Hi old friends! Some memes!

I’ve been working on this podcast the past couple of months with my pal Lucia, I hope folks enjoy it. We focus on the on-going struggle to survive as an art/cultural worker. I’d say it’s got a bent towards Anarcho-communism, but we’re also into decolonization and other ideas to make these industries better. There’s an ep where we yell at Jeff Koons, it’s good.

Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ArtandLaborPod

Listen: http://www.artandlaborpodcast.com/
iTunes subscribe/rate: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/art-labor/id1387325985
Google Play subscribe/rate: https://play.google.com/music/listen…

Contact us! Call or email us about shitty jobs you’ve had, bullshit art people you hate, your visions for reclaiming the future, etc: (413) 258-1116 or artandlaborpodcast@gmail.com

Catch me at TCAF this weekend. I’ll be chilling at Hazel’s table #264 ✨
I love not having a job and getting the chance to finish shit I started a year ago. 🌠

1) “MAYBE THIS WORLD IS ANOTHER PLANET’S HELL?” (aka Endless Scroll) 8.5 x 11 digital print zine with BFK cover

2) “Gender Paraphernalia” or like “Junk that gives me feelings” or “Powerful Emblems” or “Good Stuff” 8.5 x 11 glossy opaque or transparent sticker sheet

3) “CHANGE THEIR SPOTS? (THESE LEOPARDS)” or “I’m trans like a manga, it’s complicated” 5.5 x 4.25 digital print zine

No idea how I’m gonna price everything. Mostly going for fun, just trying to get some travel and materials cost back. Down to trade tho! 🌸🐳

I’m waiting for a plane! Wow! ✈️🛩️✈️

comics-for-choice:

3 DAYS LEFT TO GET COMICS FOR CHOICE!

All proceeds go to the National Network of Abortion Funds, a charity that directly helps folks in need pay for their abortion procedures, and helps with the transportation costs of faraway clinics, because NO ONE should be denied a choice, no matter how little money they have. YOU can support this life-changing mission and get a great book at the same time!

Get Comics for Choice now!

Linda Felcher at the Mirror

I’m in a car heading to Providence for the @qtzfest hmm

ourcomicsourselves:

Three Genderqueer(ish) Manga I Would Like to Revisit:

Your and My Secret (Original title: Boku to Kanojo no Peke Mittsu or  My and Her Three X’s)

Hana-Kimi (Hanazakari no Kimitachi e or For You in Full Blossom)

Ouran High School Host Club

I was obsessed with all three of these series in middle/high-school (2004-2009). With Hana-Kimi and Ouran I would get every volume as they came out. I eventually had all 23 volumes of Hana-Kimi, but with Ouran the release schedule became too sporadic/I became too busy with college. Your and My Secret the first volume came out through ADV in 2004. I’ve attached pictures of my original copy so folks could see how bent up it is from constant re-readings. My copies of 2 and 3 are pristine by comparison because it took another 4 years for Tokyopop to pick it up and distribute the next couple of volumes. Tokyopop famously went under, and it took a third publisher, JManga to complete the English run. It’s so odd trying to parse series like these when you’re an adolescent. There is a part of you that is cheering for the narrative to end up as queer as possible, and another part of you trying to dissect the social norms as potential tools for your real life survival.

In Your and My Secret a schoolboy and schoolgirl switch bodies through the experiment of a mad scientist parent. They end up feeling more comfortable in their new bodies. The boy in the girl’s body has a harder time adjusting because he had a crush on the girl before they switch, the girl in the boy’s body loves it right away and does not want to switch back. This is the volume I read over and over, the concept that you could just instantly feel better in a different body was so fascinating to me as a 7th grade freakshow. I wish anyone in my life at the time could have realized how much I needed to be told that changing your body is possible in real life. Both of the main characters eventually end up falling in love with their best friends from before they switched. This is around when I ran out of volumes to read. I’ve since looked up the end and spoilers: the mad scientist accidentally switches them back to their original bodies after they had decided to stay the way they are. They do get to switch back, but it seems to be at the expense of some gay panic, as in the only way they can be with the people they love is if they stay het.

