Rate this book

Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights (2009)

by Jonathan Vankin(Favorite Author)

3.17 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1401221890 (ISBN13: 9781401221898)

languge

English

genre

Graphic Novels & Comics

publisher

Vertigo

review 1: In the early 'oughts, DC's Vertigo imprint decided horror, fantasy and weirdo superhero comix weren't raking in enough of that young hipster dollar and envisioned Vertigo Pop!, an imprint of an imprint to publish comix so much cooler than you could ever dream of being and lure in all those readers of "Hate" and "Ghost World." This is a lesson Vertigo has yet to learn, but corporate-engineered, contrived attempts at coolness are generally doomed to failure, artistically if not always financially, and the Vertigo Pop! books were miserable flops. So now DC's trying its luck again, repackaging two of the Pop! miniseries in one volume. Twice the yuck for yer buck. Jonathan Vankin ran around "exotic" (does that sound patronizing to anybody else?) Asia for a while and picked up e... morenough local slang and color to impress his editors and write these two adventures, filled with such insufferably cute lines as "Maki asked me to meet her the next night, at Nihon Budokan. You know, as in 'Cheap Trick Live at Budokan'" (I want you to bite ... MEE!) or "Please hold this honorable gun. If it is not too much trouble, shoot him if he escapes." Those two pearls are from the "Tokyo Days" half of the book. You could pick any random line from "Bangkok Nights" and find something just as grating, if not more so. It's a book rife with fashionably radical posturing (Che Guevara T-shirts and Howard Zinn references) and manufactured cleverness. Basically each story boils down to "Oh, those Asians and their wacky customs, will the white tourists ever understand?" "Tokyo" artist Seth Fisher put his own spin on the manga style by drawing all the characters without noses. You have NO idea how off-putting that is until you see it for yourself. Giuseppe Camuncoli fares slightly better in "Bangkok," but I've never much cared for his jaggedly angular drawing. Some works of art are ahead of their time and have to wait years to receive their just due. That's not the case here. Sorry, Vertigo, these comix remain just as lame today as the day they were originally published.
review 2: this actually collects two different series originally put out by VIRTIGO POP and written by jonathan vankin. seth fisher. man-- i just wish he wasn't dead. no other way to put it, cause his art was so unique. anyways, he draws the TOKYO DAYS story, which i liked better than the BANGKOK NIGHTS. DAYS is a little mor light-hearted and fun. its about an american dude becoming friends with this girl, who's kind of insane, and is also a sister to a yakuza wannabe-gangster. craziness ensues. good stuff.NIGHTS is about a young couple on the brinks, taking a trip to thiland, and then they get mixed up in the sex-trade game-- trying to rescue some girls and stuff. there's not a happy ending, and this is more serious a story than DAYS but still pretty good. less

Download links for: Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights

Advertising