S T N E T N O C F O E L B TA Letter From Publisher
6.00AM
Apple Black #4 (Part 1)
6.30AM
Saigami #2 (Part 3)
7.00AM
Comatose #1.325
7.30AM
Creator Interview: Katherine Lang
8.00AM
Race!On! #2
8.30AM
Bully Eater #9
9.00AM
Creator Interview: David Brothers
9.30AM
PILOT Manga: Ken No Kendama #1
10.00AM
WhytManga Contest Winners
10.30AM
Subscribe
11.00AM
SATURDAY
R E H S I L B U P M O R F LETTER Welcome to our first Sample Reader. Those of you who have been with us from the beginning know that we have actually released two Beta Issues prior to this that worked in a similar capacity. While they were lacking the final polish, the Beta Issues DID offer fans a good glimpse of what Satuday AM is all about: • The best up and coming webcomic talent • Cool, original manga concepts • Interviews with the hottest names in digital content (3D, gaming, video and graphic literature). • Fan art, PILOT manga--and more! For this Sample Reader, we are actually presenting FINISHED CONTENT directly from issues of our first quarter of releases (Issue #1 through Issue #5). This gives anyone who downloads it the ultimate understanding of Saturday AM’s approach to the next generation of manga webcomics. If you’ve never subscribed or bought an issue then we feel very proud to share this collection with you. If you are new to Saturday AM and are experiencing this for the first time, then GREETINGS! You are in for a treat! Saturday AM is a bi-weekly digital manga anthology that was developed specifically to appeal to fans of the smartphone generation. For just $5.00 a year, we produce 20 issues a month for our subscribers that want to see the latest in original content! We bring EXCLUSIVE content including such series as Whyt Manga’s Apple Black, Andrea Voros’ Saigami and Wally Nguyen’s Comatose into the global mix with themes and characters which more properly reflect the post-globalization culture. If you’ve ever believed that you and/or your friends could create the next big anime or manga then Saturday AM is not just for you...it is you! Thank you for downloading this sample issue. Please read it, share it and tell people about it (via blog, social media sites or just plain ol’ speech). If you really love it or want to support us, please make a purchase at www.Saturday-AM.com/subscribe Sincerely, Frederick L. Jones Publisher, Saturday AM
SATURDAY
Click here for the full comic archive on Saturday AM
) 1 T R A P ( 4 # K C A L B APPLE
Click here for the full comic archive on Saturday AM
) 3 T R A P ( 2 # I M A SAIG
WELCOME TO THE GEEK GENERATION!
Saturday AM proudly presents a cool new line of T-Shirts, brought to you by fan-favorite characters of Bully Eater, Comatose, Apple Black and more.
! E R O T S R U O T I S I V
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Click here for the full comic archive on Saturday AM
5 2 3 . 1 # E S O T A M O C
W E I V R E T N I R O T A E CR
SOUL TO CALL
CONVERSATION WITH KATHE RINE LANG Katherine Lang delves into the world of the occult in her webcomic, Soul to Call. The beautifully mysterious comic follows Avril, a courier, as she navigates a treacherous and desolate world. Saturday AM caught up with Katherine to talk about Soul to Call and the supernatural. http://www.Saturday-AM.com
SOUL TO CALL: CONVERSATION WITH KATHERINE LANG
Saturday AM: Tell us a little about your art background and foray into webcomics. Katherine Lang: I started as a classic case of “drawing as soon as she could hold a pencil,” and I’ve pretty much been teaching myself art ever since. In the past, I’ve taken a few basic art courses, even a short one on making comics, but the majority of my skills have been the product of a lot of time hunched over my sketchbook or tablet. I’m going to college for graphic design now, and that’s helped me with composition and color theory, but the drawing part is still mainly self-taught. My first proper experience with webcomics was in middle school when a friend introduced me to the webcomic Angel Moxie, which I read from start to finish in a matter of days. After that, I joined deviantArt and it became my main gateway to webcomics, until I stumbled upon Smack Jeeves. That discovery showed me just how many webcomics are out there. I had always enjoyed doodling little stories for myself and my friends, but this made me realize how easy it is to share your fictional creations with the world. If you have the passion and drive, there’s really nothing stopping you. Saturday AM: Is Soul to Call your first webcomic? What made you want to create your own website to publish but also use web aggregator sites like Smack Jeeves? Katherine Lang: I’ve taken a swing at this webcomicing thing a couple times in the past. A few false starts. My first major webcomic project was in 2009. It was a zomcom I intended to use as comic practice