I know I write often of comics, manga, and manhwa, but I wanted to make a fuss about how digital illustration has really changed how comics look now, and has made manhwa (comics from South Korea) in particular so attractive to me as a person who used to work in architecture.
Just a scene of one character waiting in a restaurant for another character to show up. (She won’t.)
Look at the details. The textures. The shadows that the evening sun makes on the floor (which has a sort of wood parquet treatment). This level of effort in webtoons is VERY appealing to me. And is spoiling me a bit.
Even if/when the characters are highly stylized in unnatural ways, the rendering of the world they live in – backgrounds, the interior design, the furniture, the foliage – these have some remarkable details. Some appear to be produced by specialists who just create castles, modern cities, European rococo ballrooms, etc. Others appear to be photo-to-illustration conversions of some sort (but that works only for places based on real settings).
Drawings produced at this level when I was still in architecture would have been award-winning marvels of the profession: now they are the routine product of manhwa studio artists!
I admire the effort (and artifice) that goes into producing these scenes.
I have other favorite scenes to express my admiration for, but I haven’t reviewed those particular manga yet, so they’ll likely turn up in a few weeks.
Monster Duke’s Daughter by Han Ocean, Chal Lan published by Webtoon (151 chapters, ongoing) 2022 – present
Tiny Lotilucia is transported away from her beloved mother, who was still trapped in their eternally snowy forest home/prison, to the estate of her unknown father, Duke Frodium. She knows her mother said a forever goodbye, and she knows that her father factually accepts her existence, but isn’t entirely sure how to relate to her.
As she tries to maintain a low profile (out of sight, out of danger?) and learns to read, she finds a book in the library. A book about a little girl named Lotilucia, whose father is also Duke Frodium, and who… dies very young, without every being fully accepted by her father. In the story, she is replaced in her father’s improved affections by a new adopted daughter, who appears to be the true heroine of the book, and who resembles Lotilucia’s lost mother. Despite being a tiny-but-literate girl, she decides that she won’t allow the book to determine her fate, and strikes out to really live – this includes forging a bond with her surprised father, preventing her untimely death, and perhaps becoming the lead character of her own story.
As she grows, she realizes she can do more than just survive – she may be able to protect her father’s secret (he’s a demon protecting the human world from the demon world), use rare powers she inherited from her mother to protect her loved ones – including her friends, one of who is growing up into a handsome boy, and is secretly a dragon – and become a protector of the human world and ally to the emperor as her father’s successor.
There are sci-fi technologies in this fantasy story, questions about whether Lotilucia is living in a real world or if the book was the real world, and scenes that were supposed to be flashbacks, but where the participants (or at least one important participant) can see Lotilucia and interact with her in what should just be a memory…
Our child heroine really has too much on her shoulders, and has to exceed the abilities and expectations of other so much, it’s unfair! Despite her young start, she is SO DETERMINED and so unnaturally skilled, that she is pulling off improbable rescues and stirring up trouble much larger than herself. The giant-eyed child does grow up over the course of the story, so her body catches up (mostly) with her enormous eyes.
I’m 151 chapters in, and the fact that I’m 151 chapters in tells you that I’m committed! This is a cute fantasy story about being true to yourself, thinking you are old enough to make independent decisions when you are four years old (you are not), making your own future, caring about your parents, worrying your father, and having everyone say you make a good-looking couple with your dragon guy pal.
This is a COMPLETELY ADORABLE comic about a fire demon who wakes up on a farm and is adopted by the farm family as seasonal help and a friend.
Auntie Ann and Katy don’t think twice about taking Red in, taking Red to a friend to make some soft clothes suitable for an eight foot tall fire demon. They just… accept Red as they are: a nice, helpful, large, warm being.
Have I mentioned this is completely adorable?
Cats can’t resist Red, a cosy fire demon who is always warm. Awwwwwwwww. Beyond cute!
I can often resist things that are cute, but this is so…. not just cute, but soothing. Sweet. Homey. Gentle.
The wonderful thing about weekends, though, is that naps are possible if I don’t overschedule myself. Yes, I was up at five something, but by eleven (AM!) I went down so hard for a nap that I considered checking my neck for drugged darts.
I needed that.
Unlike this bottle of Pocari Sweat, which I don’t need, but which I am truly enjoying…
Painting The Void: How Art Transformed the San Francisco Bay Area During a Global Pandemic by Paint The Void & Broke But Grand LLC dba BUILDING 180 published by Paint the Void 2024
Once the safety precautions were loosened and we could wander around outside, we were faced with countless boarded up buildings, a sense of emptiness, and finally – art and color.
This is a lovely photo book depicting the art organization that stepped in to brighten SF’s closed businesses with large scale art, and the many local artists who stepped up to the challenge and created bright, hopeful murals throughout the City.
