NISHIJIMA Daiskue links & notes
I have a long essay about the stellar artist Daisuke NISHIJIMA, written in a haze of flu, in the latest issue of The Comics Journal. It’s online now for subscribers, but for everyone here are a few additional links about this artist:
A couple of Japanese-only sites, with art:
- His official site and blog (Japanese only, but the source of this witch picture, among others).
- His alter ego “Mangacchi” has a blog on the slow life: Mangacchi 2.0
- Actually, it looks like “Mangacchi” has been set to private. Oops. I fixed the link for the official site, though.
Awful YouTube has his charming flipbook animation, showing his philosophy of vapor trails.
A couple of interviews:
- Commonsphere Interview, translated into English.
- A 2005 interview by translator Matt Treyvaud, in English.
The French, as usual, are way ahead of us. Nishijima’s French publisher’s page explains that Nishijima is a “grand amateur de musique, et il écrit régulièrement pour des mensuels consacrés à la musique comme Studio Voice ou Music Magazine et il prend le nom de Mahôtsukai, pour ses activités de DJ.”
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From music to movies, Nishijima has an inveterate love of pop culture. His first work, O-son Senso (”The Universal”), riffs on Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds and Neon Genesis Evangelion
- Blur’s video for the song “The Universal”
- Superflat.
- Some Hollywood movies: John Carpenter’s The Thing, Rambo, Rocky, like they need links. Like Coca-Cola needs to buy ads.
- The Prisoner
(which once had Jack Kirby as its interpreter)
That’s just in his debut volume. Later ones have more riffs; Dien Bien Phu draws extensively from Vietnam War literature and film, particularly the author Tim O’Brien. Nishijima begins the comic with a quote from O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” (link to .pdf), but as always, Nishijima transforms his sources into his own idiom.