Random links and questions

[oyceter]

• vom_marlowe is asking who's your favorite mangaka, strictly style-wise?



• TechKnitting -- Why did no one tell me about this? This blogger would be awesome if only for her 3-in-1 circular join that eliminates the jog and weaves in your ends at the same time. While a lot of technique articles tend to be things I already know (how to gauge, etc.), TechKnitter actually provides new tips and tricks on old techniques. I think my favorite may be the 3-in-1 join and the tips on long-tail cast-on.
  
  Now all I need to do is email her to ask about good ways to do tubular cast-on in circular, non 1x1 rib tubular cast-on, and the possibilities of using Kitcherner stitch to graft together things in patterns (ribbing and anything non-stockinette and non-garter).



• And I ask everyone what comics or manga you can think of that have stories-within-stories, or stories that comment on each other (aka, the text narrative is telling a different story than the graphic narrative, but they illuminate each other)?

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

* And I ask everyone what comics or manga you can think of that have stories-within-stories, or stories that comment on each other (aka, the text narrative is telling a different story than the graphic narrative, but they illuminate each other)?

Watchman -- Alan Moore does this a lot, but Watchman is probably the best place to start. I'm very fond of Promethea, too.

American Born Chinese, but I expect you know about that. :)

Sandman, probably most notably in the bit in The Kindly Ones where Charles Vess does a fairy tale, but everywhere, more or less. I am fond of the single-issue short stories that reflect on the main arc. Mike Carey uses this a bit in Lucifer, too.

Bryan Talbot's Tale of One Bad Rat

The One Thousand and One Nights manhwa, whose art is good but whose stories tend to bug me

This doesn't strike me as exactly the way manga tends to do its stories within stories; it does side-stories, or stories more integrated into a looser base plot. Though I'm not convinced that feeling will stand up to a rigorous analysis. But Princess Tutu and Utena aren't exactly that sort of thing.

[oyceter]

Yeah, most of the ones I keep thinking of are comics, not manga! Though vom_marlowe did mention the stories in xxxHolic, which I will now have to reread.

Now I need to borrow One Bad Rat again! And dig out my copies of Moore!

Heh, no wonder all the paneling layouts in my head looked non-manga-esque.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

Stories-within-stories:

Sandman, especially World’s End.

And there we end my knowledge of comics. *g*

Though, hmm…in one of the volumes of Y: The Last Man, there’s a play depicted.

Fruits Basket often has people telling stories from their pasts, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I was definitely thinking World's End. And Ramadan, though that has less of the one story commenting on another factor.

I think I'm looking more for something like:
Caption: And then the Monkey King beat up the bad guys.
Picture: Our Hero being beaten up by bad guys

So there's that interplay between the caption and the picture, where you can see that Our Hero wishes he were like Monkey and is using the story to make himself feel better, in a way. If that makes any sense at all...

[octopedingenue]

Fruits Basket uses stories-within-stories in very significant and spoilery ways near the end of the series.

[snarp]

Monster, by Naoki Urasawa, apparently does that, though I haven't gotten far enough to get to it myself. And Petshop of Horrors and Kamen Tantei, by Matsuri Akino, both tend to have overlay/background stories going on in a lot of the individual chapters, though I don't think there's one big one for either series.

[oyceter]

Oh! I need to read more carefully! I'm only up to v. 4.

Thanks for the suggestions! I will check them out.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Monster: a children's book is central to the plot. I can't say more though because that would give it away. :)

More than Monster, Urasawa's 20th Century Boys has a meta-narrative. The premise is that this group of kids played games where they pretended to save the world from various disasters, and now that they've grown up "Friend," a mysterious cult leader, is engineering those same disasters/acts of heroism. Features things like giant robots made out of tinfoil. There's also a side-story about a cowardly manga artist leading the resistance XD.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: in part 4 of the manga (which isn't out yet), there's a character named Kishibe Rohan, who is a manga artist/male model/author self-insertion, and draws a comic very similar to Jojo. There's also a character who fights with the power of manga sound effects.

I've lost track of amount of shoujo manga I've read where the characters joke about being in a shoujo manga. Also very self-referential: Mitsuru Adachi.

Fushigi Yugi, Miyaka is sucked into a book and for a while, at least, her friend reads along to find out what became of her, sort of like in Neverending Story.