Delighted by the murals as I reoriented myself to the City on foot, I ordered this book ages ago, and am delighted that it was finally released and shipped to me this year! It includes essays on the effort, discussions of how it was received, experiences the artists had as people interacted with them as they worked, adjustments the organizers made to include artists who hadn’t previously worked on murals, and more.
If you’d like a sense of the murals it includes, you can enjoy the Paint The Void mural gallery below:
Paint the Void Mural Gallery
Gallery of Paint the Void’s work
Great book, great project, highly recommended especially for local public art and mural fans.
This is an adorable, gothic visual comic collection about a lovely goth girl named Flora who inherits a mansion inhabited by a “cat.”
This”cat” defies the laws of physics, consumes people, levitates, stretches endlessly into room-filling forms, periodically swallows Flora…
Creepy Cat is both adorable and… a monster of some undetermined kind. But it is so… fluffy! (Life lesson: you can get away with a lot if you are fluffy.)
The stories are brief, a few panels or pages long, and are stylishly adorable. The tone is great; Flora is charming; Creepy Cat lives up to its name. Flora is sometimes in danger, and it appears Creepy Cat may periodically eat or harm Flora, but doesn’t necessarily like when anyone else does that. (Yay for possessiveness?)
There is an adorable brief comic at the end in which Valent tells the story of how this comic came to be.
This is a lovely, consistent, stylish, attractive work. And there are more volumes out there, which is good news.
Hikaru went missing in the mountains. And then… Hikaru came back.
But the Hikaru that came back is not the same lifelong friend that Yoshiki has always had at his side. This Hikaru admits that he is… something else, something that has never been human before. It has Hikaru’s memories, but is feeling everything in Hikaru’s body for the first time. And in a moment of stress, he/it loses some of Hikaru’s form, and Yoshiki can see things he should not be able to see.
But Yoshiki has missed his dear friend so badly, that maybe this other Hikaru is enough. Maybe.
The cicadas chirps fill the air, the summer heat makes the boys sweat on their walks to school, and Yoshiki gets warnings that something dark is taking over the town, from others who have seen the forms the darkness can take…
This is broad-daylight-spooky. I can’t wait to read the next two volumes!
Delicious to look at, delicious to drink: hooray for almond milk lattes at Ritual Coffee!
Update on Facial Graffiti: After using a harsh fading shampoo three times in one day on my hennaed eyebrows, I went to work and… received compliments on my new glasses from a nice young man.
I didn’t have new glasses: my newly visible eyebrows frame my face so well, my glasses look better. All is well that ends with improvements to my vanity, I guess!
I just have to figure out how to avoid that first-day-Sharpie-attack look. And argue with my stylist about her very unrealistic definition of “light brown.”
Update on What I’m Reading: I was going to apologize for going from being the person who only writes about SERIOUS SUBJECTS (oooooh, so impressive) and summarizes US Supreme Court rulings with mildly catty commentary to someone who has 85% graphical fiction content with a trend toward gay male romances, but… why apologize? I’m enjoying myself! That’s what is important. Well, to me, anyway. There are always more heavy books in my pile, and I will get to them when the time is right.
What I’m (Not) Writing: I’m working on notes for the science fiction scenes that I imagine when I’m listening to too much of Massive Attack’s Angel, but I’m not getting far. Someone sits near me, and when he is there, I don’t write. I just… am. I hold the pen; I hold the notebook; words just float away.
The one who sits near me has the best hair. (Ahhhhh.)
Others sit near me and don’t have this effect, so I am not forever sabotaged: it’s just that the scenes that have come to me aren’t all smoothly connected (there is a war, war lacks narrative cohesion and involves abrupt transitions in my view), and it will take some time to connect them with proper bonds.
I’m afraid I’m being influenced by the styles of streaming television, as the wreckage in the first scene makes me want to put up a giant title card that says, “10 days earlier” and launch a flashback… I don’t need to write that way. Unless Netflix has a pile of money for me, in which case, I will happily change my style.
Also: I need to not kill off so many characters so early. Aside from the realism that would bring. (Have you noticed how most named characters survive nearly every improbable thing in American stories? What the hell?!?).
I designed a costume for the character modeled on myself years ago. The left arm of her spacesuit is a different color (red) from the rest of her suit, which is unfortunate, but is based on something she predicts before it happens. Her/My left arm has it EVEN WORSE in this story than it has in real life. Dear left arm in real life, I truly love you, even with the plate and screws (especially with the plate, screws, and the scar!), and I am so sorry for what happens to you in the novella.
COVID Negativity Is The Best Negativity: Stay positive in outlook, negative in fresh diagnostic tests!
