When it comes to long essays, I normally do a lot of beating my head against the wall or my desk or any other hard surface that can withstand repeated impact from my thick, thick, fortified skull. But when the muse is a stylish 73 year-old Japanese man in a freshly pressed shirt and lightly distressed denim with thousands upon thousands of pages of work under his belt, and thousands more to come, I try to forgo the headbanging and just dig deep to make it happen. At this point, given the type of attention he’s been getting for A Drifting Life, I hope that Yoshihiro Tatsumi is everybody’s muse – at least for a day.
Massive love to my saintly editor in Abu Dhabi who did a stellar job of guiding me and trimming down my 3500 word submission to a neat and tidy 2000 words. (*Note: he asked for the unabridged version.) And to D&Q for all their help.
My article, Gladly Drawn Boy, on Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s graphic memoir, A Drifting Life for the Review section of the Abu Dhabi National.
My interview with Tatsumi-sensei for Publishers Weekly.
And no, as long as sensei is crankin it out, I will never be done with gekiga.
