Gekiga!

Just In @ Copacetic:  Red Red Rock by Hayashi Seiichi

An all new collection, just released by Breakdown Press.

236 pages of comics

32 page essay by Ryan Holmberg, “Hayashi Seiichi’s Pop”

24 page glossy insert of bonus extras

Ryan Holmberg has yet another fascinating look at avant-garde Japanese comics magazine Garo at The Comics Journal, this time translating a 1969 interview between Sasaki Maki and Hayashi Seiichi for the first time.

Ding Dong Circus and other stories, 1967-1974 by Sasaki Maki is available now from our online store. Flowering Harbour by Hayashi Seiichi will be available again very soon.

A oneshot from Garo 1967-08.

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A frog staggering from lack of food collapses on the road near a scarecrow. The scarecrow requests some of his friends, the crows, to get some grain. As the frog recovers, the scarecrow asks it what the matter was. The frog replies by saying that when it was a tadpole living in a well with all of his friends and family, he’d look up and see the moon. When he’d turned into a frog, he struggled for weeks to crawl up out of the well, and then spent the next few years walking the lands trying to reach the moon, but no matter where he goes, it’s always still out of his reach. The scarecrow tells the frog about a bus that from time to time goes up a nearby hill to go to the moon, but that not just anyone can get a ticket for it. The ticket’s in your heart, and he just happens to have one that he’s willing to give the frog. The frog’s overjoyed at this and happily continues on its way. The scarecrow then says that he’d often wondered why he’d been given life, and now understands the answer, as the wind picks up and he flops over. 29 pages.

“Tatsumi’s comics (which he called “gekiga,” meaning “dramatic pictures”) predated any similar material being produced here by at least a couple of decades.”

Yoshie Kashiwabara – 花嫁になる朝 (1986)