Happy work week! I wanted to get back to drawing comics, but I’ve been busy getting ready for Kumoricon. Stop on by if you’re in the Portland, Oregon area on Labor Day Weekend! I’ll write more later this week.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
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I’ve got my schedule figured out for Kumoricon! This is copied from the Kumoricon Events Schedule, so please check out the link for the full list of everything that’s happening this weekend in Portland/Vancouver. Here’s my main events… I may show up as a guest on a panel or two in addition to this. Meanwhile, I’ll also be in the exhibit hall, and I’ll have copies of “Anything That Loves,” the bisexuality anthology in which I did a 16-page story. Come see us!
SATURDAY
The Secret History of Manga in America: 1946-2013
Sat 3:00pm – Sat 4:00pm – Live Events (Discovery A/B – Hilton)
Ever since 1946 when Osamu Tezuka drew his first published manga Shin Takarajima, inspired by Disney Donald Duck comics, manga and American comics have been interlinked. Join us on a bizarre multimedia adventure through the history of manga adaptation/translation and general Japanese pop culture in America, from the first licensed translations in the ’70s and ’80s to the 2000’s boom years of Tokyopop, Raijin Comics and more! Featuring ninjas, furries, giant monsters, and Japanese hippies!
Mangaka!: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics
Sat 8:30pm – Sat 10:30pm – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
Join the struggle for manga supremacy! Combine Pictionary, Telestrations, Bakuman, and Dominion and you get Mangaka, a fast-paced new storytelling game where every round involves drawing cards and drawing comics. Follow Trends, avoid Impairments (like Blindness and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome), and compete with your fellow players to tell the greatest comic stories, even if you can’t even draw a stick figure! Pens, paper and cards provided. (I’m also running Mangaka games on Sunday and Monday.)
D&D Next: Tomb of Horrors
Sat 11:00pm – Sun 2:00am – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
The deadliest Dungeons & Dragons adventure ever made! I DM the classic dungeon crawl updated for the newest edition of the D&D rules, plus a few twists of the knife. In the tomb of the wizard Acererak, mere death is one of the least of the terrors that await unwary adventurers… pre-generated characters provided, easy to jump into even if you’ve never played D&D before. Warning: Kumoricon and the DM are not liable if your character dies horribly.
SUNDAY
Manga Hell: The Worst Manga Ever Translated
Sun 1:30pm – Sun 2:30pm – Live Events (Discovery A/B – Hilton)
From the nine circles of Hell to my bookshelf to Kumoricon… it’s a panel on the absolute worst manga ever translated! If you’ve enjoyed my “House of 1000 Manga” columns on Anime News Network, this is your chance to see the flip side of reading too much manga. Come to jeer at the convicts on their way to execution, or alternately, get up in my business and try to argue that “Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution” is a masterpiece of Japanese literature. (And that one’s not even in the bottom 10!) It’s an action-packed panel of loathing and, yes, appreciation of the lamest manga ever. I might even talk about some good manga while I’m at it.
The Scariest Manga Ever Made
Sun 10:00pm – Sun 11:00pm – Panel 1 (Discovery C – Hilton)
(Age 18+ only—hand stamp required—see Programming Booth)
Horror manga are some of the most frightening, bizarre, and of course, grossest stories ever drawn in black and white. From zombies (fast or slow, your choice!) to serial killers to traditional Japanese yokai, join us as we count down through artists like Kazuo Umezu, Junji Ito, Katsuhisa Kigitsu and dozens of others to find the darkest, most disturbing manga. Warning: There will be pictures.
Mangaka!! The Second Game!
Sun 11:30pm – Mon 1:30am – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
Another chance to play Mangaka!! Come by, check it out, and draw some comics! Pens, paper, cards and Trends provided.
MONDAY
Mangaka!! The Third Game!
Mon 1:00pm – Mon 3:00pm – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
The final chance to play Mangaka at Kumoricon! Draw the Greatest Comics on Earth… or Die Trying!! Try out the upcoming game and test your quick-draw skills, cleverness and ruthlessness.
*******************
It’s going to be a busy weekend: I’m exhibiting and doing panels at Kumoricon! In case you missed it, here’s my panel & gaming schedule which I posted on Wednesday.
SATURDAY
The Secret History of Manga in America: 1946-2013
Sat 3:00pm – Sat 4:00pm – Live Events (Discovery A/B – Hilton)
Ever since 1946 when Osamu Tezuka drew his first published manga Shin Takarajima, inspired by Disney Donald Duck comics, manga and American comics have been interlinked. Join us on a bizarre multimedia adventure through the history of manga adaptation/translation and general Japanese pop culture in America, from the first licensed translations in the ’70s and ’80s to the 2000′s boom years of Tokyopop, Raijin Comics and more! Featuring ninjas, furries, giant monsters, and Japanese hippies!
Mangaka!: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics
Sat 8:30pm – Sat 10:30pm – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
Join the struggle for manga supremacy! Combine Pictionary, Telestrations, Bakuman, and Dominion and you get Mangaka, a fast-paced new storytelling game where every round involves drawing cards and drawing comics. Follow Trends, avoid Impairments (like Blindness and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome), and compete with your fellow players to tell the greatest comic stories, even if you can’t even draw a stick figure! Pens, paper and cards provided. (I’m also running Mangaka games on Sunday and Monday.)
D&D Next: Tomb of Horrors
Sat 11:00pm – Sun 2:00am – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
The deadliest Dungeons & Dragons adventure ever made! I DM the classic dungeon crawl updated for the newest edition of the D&D rules, plus a few twists of the knife. In the tomb of the wizard Acererak, mere death is one of the least of the terrors that await unwary adventurers… pre-generated characters provided, easy to jump into even if you’ve never played D&D before. Warning: Kumoricon and the DM are not liable if your character dies horribly.