before starting Soul to Call, but in the end I dropped that project because it was too much of a gag comic. I’m a person that needs a lot of meat on their stories, deep characters, intriguing plots. A gag comic with no plot aside from “haha zombies” just could not hold my interest. My second major project was in 2012. I did a test comic for Soul to Call. A 72 page stand-alone story that helped me test the waters of my world and characters, plus it taught me a whole bunch about making comics. What works for me, what doesn’t work, what I needed to improve. I like to joke that this is the project that made me snap, because since I finished it I’ve had an insatiable itch to draw more and more comics. It catapulted me into wanting to make the actual Soul to Call a reality. No more twiddling my thumbs. I like the idea of having my own stand alone site, no association with an aggregator or community. It’s own entity, not tethered to anything else. But, I also wanted Soul to Call to get more exposure than it would solely on its own. Smack Jeeves and Tapastic offered an easy platform to share it with a whole slew of webcomic readers, so I opted to post it there, too.
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Saturday AM: What was the biggest thing you learned from your first trial projects? Katherine Lang: That backgrounds and scenery can actually be extremely fun to draw. But more importantly, PLAN. Plans are a beautiful thing. And I’m not just talking about having a script or some notes to follow. Before you start, do a bunch of concept art, collect reference images, thumbnail two dozen pages ahead of the one you’re working on, or, heck, thumbnail the entire chapter before you start. Set some deadlines for yourself, too. Do all this prep work and the experience of working on the actual pages will be smoother and much more enjoyable. Saturday AM: What element do you imagine or develop first when creating your ideas: characters, environment, or story? Katherine Lang: Definitely characters! More often than not ideas come from certain interactions, emotions, or situations I want to put a character or multiple characters through. Once I have that, I build everything else around it. In fact, Soul to Call all came to be because I wanted a particular relationship between a group of characters.
Saturday AM: Are there any artists or supernatural works like The Walking Dead or 30 Days of Night that inspire you creatively? Katherine Lang: Sana Takeda has been a big inspiration to me recently. Her style and beautiful use of color floors me every time. The fact that she can bring that incredible look to comic pages motivates me to put my all into my own strips, as well. As for supernatural works, the game series Silent Hill has to be one of my biggest influences. Its unsettling atmosphere, twisted world, psychological horror, and lore based on occult practices and demonology are some elements I love to see in supernatural and horror works. There’s another game series, Shadow Hearts, which has heavy Lovecraftian elements that also delight and inspire me. Lastly, there’s a much lesser known Wii title, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. Its environments are so gorgeous and enchanting yet desolate, and it’s the reason I fell in love with abandoned ruins. Plus, it’s one of the only stories I’ve come across that deals with a supernatural apocalypse that wasn’t a big violent zombie or vampire outbreak. As you can tell, I get a lot of inspiration from video games! Saturday AM: Supernatural comics are quite common but few deal with the occult element. What made you decide to take that route instead?
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Katherine Lang: Ask my mom and she’ll tell you I grew up in a haunted house, so maybe that’s why the occult has always been an intriguing subject to me. I got excited by the notion of a world where occult practices have become part of the overall culture-convenience stores selling gemstones, amulets, and chalices like they were newspapers and cigarettes-- so I ran with it. I wanted to explore the idea of how people would react when their world suddenly becomes infested with supernatural things. When it’s not speculation, or ghost stories anymore, and instead completely real and in your face. The spiritual and paranormal is no longer arcane, now clear and malleable. So what kind of practices would people unearth in order to cope with and use these new elements? Some might hang shells outside their door hoping to ward off evil, maybe some will brew eye of newt and lizard tail, and maybe some go straight to blood sacrifice. It’s all valid now. Soul to Call does have its own special lore though, so not all occult practices actually work... doesn’t stop people from trying to use them anyway.
