Hi, I'm Frances the designer for I'll Give It My All...Tomorrow. I hope you're enjoying the manga chapters! I think that everyone knows someone like Shizuo or maybe you see a little bit of him in yourself. I can completely identify with his creative block in the first chapter. Nothing is more full of possibilities or more intimidating than a blank page. The hardest part is getting started as you can see in my little tale of distraction and procrastination.
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2009 has witnessed the launch of the VIZ Signature IKKI online magazine. So…what is IKKI anyway? If you’ve asked yourself that question, you’re not alone! Even I, the self-proclaimed “Level 50 IKKI reader,” have not yet found the answer for it. So I went straight to the original source, the ultra-genius editor in chief of IKKI, Hideki Egami, and asked him about the roots of IKKI. What makes him an ultra-genius? Read on and find out!
–Misaki “Slave of Manga” Kido
The IKKI UNDERGROUND is your fastest connection between Japan and America's Manga Evolution. For easy travel and trip planning, access Transit Map from here.
M: So tell us what IKKI is all about and what its significance is.
E: When IKKI was about to be launched as Big Comic Spirits Special Issue, we faced so many obstacles, mostly trademark issues in coming up with a name for the magazine. The deadline was looming and I was getting pretty desperate. So, as a last resort, I came up with a plan to devise a name from ideas submitted by readers.
M: Are you serious?
This ad was an announcement soliciting the public for ideas for the name of the new magazine in exchange for a $10,000 reward. Right underneath the reward, there was a list of “rejected names to avoid due to various circumstances”. This was mostly due to copyright and legal reasons. On the list of rejected names was PULP.
E: It’s true. We already had an ad ready for it. The ad was to nudge the audience by saying, “Look! What you can come up with is going to be the name of the new magazine! Aren’t you excited?!” But then when my boss at the time found out what I was planning, he yelled at me, “What the hell are you thinking, letting the readers decide the name of the your magazine!” and “This is a completely preposterous thing to do as an editor!”
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The IKKI invasion of America is something without precedent—or so it might initially seem. But the truth is that seinen manga had already begun making inroads into the States more than a decade ago. At the vanguard of the movement was a seinen magazine that was way too early, way too insane, and way too cool for its time. The magazine was called PULP. It was like a mad scientist’s lab where countless unbelievable manga experiments took place. This was during the hard-core anarchist phase of VIZ Media, which is something not widely known today. So, why are we bringing up such a thing from the past? Because IKKI and PULP seems to share a karmic bond, one that becomes more apparent the deeper we look. From the perspective of Alvin Lu, the G-1 American manga reader and editor who later became the second editor in chief of PULP, we looked at the past and the future of “Manga for Grown-ups” in America.
–Misaki “Slave of Manga” Kido
The IKKI UNDERGROUND is your fastest connection between Japan and America's Manga Evolution. For easy travel and trip planning, access Transit Map from here.
The very first issue of PULP.
M: Recently I got into your stash of old PULP issues at the office. If I were to use the Japanese cliché, it seemed to be something with “blood flowing through it.” Or “bleeding edge,” to use the English cliché. Tell me about your experience with PULP.
A: Yeah, it was a pretty wild concept. One of PULP’s attempts was to fight against the preconception that only a certain kind of person reads comics, like limiting it to “that geeky guy who reads comics.”
M: Wait, weren’t you one of them? I know I totally fit into that profile…
A: Unfortunately, yeah. We all basically fell right into that category. That was sort of the paradox and stigma. But the truth is, we felt comics could do better than that. It was a way to find out how to reach the audience that manga hasn’t reached yet. Also, it was an attempt to forge an organic audience during the pre-internet time.
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