Today we are bringing you an excerpt fromBox Garden Beetle, the first volume of manga by Kondoh Akino to be released in the U.S. (Nothing Whatsoever All Out in the Open,a 50-page magazine-sized comic, was published by Retrofit in 2014). The manga is now available from Glacier Bay Books for $25. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:
Unfurling fields of morning glories and buttony polka dots. Wormholes of childhood memories and cabinets of magical curiosities. Balletic bands of laughter. Creeping stippled shadows. Armies of insects and doppelgangers. An ethereal poetry of exquisite line and quiet space on one page, a surrealism of exploding form and whirling imagination on the next. Welcome to the wonderland of Kondoh Akino, one of Japanese comics’ pioneers of visual form and poetic imagination! Since her debut in the alternative manga magazine Ax in 2000, Kondoh has enchanted readers with limpid stories exploring daily life, memory, love, and womanhood. Author of the best-selling A-ko’s Boyfriends (2014-20) and the diaristic Noodling in New York (2012-present), she is also much admired as a fine artist and has exhibited her paintings, drawings, and experimental animation around the world. Originally published in 2004, BOX GARDEN BEETLE is not only Kondoh’s debut book, but also the first full volume of her manga to be translated into English. With an essay by art comics doyen Hayashi Seiichi and translated by Ryan Holmberg.
Note that the pages here should all be read right to left
