Unfortunately for everyone in the world, most of January and the entire month of February doesn’t exist in the subhumanzone. As a result, I wasn’t able to make any blog posts for some time, despite my hosting company insisting on charging me during this black void of existence.
That’s ok, though, because I’m back thanks to the power of comics. Recently, manga artist Yūsuke Murata—best known for his work on his and Riichiro Inagaki’s Japanese comic about American Football, Eyeshield 21—posted a particularly rad comic to Twitter. The result is the perfect example of why comics are really exciting, especially the possibilities when they’re presented online.
You should really read the whole thing, which my good friend Emily helpfully translated into English for me, but here are some of my favorite panels.
“Aaahh!”
WHAM!
“Don’t take Jump editors lightly! X-Ray Mangaka Search!!!!”
SLASH!
“Hergh”
I could go on. As soon as I started uploading favorites I realized I was tempted to just keep inserting pics, so I’ll stop here. You get the picture(s). It’s not that Murata is the first person to mess around with this kind of visual play in online comics, but he does it so well and so creatively that it’s a wonder so many webcomics are satisfied with being traditional, static pictures.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Shoehorning FX into comics with zero inspiration would be just as bad as doing nothing interesting with them at all. Another example of someone who does it right is Zac Gorman over at Magical Game Time. While no one should be allowed to make a Mario comic/joke/video ever again, he’s doing some good things over there.
So yeah. I’m really excited about comics right now. I’ve been drawing a lot and have a big project in the works that I haven’t really mentioned to many people yet except in passing. Part of me doesn’t want to say anything until at least the first leg of it is finished, but there’s also that fueling, added pressure that comes as a bonus of making something known and announcing its impending existence. I think I’ll hold off for now and go read more One Piece instead.
I’ll post some unrelated in-progress artwork soon, though.
subhumanzoids 