Interview Roundup

• The Village Voice chats with graphic novelist Jessica Abel about, among other things, how her comics have often been miscontrued as thinly veiled memoir: “When La Perdida was first serialized [in 2001], everyone assumed it was autobiographical, but as it went along people figured out Carla wasn’t me—or hoped it wasn’t me, given what happens in the book.”

• As long as we’re talking about comics, here’s an interview with manga legend Kazuo Koike, perhaps best known for Lone Wolf and Cub…but whose Lady Snowblood was a key influence on Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill. And lest we still have any doubts about the signficance of manga, Koike describes it as “the only new—and perhaps, the last new—commodity that Japan can proudly present to the world.” As he points out, “gross yearly sales in the Japanese automobile industry are 20 trillion yen ($170 billion). Gross sales related to intellectual property, of which manga is a major subset, are 14.7 trillion yen ($125 billion).”

• I was hoping that I’d get to meet Elizabeth Kolbert this weekend at the Virginia Festival of the Book, but our panels are scheduled directly opposite one another. So for now I’ll have to settle for this New Yorker promotional interview for her series of articles on climate control…

• One of the best books I’ve read in the last month is Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, which is basically like Patrick O’Brian, but with dragon riders. Seriously amazing book; it’s a mass-market original coming out any day now from Del Rey, and you’ll want to pick it up. Find out some more in this interview with Novik.

23 March 2006 | uncategorized |