SUNDAY
Manga Hell: The Worst Manga Ever Translated
Sun 1:30pm – Sun 2:30pm – Live Events (Discovery A/B – Hilton)
From the nine circles of Hell to my bookshelf to Kumoricon… it’s a panel on the absolute worst manga ever translated! If you’ve enjoyed my “House of 1000 Manga” columns on Anime News Network, this is your chance to see the flip side of reading too much manga. Come to jeer at the convicts on their way to execution, or alternately, get up in my business and try to argue that “Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution” is a masterpiece of Japanese literature. (And that one’s not even in the bottom 10!) It’s an action-packed panel of loathing and, yes, appreciation of the lamest manga ever. I might even talk about some good manga while I’m at it.
The Scariest Manga Ever Made
Sun 10:00pm – Sun 11:00pm – Panel 1 (Discovery C – Hilton)
(Age 18+ only—hand stamp required—see Programming Booth)
Horror manga are some of the most frightening, bizarre, and of course, grossest stories ever drawn in black and white. From zombies (fast or slow, your choice!) to serial killers to traditional Japanese yokai, join us as we count down through artists like Kazuo Umezu, Junji Ito, Katsuhisa Kigitsu and dozens of others to find the darkest, most disturbing manga. Warning: There will be pictures.
Mangaka!! The Second Game!
Sun 11:30pm – Mon 1:30am – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
Another chance to play Mangaka!! Come by, check it out, and draw some comics! Pens, paper, cards and Trends provided.
MONDAY
Mangaka!! The Third Game!
Mon 1:00pm – Mon 3:00pm – Workshop (Discovery E/D – Hilton)
The final chance to play Mangaka at Kumoricon! Draw the Greatest Comics on Earth… or Die Trying!! Try out the upcoming game and test your quick-draw skills, cleverness and ruthlessness.
*******************
Hope you’re enjoying the three-day weekend! I’m still at Kumoricon; I’ll be back in Seattle later today.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
Kumoricon was great. I had a wonderful time, and I’ll definitely be doing the “Manga Hell” panel (and perhaps “The Scariest Manga in the World”) at a future convention if possible. The Mangaka playtests seemed to go nicely as well, even though we got kicked out of the room at 2 AM by the hotel staff before we could finish one of the games, but that’s life. My deepest thanks to everyone who played the games and gave me your feedback! I hope you had as good a time as I did!
The only rocky event I was involved in was probably the D&D Next “Tomb of Horrors” game, which was a bit of a mess simply because 25 people showed up to play and I insanely decided to try to let everyone be involved somehow. Since there were only 12 pregenerated characters (itself an excessively huge party), most of the people ended up playing various henchmen and 0-level flunkies, which actually provided lots of entertainment and aid to the survivors as they fell into pits, triggered poison needle traps and cave-ins, and generally protected the higher-level characters from harm. I’m not sure how much fun those players actually had, though, especially as many of them were new to D&D and deserved better than that chaos. Between attrition and boredom/sleepiness, the group was whitted down to about 8 players by the time the hotel booted us out of the room. However, on the good side, I enjoyed using the D&D Next rules and I was actually pleasantly surprised how well “Tomb of Horrors” ran as a tournament game; its arbitrary murderousness, its scads of secret doors and deathtraps, actually seemed really fun to players coming at it from the perspective of a one-shot game (rather than, presumably, seeing their cherished homegrown 10th-level characters die horribly). It makes me want to run more D&D events.
NEXT UPDATE: Friday!
It’s raining like mad here in Seattle and I’ve got three packets of chemical desiccants guarding my books from moisture down in the basement. (Fingers crossed.)
I think I forgot to mention that a few weeks ago I attended the Seattle launch celebration for “Anything That Loves”, the new anthology of LGBT (emphasis on the “B”) comics from Northwest Press. Anyway, the party was wonderful (I met Roberta Gregory!!) and the book, which is great, is now available in the Mock Man Press store. If you’re interested, please check it out! It’s avaiable from me, Northwest Press and your local comic store.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
I’m reading a ton of books (mostly bad zombie novels) lately. I have a goodreads account, so you can read all my excruciating reviews if you want to. (I may need to go back and rate “Blood Crazy” at one star…) Apart from that, I’ve been drawing, although too slowly; still, I should have a new large-scale illustration in about a week.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!
Guess who forgot to upload today’s page until it was 1:30 PM? Me! Sorry about that! And now, I’m off to a doctor’s appointment and then, working on a new large illustration.
NEXT UPDATE: Friday!
It’s a gray and gloomy day in Seattle: perfect weather to stay inside and draw. However, I’ll also be going out to the post office to send out some playtest copies of my game, “Mangaka.” I’ll be waiting eagerly for the playtest feedback; this is my first serious experiment in game design (apart from writing adventures for preexisting roleplaying games), and the input from the tests has been really helpful.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
I’ve been reading Colson Whitehead’s zombie novel “Zone One” and it’s very good so far, albeit in a very depressing, uniform-grey way: kind of like if Joseph Heller and J.G. Ballard teamed up to write a book about the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.
Apart from that, it’s the usual: drawing, getting ready for the upcoming trip to the HPL Film Festival in Los Angeles (September 27-29!), and awaiting playtest feedback for my card game, “Mangaka.” I just sent out five new sets of playtest copies in the mail, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that the playtesters will get to them soon. I’ve been working on this game for over two years now and it’s so close to being ready (I think), but I still need more eyes looking at it.
NEXT UPDATE: Wednesday!