Reading: Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma
Music: The Bothy Band
TV/Movie: Charlie Wilson's War
Link o' the Day: Stamps.org the site of the American Philatelic Society


I've been reading Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma. It's the fascinating story of Azuma who is a respected and fairly well-known manga artist in Japan who, during the 70s, dropped out and lived as a bum for a while when the pressures of his career were getting too much. It also relates his descent into alcoholism and subsequent recovery. What's kind of revealing, and it's something I've known but often forget... manga artists are nuts!

And by nuts, I mean they willingly work these insane schedules where they're something writing and drawing 16 or more pages a day. Every day.

Find me a comic artist in the US or anywhere else in the Western world that does that. Not even comic strip artists work at that kind of pace. It's no wonder there is such a high burnout rate among manga artists. Sure, they work with assistants who help with inking, lettering, and backgrounds. Sure, most of the work is in black and white. But many of these artists also come up with the plots and writing.

I suppose that's why a lot of manga is pretty formulaic... but jeez. What a schedule.

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Been a fairly productive week. We're trying to figure out exactly what the next projects are going to be. In the meantime, I took care of some detail work and some promo work.. one item being a postcard for Jan Wahl pushing his book Through a Lens Darkly and his newest childrens book, Bear Dance. The medical journal has a lot of color content this month, so I've been taking care of the additional details involved with that. This month's theme? Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Rumor has it... the retractable ball point pen was developed after Charles Cross saw the design for a retracting needle device used by witch hunters to extract confessions from suspected witches in the 17th century.

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Because philately will get you anywhere, today's link drops by Stamps.org the site of the American Philatelic Society. Why stamps? Why not? I had a collection when I was a kid... it might even still be somewhere around here. I have no idea. My mother collected sets and I have a bunch of her old pieces. Someday I'll figure out what to do with all of them. Maybe I'll have a kid who will be into stamps and all these might be worth some coin someday. Still, I think I have a fond memory of stamp collecting because it was my very first hobby.

You never forget your first.