did the Comix India volumes. As editor, I felt that the kind of comics we want to publish demanded a more specific name. ‘Vérité’, the French word for ‘truth’, seemed just about right since we want to encourage creating comics that express reality in a truthful and unflinching manner, comics that don’t shy away from difficult subjects, comics that don’t merely show off art styles, but those that confront reality head-on.

The first issue of Vérité features Indian, Japanese, an American and a French artist. Indian artists featured are Anpu Varkey, Biboswan Bose, Shaunak Samvatsar, Nandita Basu and Bharath Murthy. Mitsuhiro Asakawa, the Editorial Adviser for the Japanese section, has selected some amazing alternative manga artists: Tadao Tsuge, Susumu Katsumata, Youji Tsuneyama and Yukichi Yamamatsu. Tadao Tsuge is a critically acclaimed artist and one of the key contributors for the 1960s cult manga magazine Garo, who along with his brother Yoshiharu Tsuge revolutionised manga. Tadao’s work in English translation include Trash Market (Drawn & Quarterly) and soon to be released Slum Wolf (New York Review Comics), both translated by manga historian Ryan Holmberg. Ryan’s very perceptive essay on the origins of ‘gekiga’, a late 1950s-60s movement within manga that focussed on adult themes and created a new wave that resulted in magazines like Garo, is also published in this issue. Susumu Katsumata was also a key artist in Garo magazine. His works Red Snow (Drawn & Quarterly) and Fukushima Devil Fish: Anti-nuclear Manga (Breakdown Press) are available in English. Yukichi Yamamatsu’s work has already been published in India. The two-volume Stupid Guy Goes to India was published by Blaft Publications. French comics artist Simon Lamouret (whose award-winning reportage comic Bangalore was published recently) also features, as does American artist Nick Tobier.

– Bharath Murthy, Editor.

Introducing manga translator Kumar Sivasubramanian

KUMAR-_MG_7179-660x440 (image courtesy: sequart.org)

The Japanese manga in Comix India 01 has been translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian and Chitoku Teshima. Kumar is an accomplished manga translator, having translated over 80 volumes of Japanese manga into English, including big names like Osamu Tezuka (Metropolis, Nextworld, Message to Adolf). Some other well-known authors he has translated are Jiro Taniguchi (A Distant Neighbourhood, Summit of the Gods, A Zoo in Winter, Furari), Hideo Azuma (Disappearance Diary), Tsutomu Nihei (Knights of Sidonia), Hiroaki Samura (Blade of the Immortal), Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi (Old Boy), Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami (Crying Freeman). He also translated both volumes of Yukichi Yamamatsu’s Stupid Guy goes to India (Blaft Publications), one of the first Japanese comics to be published by an Indian publisher. He has worked with many top manga publishers and we hope that his association with Comix India will be a long one.

You can read an interview with Kumar HERE, by Sequart.