It’s disappointing these gender-bending manga tend to center heterosexual relationships. Though there are clear homosexual/bisexual characters in both Hana-Kimi and Ouran, they are ancillary at best. In Hana-Kimi one of the main characters’ best friends falls in love with her even though he thinks she’s a boy. The best friend ends up spending most of the manga trying to come to terms with his homosexuality, and I seem to remember him feeling relieved to be “not gay” when it’s finally revealed to him that his crush is a girl. In Ouran the main character is instantly shown to be gender-neutral/gender-blind, but they are constantly pressured into femininity/heterosexuality. It’s especially gross coming from the men who have financial control over them, as they are one of the only poor students in a rich academy. I encourage folks to read this excellent post about some of the disgusting ways gender conformity plays out in the Ouran anime. I know the anime ended before the manga did, and I would like to revisit this series and figure out how everything canonically plays out.

Ultimately the gender-bending genre of manga is really complicated (and when it gets into fetish territory it gets even more problematic). I appreciate having them as escapes during my teen years, but I’ve yet to find one I can truly celebrate for its unabashed queerness. Perhaps the closest is Utena, but that has its own issues of course (it also has four different versions, I’m interested in parsing that in different piece of writing sometime). More recently we’ve gotten Princess Jellyfish and Wandering Son. I’ve only seen the anime version of Princess Jellyfish, and I found it to be too trans-exclusionary/off-putting. Wandering Son I liked, but I found the portrayal of the adult trans woman character to be predatory. I was extra disappointed of the mishandling of that character given the otherwise decent ending. There’s also a recent manhwa called My Boyfriend is a Vampire that I read the entirety of last year, and was extremely annoyed by the whole time. I have not given up, the year 24 group generation had some really excellent series that explored gender non-conformity, so certainly we could get there again. I pray for a higher caliber of queer stories, and I hope it comes from queer creators as well.

(I only read this weird Korean vampire comic ‘cause I thought the main character looked exactly like me lol)

Ø.K. Fox is a digital printmaker and little weirdo in Queens. They are currently co-editing @comics-for-choice, an anthology dedicated to abortion rights, raising money for the National Network of Abortion Funds. Support the project here.

I really enjoyed processing my feelings about these beloved teenage series. I think I will try to properly finish the ones I never got a chance to.

ourcomicsourselves:

HERE IS A WILD FANTASY 

I strive to use the internet in the opposite way web 2.0 encourages people to, I hate the dang endless scrolls, I miss seeing real dates on posts, I need PAGE NAVIGATION. So i often look through blogs’ archives (put /archive after your favorite tumblrs, it’s great!) I love wikipedia hoping and deep dives into tags. Web 2.0 eats new content, all the time, constantly. 

I mentioned @samehat in an earlier post, the tumblr has tons of incredible artists in its archive. Samehat was originally a blogspot that would post translations of old and weird manga, but also their current zine-making friends like Hellen Jo and Michael Deforge. Because of them I went to my first non-anime comics fest, MoCCA in NYC. Changed my life forever.

Also go through the amazing stuff on @de-maupin & @fehyesvintagemanga!!

ANYWAY BACK TO MY WILD FANTASY:

WHAT IF THERE WAS A YEAR 24 GROUP IMPRINT?

(read this great posts about this group of artists here)

What if Viz, and Vertical, and Fantagraphics, and everyone publishing old manga came together for whimsical new imprint?!!

Anyway, the stuff posted above includes some year 24 group stuff that got published in english, but maybe weren’t given a proper shot. I would love to see everything in as great an edition as the Moto Hagio Fantagraphics runs, that’s my dream. Keiko Takemiya, Riyoko Ikeda, and Yasuko Aoike all deserve big nice books too! I would also love to see stories from all the lesser known year 24 group folks as well. I’m including Shotaro Ishinomori in this group because I think there’s a lack of his titles in English as well (I used to feel similar about Leiji Matsumoto, but Kodansha America just did a great Queen Emeraldas run). 

IT IS CRIMINAL THAT THERE HASN’T BEEN A PROPER ENGLISH RELEASE OF THE FOLLOWING TITLES:

-Oniisama E

-The Rose of Versailles

-Kaze to Ki no Uta 

-Fantasy World Jun (seen below paired with Tezuka’s magnum opus, Phoenix) 

-PROBS LOTS MORE I HAVEN’T GOTTEN TO RESEARCH YET

(and the special horror manga, outta-place-in-this-post, final thought, My Name is Shingo by Kazuo Umezu please please someone publish that too)

PLEASE PUBLISH THESE!

Ø.K. Fox is a digital printmaker and little weirdo in Queens. They are currently co-editing @comics-for-choice, an anthology dedicated to abortion rights, raising money for the National Network of Abortion Funds. Support the project here.

I like having an excuse to write nerd shit