Osamu Tezuka's Apollo's Song & Existential Entrapment

A Little Late To The Game
As someone who enjoys comics and all the wonderful genres that they offer, I never quite got on board with reading Manga. This was not due to availability, in fact, Manga availability has long been more at my disposal where I have traveled than any other genre in comics. So why the hold up? I have no real defense other than I chalk it up to being one of those instances where (and we all do this in life), if something of interest comes along, we often make a note of it and say the magic words 'I will get to this soon'. And so, twenty plus years later, (sweeping arms) here I am. And I arrived at a most curious story in Osamu Tezuka's Apollo's Song.

So out of all the Manga to choose from how did I arrive at Apollo's Song? Simply enough, I closed my eyes, and my finger landed on it, standing in front of a large selection of Manga pieces to choose from. Before I get into what I found particularly striking and most fascinating about Apollo's Song, I just want to say that if my choice process always works out for the best in this way, I will always choose with such a random flare!

Rathe than attempt to dissect Manga stylistically or in any way it is constructed, as I have no business doing so due to my ignorance of its history and form, I really did try to read it from the perspective of someone just looking for a good time. My brain, however, rarely these days lets me rest on my laurels and very early in the story those special little areas in my chemical processes upstairs began to light up. This is the disease of an educator.....somehow I always spoil my own good time! While I am going to write more about this title and how it relates to existential philosophy at a later time, I wanted to get this initial idea out that exploded in my head while I was reading. In the last few years writing in this more ephemeral way has become more and more part of my own process of creating context and understanding, and, as anyone who reads this blog knows,  creating context and understanding through the comics I read and the comics medium as a whole.

Aesthetic Despair
Shogo Chikaishi, the male protagonist, is presented to the reader as a psychologically damaged, cold and violent young man. His sadism is self-seving, even self-pleasuring (as exhibited in his facial expressions), as he engages in the mutilation and murder of animals and outbursts in dealing with any affections shown by others. Outside of the story of the possible involvement of the gods in Shogo's Journey (which is something for another time), I quickly realized he is a character that is stuck in what Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once described as the first of his proposed three stages of human existence: Shogo is in the aesthetic despair stage.

Why This Is A Good Thing
According to Kierkegaard, "the aesthetic stage both begins and ends in despair", as the "aesthete is inherently selfish, living with the sole concern of what is of interest to him at the moment. His life is experimental and relative; he will pursue a particular pleasure just as long as it is of interest to him" (Irwin, 2000, p.41-42). This typifies most young people in the adolescent and young adult phase of life (minus the violence and death of course!), but what makes Shogo interesting as  being representative of this stage is due to the fact that he is damaged to such an extreme degree that it makes him, as a character, a great place to exhibit the idea, both visually and narratively, as an example of the complicated philosophy of existentialism. As an educator, I often struggle to find the contexts and examples to engage students, family and friends in some of the more complex ideas when engaging in self and cultural analysis through philosophy. While I do not know if these ideas are present in all of Osamu Tezuka's work (if it is please let me know so I can investigate further!), I think the fact that it is present in this work again strengthens the argument for using alternative forms of media in presenting students and citizens with ways to access great philosophical questions that they may have not been previously given any access to in formal and/or informal education.

References
Irwin, W. (2000). Seinfeld and Philosophy (A book about Everything and Nothing). Chicago, Il: Open Court Publishing. 

Stumptown: Continuing to Improve On Crime Fiction in Comics

"The Secret Ingredient Is Crime" - Ed Brubaker

One of the great things about writer Greg Rucka and artist Matthew Southworth's stylish take on the P.I. genre-driven tale of a flawed detective, a girl gone missing, and a deal gone wrong is that it embraces and adheres to the classic pulpy crime story. More than that, however, is that much like its counterpart Criminal, Stumptown is another example of how the comics medium continues to not only breathe life into the crime story genre conventions that first came to be in the early to mid period of twentieth century fiction and film, but also are able to define it for the medium of comics in a unique way. I believe this unique-ness is accomplished to a large degree through color and use of space and place.

There is Life in the Body, You Just Gotta Know How to Breathe Life Into It
Even working within the blueprint of a genre and how those stories flow, it is hard to craft an entertaining, engrossing and compelling narrative. If it was easy, more would do it, but if you have ever tried to write your own superhero story, or book about aliens, or even romance, you know that even within the blueprints of what is taught to us in grade school English/Drama about story construction (act structure, rising action, climax, etc.), and getting from point "a"------>"b" is no easy feat! The medium of comics helps artists, writers and creators work within genre conventions (e.g. the detective crime story) while allowing a greater freedom to explore in really unrestricted ways. In the comics medium, as long as you hit the universal story beats, then you can play with the way your story looks on the page, thus creating new and modern interpretations.

This Place Feels Really Familiar
So is Stumptown= Portland, Oregon? Well yes and no. Much like the best fictions, Stumptown is based on a real place. According to the introduction by Matt Fraction in the first collected edition of Stumptown, the layouts and backgrounds are indeed Portland, and to a very vivid degree. This is another example of how comics are able to inhabit a real space and yet it be just a little adjusted where it is its own world (for more on this idea, see these posts here and here). Stumptown creates this blend of real and imaginary through a specific color palette that is naturalistic and stays very close to groundwork laid in another homage series, Criminal by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips. For this example, lets do a compare and contrast by looking at the night scenes in figures one and two below. Comics medium artists such as Phillips (figure 1) and Southworth (figure 2) along with also the unsung colorist for these series such as Val Staples for the most recent Criminal and Lee Loughridge for Stumptown, are creating a great twist on a genre style employed in the shadow-y colors of blue, purple/violet, and dark shadow outlines enhanced through backlighting. Much like the classic ideas about black and white film noir, shadows and light are just as important (perhaps even more so) in the comics world of trying to create mood, environment, and really establishing a place or time period as character.

Fig.1

Fig. 2

So who influences who more in the crime genre-- the books, the movies, or the comics? I like to think that through these stories there is a very homogenous blend that is forming that is part homage, part convention, and part new territory as is the want of the creative team. Stumptown is more what I like to think of as "wide-screen" cinematic than say Criminal because it is taking place in a more open area, as opposed to the claustrophobia of the city in Criminal. It is fascinating to think about environment in relation to story in this way because one cannot deny the importance of the spatial aspects as character in such instances. While film and television sometimes moves to fast for us to soak in such nuances as place, the comics medium is able to slow us down and have us really soak in the places that these stories inhabit. While Phillips and Southworth obviously have a lot of respect for each other they (along with the co-creators/writers Brubaker and Rucka respectively) are both helping to create the unique space within the comics medium for the detective crime story to find new legs and new audiences.

Stumptown is copyrighted to Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth; Criminal is copyrighted to Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Figures provided by the author were purchased by the author and are intended only for academic/conversational purposes.