In the fifth(?) volume of Yami no Matsuei, Tsuzuki is drawn into a book written by his admirer, the Count, in which he and his co-workers take on various fantasy roles. His avatar is a girl, XD.

Princess Tutu goes without saying.

Clover: sort of like a songfic, Oruha's lyrics tie into what's going on in the story, as well as inspiring the characters. Okay, I'm stretching, I'll stop.

[octopedingenue]

Item #3: Fruits Basket, Monster, Chobits, Gekka no Kimi, Princess Tutu (I cheat, for it is a manga, albeit a mediocre one!), Hellboy, The Sandman.

[octopedingenue]

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters especially (as it hasn't been mentioned) because wah monk/fox. Although it might be more an illustrated story than a comic.

[oyceter]

Gekka no Kimi? Hrm. Must flip through.

What bits of FB? I can't seem to remember...

[heresluck]

That knitting blog is terrific; thank you so much for the link!

[oyceter]

I know! I also can't believe she does all her knitting diagramming herself in Illustrator!

I am tempted to show her blog to assorted publishing companies and asking them to publish it, because those are some really great explanations and tricks.

[octopedingenue]

The Gekka no Kimi pic-gathering ended up a little too ginormous to dump here, so here is a post for it!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you. Genji as unwilling, angst-ridden skank is a lovely thing.

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[(Anonymous)]

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[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

In manga, W Juliet might be a possibility, given that Emura uses the plays the characters are performing to comment on the relationship between Makoto and Ito. In fact, which of the two is playing the female lead and which the male lead changes over time when they restage a play they've done before. Genshiken is a possibility, esp. when Oguie starts imagining things about the guys in the club.

[oyceter]

Hrm, yeah. I think I read half of the first v. of W Juliet and never finished it... need to dig it up.

[tyreseus.livejournal.com]

Not sure it's exactly what you're talking about, but there's this moment during The Road to Civil War, one of the Spidey stories I think, where the editors start debating whether or not the Superhero registration act is a good thing...

(paraphrased)
Editor: Stay tuned for tragic developments in this story.
Editor: Some might not consider the events tragic as much as a misguided over-reaction
Editor: Well, some people might themselves be misguided and lack the proper understanding of the necessity of said developments.
Editor: Or maybe they believe that the ends don't justify the means.
(etc.)

These little editorial comments overlapped about three pages of the characters in a fight that neither realized was tied into the Superhero Registration Act.

[oyceter]

Hee, cool!

[rilina.livejournal.com]

How about the school plays in Kare Kano and Fruits Basket? In both, our reading of the plays are colored by our knowledge of the actors.

[oyceter]

I forgot about those! Thanks!

[anenko.livejournal.com]

Hello! I found your post through octopedingenue's journal.

I'm not sure that this is what you're looking for, but Ouran High School Host Club puts their own spin on the Alice in Wonderland story in one chapter. For instance, the heroine, Haruhi, gets booted out of the Alice role because she's too disinterested to follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.

[anenko.livejournal.com]

There's also a bonus story in volume five of The Wallflower, a take on Red Riding Hood.

Like Ouran's Haruhi, Sunako makes a very bad fairytale heroine. She has no interest in being a princess, and in fact, "became twice as scary as she was before. Hooray for her."

[larryhammer]

Lessee -- Chobits is obvious. So's Fushigi Yuugi (original and Genbu Kaiden).

Do the plays in Fruits Basket and Kare Kano count?

---L.

[oyceter]

Chobits? I know vaguely that it's about computer/android girls with ears... (I think...).

Comics stories-within-stories

[(Anonymous)]

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley has several flashback scenes where someone tells a story of things that happened earlier, especially during the bearded nun sections (titled "Solicitine). Some of this was due to publisher demand, so I don't know if it fits what you're asking about. Castle Waiting is a Western style comic.

Re: Comics stories-within-stories

[oyceter]

Huh, I've never heard of that one! Will have to check it out, thanks!

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

I just remembered: CLAMP's Suki dakara Suki has a picture-book within the story; the main character is a somewhat childish high-school girl who enjoys picture books, and meets the writer of the picture book, and the story in the picture book is somewhat about her--it's a bit tangled.

However, there's a slight squick factor, because the main character has a crush on one of her teachers.

[oyceter]

Doh for the squick factor. CLAMP! Why?