Saturday, July 29, 2023

日々 by もぐこん

 日々 (Everyday) is a collection of short, self contained manga stories by もぐこん, a rather obscure auteur who is part of that Garo-inspired galaxy of what we would call "alt-comic" creators, mostly nowadays publishing in web format and, occasionally, small run or self published hard copy. These authors tend to share a lot of similar traits - a jaggy, purposefully amateurish, sort of 'unclean' tract, meant to suggest an alt vibe compared to mainstream manga; very rigid layouts, reminescent of Western comic books; a focus on 'realistic' life stories, usually with a touch of the grim. 


もぐこん shares all of these traits, and they are in full display in this 2021 self published collection. Ten stories of varying length and complexity, shifting back an forth between the realistic and the fantastic: we range from a binoculars-armed shinigami after its next pray, to the ambling of two friends attending a wedding in Maui, through a girl assembling a giant paper plane and a couple darker pieces where, though with little gore, death rears its ugly head. As mentioned, Japanese alternative comics like one could find in Ikki or the more experimental pages of Aternoon are the main reference point, and  もぐこん's sometimes shaky grasp of anatomy and image composition comes across as more of a conscious stylistic choice, rather than amateurishness. It's an acquired taste, and certainly one as far removed from anime-dependant manga as one can get - while we don't come nowhere close to the Nishioka Kyodai's abstraction, we are still talking non-mainstream through and through. 





If this sounds like something that'd be up your alley, you're in luck - もぐこん has one of their stories translated in Glacier Bay BooksGlaeolia 1 anthology, collecting some of the best in Japan's alt manga scene. I hear it was out of print until a while ago, and even the reprint is now pretty much gone. At 30$ just for shipping, I still managed to get my hands on volumes III only myself... 

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