Saturday AM: What do you mean you grew up in a haunted house!? My mind is flooded with a mix of things: cool, interesting, entertaining, and creepy. Katherine Lang: When I was younger, there were all kinds of minor yet strange occurrences in my house. We had no pets, but the sound of paper being knocked off the table and fluttering to the ground could be heard from my room some nights. In the morning, there was no mess. Often the downstairs toilet would flush by itself, and sometimes there was the sound of wood being chopped coming from the basement. There were also certain places in the house, like the basement and living room, that my entire household felt uncomfortable being in alone. It all stopped after my mom performed a clearing on the house, shining candles in all the dark corners and praying aloud. Nothing has happened since, no strange noises, and we haven’t felt any of that uneasiness either. Saturday AM: That is so freaky…On a positive spin, I think your art is beautiful, and I am so intrigued by the story. Do you have Soul to Call already planned out as a whole or are you adapting as you create?
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Katherine Lang: Thank you! I’m so glad it’s piqued your interest so far! The majority of Soul to Call has been roughly scripted, and I have a clear vision of my ending. I know where I want the story and character arcs to go, and have a pretty good idea on how I’m going to get there, but I’m very open to change. If I have a better idea for something or a new chapter/scene I think should be included to improve things, you bet I’ll adapt and rework the script for it! In fact, I’m constantly altering and adding to the script as I thumbnail or work on a page. Edits never end. There’s always room to improve, especially as I mature as a storyteller and person. Saturday AM: Do you listen to fan feedback? How does it impact your creative process? Katherine Lang: I like to listen to fan feedback. It helps me figure out what’s working and what might be falling flat. Nothing feels better than working on something, posting it, and getting exactly the reaction you wanted. If that doesn’t happen, it’s just motivation to try harder and/or try something different that might better elicit the desired response. That being said, I don’t let fan feedback dictate story or character. Some feedback might give me new ideas, but I won’t be changing major plot points or the ending because of fans. Saturday AM: What made you decide to start Soul to Call with the quote by Stanley Kubrick? How did you decide on that one? Katherine Lang: First and foremost, I’m a huge sucker for quotes at the beginning of fictional works, so naturally I had to do it with my own. I spent some time contemplating a whole list of quotes, but in the end I felt like that one embodied one of the core themes of Soul to Call the best, without sounding obvious or cheesy. We have to bring meaning to our own lives. Even in the face of darkness and death, hope isn’t impossible. Saturday AM: What is the manga/comic/anime scene like in Canada? Katherine Lang: It’s certainly not obscure or an underground thing where I live. My local mall has a store dedicated to selling manga and anime, and across the street from that there’s a comic book shop. People use Halloween as an opportunity to show off their cosplay, and there have been a number of anime and comic book conventions within driving distance. I’ve not delved into the scene as much as perhaps I should, but its prevalence is hard to miss. Saturday AM: Do you think there is a stigma within the supernatural/horror market due to overexposure? I do find it hard to sift through all the vampire, zombie, and supernatural material to find the gems nowadays—oversaturation riding on other’s success—but they are there and with a force. As a supernatural fanatic, I am still able to discover material like American Vampire, Coffin Hill, Orphan Black, and Byzantium. What do you say to people that would dismiss Soul to Call at a glance because of its genre or supernatural elements?
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Katherine Lang: I do think there’s a bit of a stigma. These days people see the horror/ supernatural genre and immediately think dumb, not scary gore-fests, or trite vampire romance, and that’s such a shame. It’s too bad that often you have to be like you and me to find the real treasures. There are some great supernatural works out there, but not everyone has the patience to dig through all the junk. With such a plethora of angles you can take to the “supernatural,” it’s disappointing to see it usually not utilized to its full extent. Well, the first thing I would say is there are no vampires or zombies in this story, so rest assured there. Soul to Call has supernatural elements but not ones locked into a particular cliché. More often than not, the supernatural elements are there to help aid and amplify the emotional journeys of these characters. Real life issues turned into supernatural metaphors, not just thoughtless vampires, werewolves and zombies.
