Review: ‘Red Colored Elegy’ by Seiichi Hayashi
Red Colored Elegy
By Seiichi Hayashi
Drawn & Quarterly, July 2008, $24.95
[[[Red Colored Elegy]]] is like no other manga you’ve ever seen, a blast of pop art- and film-inspired storytelling from 1971 that was hugely influential to a generation of Japanese youth but has never been published in English until now. It’s like the American underground comics of the same era in being a break from the mainstream comics of its place and era, but unlike them – and unlike anything else I’ve seen before [[[RAW]]] in the ‘80s – in its style and visual language.
Sachiko Yamaguchi and Ichiro Nishimoto are a young couple, both connected to the manga/anime world, living together in Tokyo but unsure of what to do with their lives, in the way of all restless young people everywhere. Ichiro wants to be an artist of some kind: he abandoned painting when he couldn’t make a living at it, and quits an animation job to work on a graphic novel that he can’t sell. Sachiko is a tracer for another animation company; she has only the ambitions of a girl in a story by a man: to get married, to have kids, to run a house, to have a life.
My old pal Joe Staton, one of the most brilliant graphic storytellers in the history of this medium, is currently enjoying a long-overdue exhibition of his work at the Storefront Artist Project in Pittsfield, MA. Peculiarly titled The Art of Joe Staton, it runs through August 31. We talked about this here at 
Another day, another project originally intended for television or film being field-tested in the comics world. Case in point: today’s announcement that Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia (who already has another project, Rest, in production at Devil’s Due Publishing) and Russ Cundiff of DiVide Pictures will be partnering with Top Cow Productions on Berserker, a new comic book series created by screenwriter Rick Loverd.
When a graphic novel is billed as a cross between Men in Black and Jurassic Park, it’s no surprise to see a studio come running, dollar signs in their eyes.
Dabel Bros. Publishing recently announced plans to adapt bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon’s 
Marvel.com recently posted a new video "trailer" for their upcoming 
Alison Bechdel, who’s probably best known for her memoir 
, has an essay and art in the upcoming State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America.
I was talking to cartoonist Jim Rugg recently about comics anthologies, and he said his thought as a reader is that each collection should have one great story, and then anything else good is just gravy.
(Nerdcore, $30), Rugg’s Afrodisiac story is the gravy. His old-school, dot-matrix-styled, blaxploitation character has a predictably badass encounter with vampires.
