Slum Wolf - Readings

Description

A gritty collection of graphic short stories by a Japanese manga master depicting life on the streets among punks, gangsters, and vagrants.

Tadao Tsuge is one of the pioneers of alternative manga, and one of the world’s great artists of the down-and-out. Slum Wolf is a new selection of his stories from the late Sixties and Seventies, never before available in English: a vision of Japan as a world of bleary bars and rundown flophouses, vicious street fights and strange late-night visions. In assured, elegantly gritty art, Tsuge depicts a legendary, aging brawler, a slowly unraveling businessman, a group of damaged veterans uniting to form a shantytown, and an array of punks, pimps, and drunks, all struggling for freedom, meaning, or just survival.

With an extensive introduction by translator and comics historian Ryan Holmberg, this collection brings together some of Tsuge’s most powerful work—raucous, lyrical, and unforgettable.

About the Author

Yoshiharu Tsuge is a cartoonist and essayist known best for his surrealistic, avant-garde work. Tsuge began drawing comics in 1955, working primarily in the rental comics industry that was popular in impoverished post-war Japan. In the 1960s, Tsuge was discovered by the publishers of the avante garde comics magazine Garo and he gained increasing recognition for his surrealistic and introspective work. He withdrew from Garo in the 1970s and his work became more autobiographical. Tsuge has not published cartoons since the late 1980s, elevating him to cult status in Japan. He lives in Tokyo.

Ryan Holmberg is an arts and comics historian. He has taught at the University of Chicago, CUNY, the University of Southern California, and Duke University, is a frequent contributor to Art in America, Artforum, Yishu, and The Comics Journal, and has edited and translated books by Seiichi Hayashi, Osamu Tezuka, Sasaki Maki, and others.