Saturday AM: What is your ultimate goal as an artist, webcomic creator, and with Soul to Call? Katherine Lang: My ultimate dream for my comics has always been to take people on an emotional ride. I want to share stories that not only entertain, but also make you feel. I don’t mind if it’s a small cult following (pun intended) or something bigger. Nothing would make me happier than pulling some heartstrings. Aside from that, I just want to see Soul to Call be completed. See the project that’s been stewing in my brain since middle school bear fruit. I admit, someday holding a printed copy in my hands would be pretty cool too. Interview by Kasey Michael
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
EXCLUSIVE SATURDAY A M PRINTS NOW AVAILABL E!
, a g n a M t y h W y b s k r o ! w e r g o n i r m u t d a n e a F n e y u g N y l l a W , n w o r B d n o m y Ra
Click here to visit Saturday AM Store http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Click here for the full comic archive on Saturday AM
2 # ! N O ! E C RA
<<<< This manga reads from right to left <<<<
KEEP UP WITH YOUR FAVORITE SERIES FOR JUST $5.00/YEAR!
EXCLUSIVE CHAPTERS, GAME SNEAK PEEKS, E-BOOKS, INTERVIEWS, CONTESTS, AND MORE!
DRM-FREE. HI-RES PDF/EPUB*
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE
ay AM issues will be *ePub versions of Saturd
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
available later in 2014.
Click here for the full comic archive on Saturday AM
9 # R E T A BULLY E
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO
W E I V R E T N I R O T A E CR
FRESH PERSPECTIVES AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID BROTHERS
Read on as David Brothers and Saturday AM publisher Frederick L. Jones discuss matters in the realm of pop culture and new media.
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
FRESH PERSPECTIVES: AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID BROTHERS
I
am not David Brothers but he is one of us.
The former videogame journalist and marketing executive came to my attention last year when I saw a post he made on language and boasts. It was such an intriguing piece, tying hip-hop into more post modern concerns, that I had to seek out this brave author. He was saying stuff that I had often thought about but rarely voiced for fear it would come across as controversial. Being able to weave perspectives involving race and culture into the geek community is a rare talent - some would even call it a dangerous one. That said, I was desperate to speak with him about, well, everything. I figured he would balk at the challenge but instead, the man was gracious with his time, touching on even more subjects than I had planned. In fact, he wasn’t bothered at all by the potential controversy. After all, it’s just a matter of perspective.
Saturday AM: I just discovered your writing from a few Twitter posts and then checked out the awesome minimalist site www.iamdavidbrothers.com and then checked out your Tumblr, Instagram and 4thletter blog. Great stuff---what has inspired you to become a writer? Who were your earliest influences and who continues to inspire you now? David Brothers: I’ve been reading since I was a kid, I abused the library in middle school, and I pretty much kept reading at a pretty rapid pace up through high school, when a few teachers encouraged me to write and keep writing. I started writing fiction in
high school and kept it up after graduation. I began reviewing games in 2003, starting with a review of Madden NFL 2004, transitioned to the production/ creative services side in 2006, and kept up writing fiction and criticism pretty much the whole while. It was 90% criticism, 10% fiction for a long time, but I’m getting them back in balance lately. I got heavy into Malcolm X around when I turned ten, and that was a big help as far as learning how to best express my thoughts and making sure I have a firm foundation for what I say, whenever I say it. Past that, most of my inspiration comes from novels and rappers. I love Richard Stark’s Parker novels, Elmore Leonard’s Underworld USA books, and Voltaire’s Candide is one of my favorite books. I grew up on rappers like OutKast, Goodie MOb, Company Flow, Aesop Rock, and a wide variety of others, and they taught me that language can be beautiful, and that sometimes pursuing that beauty can make your own writing stronger. Lettering your confidence or swagger shine through can sometimes make all the difference, at least when you have the room to be a little creative. Saturday AM: You have been in the videogame industry from two sides: journalist and marketing. What are your thoughts on the game industry then and now? David Brothers: A lot has changed as a gaming professional myself. I find so much wrong with the industry that even though there are some adjustments happening with things like the more vocal recognition with women in gaming there still is a lack of minority representation.
