AX manga magazine on VÉRITÉ

The editor of alternative manga magazine AX tweeted about VÉRITÉ!

Correction: Yoshihiro Tatsumi is not published in the magazine. (I hope we will someday!)

 

Editorial Adviser Mitsuhiro Asakawa on VÉRITÉ

In February 2017, Indian cartoonist/animation director Bharath Murthy contacted me through FB, and he wrote that he wants to publish an alternative comics magazine in India. He once made a similar attempt with Comix India, but it failed, unfortunately. Maybe it was slightly too early to publish comics for adults at that time, since according to what he wrote, to read or create comics/manga was not yet embedded in Indian culture.

He wanted to publish a Gekiga type magazine like Garo – the earliest alternative manga magazine in Japan, and I was an editor of the magazine in 1990s.

Personally I knew him when he started Comix India. Also I was quite in sympathy with him since he tried to start something new which no one had tried or perhaps never thought about in the past.

He asked me how to launch the new magazine in India, but I felt a bit of confusion about his request, since I didn’t know much about Indian society or reading habits of Indian people. I thought maybe this guy is something like a reckless type of person, but anyway, seems he was totally different from others. He wrote that he became a cartoonist because of Yoshihiro Tatsumi. He found a collection of Tatsumi at a bookstore, and that book Abandon the Old in Tokyo greatly impacted him. Abandon the Old in Tokyo – published in 2006 from Drawn & Quarterly was actually one of my earliest works as an editor to introduce Gekiga overseas. I compiled the stories and worked as an agent of Tatsumi at that time, so, at least I have some responsibility for him to open his eyes to something different – an alternative way of artistic expression. OK, I couldn’t deny what I’d done and there was no reason for me to refuse his request.

I decided to help him as an editorial adviser.

Bharath wanted to discover new talents in India. However, to begin with, if most Indian readers don’t have any reading habits for manga/comics, then we must show examples first. I selected the stories of Japanese gekiga artists – Tadao Tsuge, Susumu Katsumata, Yukichi Yamamatsu and Youji Tsuneyama. Other artists in Vérité are from India, US and France. Also one of the most, or maybe I should say one and only (except me) gekiga historian Ryan Holmberg wrote an article about the history of gekiga.

Vérité is quite a unique and unprecedented magazine and I hope this magazine will be a “explosion point” of Indian alternatives. Otherwise Vérité is small, non-profit magazine which is managed with one guy – Bharath Murthy. So your support to order the magazine will be really appreciated. Or if you are a journalist, coverage or interview for Bharath (or me, or artists) will be welcomed.

Gekiga itself is an artistic expression, but why are you just reading it?
I mean, Gekiga is at the same time an artistic tool to express yourself.
Use the tool, and express your own stories in your own way!

Vérité 01 printing soon

Finally, after some delays, the first number of Vérité comics anthology will go to print soon. We just got issued the ISBN number. We’re really excited to introduce Japanese alternative manga to Indian readers, along with Indian and western comics artists. It’s definitely a first for comics publishing in India.

VÉRITÉ 01

Indian readers buy on AMAZON.

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 TsugeSusumu 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.

 

Indian Literature in Comics

In future issues of Comix India, there will be a section called ‘Indian Literature in Comics’ where we want to publish comics adaptations of Indian literature, preferably 20th century and contemporary short stories. These could be from any language, but the comics will be bilingual (English + original language) or only English.

Idea submissions are invited. Write to editor@comixindia.org with proposals.