Category: Comics

One thing I haven’t really had a chance to do in my years of living next to New York City is have a classically sleazy NYC theatrical experience. Last night seemed as good a night as any, as I found out last minute (via Steven McVey) about a midnight showing of Norifumi Suzuki’s School of the Holy Beast at the awesome Landmark Sunshine Cinema.

I first read about this ’74 shocka in Patrick Macias‘s Tokyoscope book, and I’ve actually owned a bootleg DVD of it since, I don’t know, 2005? Since this illicit media languished so long on my shelf, I figured I owed it to myself and Suzuki to go see his masterpiece in the theater. An essential quote from Macias’s book sums it up nicely:

“Trashy as it may sound, Suzuki’s film is absolutely gorgeous to gaze upon (an arts center projectionist once swore to me that it was the most beautiful looking film he’s ever shown), many of its shots carefully framed and lit for maximum fearful symmetry.”

But maybe the trailer speaks for itself (NSFW):

The few people here who also frequented my old blog—actually, that probably accounts for roughly 100% of the people who read this—may have been wondering just why I stopped updating the other one. The answer is, unsurprisingly, complete burnout.

It’s as lame an excuse as any, but it’s true. I would wake up, write some articles, do some work on scripts, do whatever else and eventually go to bed to wake up and do it again. Don’t get me wrong, the work is fun, but the last thing I was thinking about after wrapping up a full day of writing was, “Oh, sweet, now I can log onto my blog and write about instruction manuals or… what ever the hell else it is I write about there.” I think I forgot what it was for after a while, and like a lot of things it fell to the wayside. Here’s a picture to break this up just to show you how goddamn good I am at this.

I could always write about my day. It was called “The Joseph Luster Report,” right? Nah, that’s not my thing. I don’t get whatever cathartic release others do from sharing things about themselves, even if that’s kind of what I’m doing now. It’s boring. I want to write about how ruthless it is that Double Dragon opens with a girl getting punched in the gut and slung over some dude’s back, not about how many Five Guys burgers I ate from 2009-2010 (a lot).

Besides, how was I supposed to top such classic posts as 2006’s “The Anatomy of an Instruction Manual”? It would be foolish to even attempt, right? As far as I was concerned, I had “beaten,” or perhaps even “solved,” blogging, just as my friends and I had beaten podcasting by doing the amazing show Robotronic Dynamite (R.I.P.) for a couple years. The village below is the Internet and this is what my collective works have done to it and its peoples.

But no! My job here is not done! And that’s why I started fresh, exemplifying the many toasts made to “new beginnings” over the years. Rather than succumbing to burnout, it’s a lot more fun to embrace it and do something even better than before. That’s what you can expect at subhumanzoids. Something better than before. Perhaps the best thing available to read for free online? Perhaps.

However, if you do want me to close this with something personal, I just drank a large pumpkin spice latte and legit feel like I’m going to barf.

Also posted at the tumblr

Also posted over at the tumblr

If you ever wanted to read what a 30-year-old dude thinks of the Sailor Moon manga, here’s your chance. It’s your lucky day! I’m pretty sure my flirtations with shoujo material are well documented, at least among certain friends. I used to own the out-of-print ADV collection 1 of the subbed Sailor Moon anime, but I ended up selling it for beaucoup bux.

Thanks to my job I’ve probably consumed more comics aimed at young Japanese boys and girls over the years than is even remotely healthy. It’s kind of interesting to note the differences between the two once you become intimately familiar with their gimmicks. Shoujo manga is, by its very nature, super flowery and ornate. There’s so much going on from panel to panel that would otherwise be seen as superfluous.

For a more purely visual take on the genre, I highly recommend this tumblr.

Here’s a good example. Sorry it’s from some stupid fan-translated pirate version or whatever but I didn’t feel like scanning anything and just grabbed it from Google image search:

The borders. The word bubbles. The stamped patterns. It’s like the manga equivalent of bedazzling a pair of jeans. Naoko Takeuchi’s style of storytelling is pretty briskly paced and fun to read, though, and Sailor Moon holds at its core a pretty typical monster/villain of the week formula.

There, I’ve only had this new blog for maybe a week and I’ve already jumped into a frilly pink outfit that I may never be able to pry off my body. Stay tuned for some more manly stuff. Maybe.