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
I have a hard time with a lot of the game industry right now. It feels like companies are increasingly driven to make big budget games for the sake of hitting yearly sales milestones, instead of purely good games. Games in a franchise come out so quickly now that it’s easy to burn out on them, because they aren’t significant leaps forward from each other any more. Leaps like the ones from Call of Duty 4 to Modern Warfare, or the introduction of New Super Mario Bros. on DS, can make going back to the same well exciting and interesting. But the cracks in any franchise start to show when you’re playing through one a year. I played and enjoyed Ni No Kuni and The Last of Us this year, but I found myself drawn toward the smaller, less bombastic experiences. I really liked Black Knight Sword and Tokyo Jungle, and while I wasn’t too keen on Hotline Miami’s aesthetic, I thought the gameplay was fantastic. I generally play games I can pick up and put down over the course of a few months, instead of powering through to get to the multiplayer or ending. Games are still awful at pretty much anything but straight white guys, and I think they will be for quite some time into the future. Indie games are more representative of the world, and more diverse as far as storytelling too, but I think we need a major company, one of the ones that sells a million units in a day and dominates the journalism field, to take one for the team, so to speak, and just quietly start pumping out triple-A games featuring people of all stripes. It’ll be a problem until people start doing it, I think, but no one wants to be first in case they get it wrong. It’s an aggravating status quo. I’d love for it to change, to be able to play something as familiar and affecting as Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid, mAAd city,” but I’m not that optimistic. Saturday AM: What are you hoping to do next in your career? Do you intend to be an essayist for a publication or novelist or pursue something more with videogames? David Brothers: I’m still working that out, actually. I left my video game gig earlier this year and I’m working in comics now, which is a position I enjoy. That gives me the breathing room I need ot sit and really think about where I’d like to go. I’ve been cranking away on short stories this year, and I’m working on a longer thing, too. I’m climbing toward a novella right now, and once I crest that peak, I’ll
see how I feel and decide what the next thing is. I like criticism, I like personal essays, and I’d love to be able to make a living off them. I find criticism really fun and, if not easy, something where I can quickly find my stride and get into a groove. I don’t think I’ll ever give that up, but I neglected the purely creative side of my writing for a bit too long, so I’m probably trying to make up for lost time to an extent. I’d love to write a short movie or collaborate with someone on a video game. I feel like I’m fairly comfortable telling stories in prose, and stretching out to doing something where someone has to interpret my words before they’re given to the audience is really interesting to me. That’s a challenge I’d like to try at some point, but I’m not actively pursuing it just yet. Saturday AM: Given your proximity to digital creation tools, do you feel that content is better today than it has ever been? David Brothers: It’s kind of hard to say. I think that the increasing level of digital options is great, from music to comics to books to movies. I have access to more entertainment than I could possibly enjoy in a lifetime, which gives me a chance to see things I never thought I would enjoy. One of my favorite comics last year was Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game, a baseball manga. I’m not even remotely into baseball, but I found the book incredibly well-made, and I never would’ve discovered it without digital delivery making it possible. So on that front, I think that we are definitely better off now than we’ve ever been before. I’m not sure as far as creation goes, however. I don’t know that it’s a case of better or worse, but it’s definitely different. I write on a laptop, and I’m not really concerned with publishing any of my stories on paper. I create them digitally and I want to sell them digitally. I have many artists friends, from musicians to illustrators, and digital tools have helped them create their art just how they want it to be. Those opportunities didn’t exist even ten years ago, and I think that’s definitely a great improvement. As far as quality goes...I can’t call it. I think that’s too much of a moving target to ever really be able to judge.
