Obscure Adventures in Geek and Nerd Culture

The Tsukioka Lineage  Tsukioka School  Sadao Tsukioka  Norio Matsumoto  Kawamoto School  Toshihiro Kawamoto *Toshihiro Kawamoto’s school is indeed a hybrid of Itano and Tohoku Realist styles, meaning that he has quite a ton of imitators. The Tomonaga Lineage  Tomonaga School Kazuhide Tomonaga  Ryo-Timo  *Kazuhide Tomonaga is perhaps one of the stylised realists who’ve impacted on almost the whole Katsumata lineage. Though his early style was indeed slightly influenced by 3 men; Taniguchi, Miyazaki and Dezaki, it slowly grew out to went on a webbing heavy rampage more akin to Ryo-Timo’s own WebGen style, at least from the mid 1990s onwards, which is partly due to the Batman TAS intro’s relevance.  Urushihara school Satoshi Urushihara  *Urushihara is otherwise influenced by Hajime Kamegaki, Ichiro Itano and especially Hideaki Anno’s early years. 

In order for comic artists and illustrators to blend with each other regardless of gender, we can finally see the stylistic evolution of various Tarzan designs in comics, animation and artworks from the 1960s onward.  J. Allen St. John + Violet Oakley = Jack Kirby  Marvel figurehead Jack Kirby seldom drew Tarzan, although his art style’s more akin to those of both Oakley and St John’s art than to those of most other Marvel artists who later joined the Marsh/Buscema squish movement.  P.J. Monahan + Marion Senones = Burne Hogarth  Although Burne Hogarth’s art style was largely self taught, he did have major indirect influences in both P.J. Monahan and the French globetrotter Marion Senones, which resulted in his classical yet very dynamic art style having a strong French influence even into the 1970s.  Neysa McMein + Alex Blum = Roy Krenkel Roy Krenkel’s art is derived from both the realistic bodies of Neysa McMein and the blustering inks of Alex Blum. Ethel Hays ...

Apart from Rubi, which spawned its own bigger franchise, there is no Mexican adult comic as captivating as Rarotonga, even though it’s rather stereotypical by both Mexican and most developed countries’ standards. Otherwise, keep in mind that despite its inherent objectification and misogyny (racism is also pretty bad in the comic, albeit not as obvious as the moderately toned down sexism), it remains the better written (1970s onward) and more captivating reboot of a 1950s Mexican adult comic named Taboo, which itself couldn’t hold up much in as early as the sixties, rather tellingly due to being more blatantly flagrant in terms of sexism than even the original Astro Boy manga created in 1952.  As suggested by looking at her somewhat ambiguous features in such a comic (itself somewhat fair for its day), Rarotonga surely is one of Mexican comics’ first mixed race baddies to gain consistent international popularity (at least in much of Latin America). Although she’s confusingly called...

The Showa Children’s History series is an underrated look at the Showa period as it was known to people of many generations. 6 of the books are now in my collection. My first one is about jungle heroes and their ilk, as well as their impact on many cultures around the world.  Much of the book is dedicated to Yoshimasa Ikeda’s character Baalumba (Barumba), a book character who’s a snowman like Giant raised by wild jungle animals. He also spawned his own, somehow better known spinoff counterparts, Burūba (aka Zamba) and his own fan-made son Shōnen Burūba.  Since Kyuuta Ishikawa was a big mighty fan, he created Shōnen Burūba (1960-61) - the sequel of Kunio Watanabe’s manga tie in to the movie - and (childhood to adolescence-focused) Zamba (1962-64) - the manga set between the wild man’s adoption by beasts and his first full fling with romance. As a result, thanks to his unpredictable writing and mildly uncanny valley artwork for both semi-official tie ins to the Burūba movie, the...

We have no idea that Kenya Boy has inspired 3 video games, two movies (live action and animation), a manga with 2 runs, a monthly retelling for similar audiences, a short lived Kamishibai style collab, and a live action tv show.  And now for something different! A revised backstory for Zega will unfortunately involve his wife dying of tuberculosis (after all, even though it's native to Africa, it still has shaped human history, but who cares) before Zega himself got raped by his superior (and almost dying because of it). Even sadder was that he surely was pelted on by most people in his village within every frigging whim possible. Zega also seems to be one of a few surviving seniors in a Kenyan Maasai village, since the typical life expectancy of a Maasai person is currently a somewhat measly 55-60 years old (an improvement with somehow more varied diets and slightly more vaccines in comparison to decades ago when it was a measlier 41-45 years old), partly due to both a relatively ...

The Ultus series is very creative for featuring a massive cast of cryptids, monsters and creatures alike, such as northern lions, Diehl’s gorillas and, oh my god, inaccurate prehistoric creatures. Then again, it should be noted that in its original time period, even a bunch of mythical West-Central African creatures, like the Dodu (Doduo) and the Bung Bung, were barely even noticed outside their now independent countries of origin, apart from gossipy tall tales made by fucked up explorers about them and all that.  Some of my favourite creatures who appear in my dreams are furry giant apemen (apish men) called Dodus (Doduos). They, though still dangerous, do have a rather unfair rap, which is mainly thanks to primate poachers (regardless of ethnicity) misappropriating them a lot. That said, they might’ve begun their cultural lives as simply wild jungle bogeymen that scare not only gorillas and chimps but also young children, before being labelled misleadingly as ‘cryptids’ decades ...

There will be a plausible 2d/3d animated adaptation of Roberto Renzi and Augusto Pedrazza’s Akim. It’s going to be made by Tezuka Productions and Ark Given that the comic book continuities of Akim are quite inconsistent thanks to being written and drawn by various cartoonists mainly in Western European countries, it’s for the best that such an adaptation will be a seasonal anthology. To make an impact on the world of online tv outside of Western Europe, it’ll also have more drama than even Jungle Emperor Leo can handle!  Season 1 has a North Carolingian character based on early illustrations of his otherwise British comic book counterpart. Unlike said comic book Jim Rank, his hair and eyes are both brownish, and he clearly is mixed race. A Coastal Deep South version of Rita Turner is going to be rather less ‘stay in the kitchen’ and more like a mishmash of Spider Gwen and Jane Parker. They have two adoptive kids instead of just one. As a young schoolboy coming to Tigora (basically ...