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Saturday AM: I share your frustration on the gaming concerns. Mine are rather vivid about both racism and arrogance that dominated the industry from the late 1990’s to mid 2000’s. It was a kind of “frat boy” mentality that just permeated the industry from every level I was in and I think that is representative of the product’s stagnation now. To be fair, it has changed slightly as I can remember going to E3’s in late 1990’s and seeing more booth babes than female execs (and damn near no brothers). By the time I had left, while there were still too few people of color, I definitely recall seeing more female executives alhough most were in marketing. Bigger and louder games reflect the mentality of those in charge which is a shame as I did and still see gaming as the ultimate art form. I think you raise an interesting point about indie gaming though. Considering that Saturday AM is a digital comics brand (MyFutprint being a digital comics publisher) I am a bit amazed at the lack of more minority producers, game execs as I think this would atleast shepherd an attempt at new narratives... were you ever tempted to become a producer? Have you ever considered the new companies producing mobile content? David Brothers: I haven’t, actually. I worked with producers a lot when I worked in games, and it seemed less creative and more punishing than anything I wanted to do. I don’t mind leading a small team, and I don’t mind keeping track of a lot of variables, but my preferred focus is creative. I want to make things, or help make them, or design them, and producers do more managing than I’d like to do myself. I’m also not keen on video game hours any more. Crunch is always a sign of poor management and unrealistic deadlines, and now that I’m away from it, I don’t want to go back to it, you know? It’s essentially codified exploitation in the games industry, and the only thing I’d hate more than being trapped in it would be ordering someone else into it.
always bummed me out. Having a variety of voices couldn’t possibly harm the industry. I think one way, the next man thinks another, and the person after that thinks a third. That’s due to our ethnicity, gender, orientation, whatever whatever—and that matters. We think differently, so we talk differently, so we tell different stories. Companies should be seeking to create a diverse workforce, not because it ticks a box on diversity compliance, but because it will make their work appeal to a wider variety of people and they’ll avoid the heinous pitfalls video games keep tripping over. Saturday AM: I’ve been screaming that for years. I think the companies that do not recognize this are doomed. Likewise, I couldn’t agree more about diversity’s impact and how frankly, the world of digital tools has changed the game on content generation in the last ten years. One of our properties, Race! On!, is by a young kid from Macedonia and an amazing artist from the Phillippines. You just would not have that scenario ten years ago---and damn sure not back when I got started professionally. Given that technology is reigning supreme and your own personal opinion about critiquing media and culture--where do you stand in regards to this new world of digital creativity. For example, superhero movies. I’m finding myself becoming underwhelmed at every announcement that DC makes about the next Superman film (now with a super skinny Wonder Woman and and even a rumor about Denzel Washington as John Stewart?!) while likewise, wondering when all the things I find about Marvel catch on to the general public (i.e. lack of cool villains; limited storylines). I mean, a mainstream fan only thinks of Tony Stark as Robert Downey Jr. who is pushing mid 40’s--how do you change him to an audience that equates Batman as iconic but Iron Man as ‘now’? Do you think this is an exciting time or potentially a bubble waiting to burst for us comic fans?
I’d be willing to write, co-write, or guide a project, but I’d have to do it on my own terms, or at least with a wider amount of leeway than most game companies are willing to give me. I’ve got a decent job and an okay life, so I can afford to be a little picky when it comes to this.
David Brothers: I tapped out of most superhero films last year. I took issue with how Marvel and DC treat and have treated their talent and decided to just cut them out of my diet entirely. I don’t buy the comics or movies any more, so I might not be the right target for the question, but I don’t not-buy them out of animosity or anything.
I’d love to see more black producers, really any non-white male producers, in games. I worked with maybe a handful of black men—never black women, which is another shame the video game industry has to rectify—over the course of ten years, and that
Craft-wise, I’m a little bored by the aesthetics of most superhero movies. The comics are fraught with fantastic colors, exciting fights, and thrilling action sequences, but I feel like the movies tend to have very flat, Generic Blockbuster Video Game aesthetics.
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
Lots of long shiny corridors, paramilitary design sense, and realistic colors. There are a few exceptions—Blade is my favorite comics movie, Iron Man’s humor was fantastic, and Sam Raimi’s SpiderMan films did a great job with movement—but for the most part, I’m never as interested in the movies as I’d like to be. I thought Captain America was an entertaining movie, but visually uninteresting. And that kills me. They’re well put-together a lot of times, but boring to look at, essentially. They feel like blockbusters created by a formula. I was really excited when the superhero trend first started, but I’m starting to think it’s a bubble waiting to burst. Superhero films now are the new zombie movies, Tarantino-inflected crime flicks, raunchy sex comedies, blaxploitation movies, westerns, and on and on. They’re here, they’re big, and they’ll pass and be fondly remembered. I’d like to see more movies that are the kind of go-for-broke, let’s make a crime movie and throw a superhero into it film that Blade was, instead of the superhero-as-genre-untoitself that we get lately. There’s such a diversity of storytelling in comics, and so little of that is reflected on-screen that I wonder if people will burn out and write them off before we get to see them evolve into something really special, instead of just blockbusters. Saturday AM: Anime/Manga is such a massive part of Geek pop culture--why do you think that Marvel and DC have globally recognized and successful super hero movies and yet Dragonball Z and One Piece probably will never make it onto a big budget live action film again? David Brothers: I think it’s a matter of perspective. There are thirteen One Piece movies, sixty-plus volumes of the comic, a bunch of video games, and the comic itself has 345 million copies in print worldwide. A lot of that has only seen Japanese release, but you could still make a case that Eiichiro Oda’s little pirate comic is a more successful venture than The Avengers.
I feel the same way about Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball series. It started in 1984, lasted through 1995, and changed an industry. You can’t throw a shoe without hitting a certain stripe of mangaka who was influenced by Toriyama. It is already a classic, and I think that’s enough. It’s good, and I like it—that’s plenty for me. Saturday AM: I too love Elmore Leonard-- we are about to publish our first e-book. What plans do you have for any original fiction? Can you tell fans about any upcoming projects you are hoping to launch? David Brothers: I have to keep this close to my vest, just to make sure I don’t make any promises I don’t keep! I can’t talk about any upcoming plans yet, beyond a digital release for my big project early in the year. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I want to do it, but first I need to wrap up the final act! In terms of stuff I can talk about, however, I spent a few weeks earlier this year putting up free fiction. It’s going to be quiet until after the new year, but there’s twenty stories up there at the moment, across a variety of genres and tones. Some of them are connected, or alternate versions of each other. I wanted to experiment with doing stories in the same setting, a nameless city I’ve been fooling around with for a few years now, so I just sat down and did it. I’m pretty happy with a lot of these, even the fistful of non-fictional personal essays. You can read more from David Brothers at: www.iamdavidbrothers.com, www.4thletter.net and follow @hermanos on Twitter.
It may not have the market penetration here that it has seen elsewhere, but I don’t think you can judge them by their limited reception here. The comics industry actively shunned manga in general when it was burning white-hot, and I think that hamstrung its reach in America. Now it’s cooled some, but the diverse subject matter in manga beats out the diversity in mainstream American comics any day of the week.
http://www.Saturday-AM.com
This PILOT Manga is hosted exclusively here on Saturday AM. If you would like to see more work by Rachelle Robin (Hyoukyo) and other featured artists in the future, please let us know. Your input is essential to the growth of Saturday AM!
1 # A M A D N E K O N N KE
<<<< This manga reads from right to left <<<<
Publisher: Frederick L. Jones | Designer: Wally Nguyen Apple Black © Odunze Oguguo 2014 | Bully Eater © Raymond Brown 2014 | Comatose © Wally Nguyen 2014 | Race!On! © Mario Savovski, Gemar Delfino 2014 | Sky Punk © Mario Savovski 2014 | Saigami © Andrea Otilia Voros 2014 | POSBOTS © Eric Michael Ella 2014 | Ken No Kendama © Rachelle Robin 2014 Saturday AM is a subsidiary of MyFutprint.com, © Frederick L. Jones 2014