Episode 285: Another Publisher Spotlight on Koyama Press - a podcast by Stergios Botzakis & Derek Royal

from 2018-06-27T12:14:12

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The Two Guys with PhDs are back with another publisher spotlight, this one focusing on the spring releases from Koyama Press. (In fact, this is the third spotlight on Koyama, with the guys having previously discusses their seasonal releases in April 2015and May 2017.) All of these books debuted at TCAF last month, and Paul and Derek indulge in exciting discussions of these six new releases.

They begin with Jessica Campbell's XTC69, a wild science fiction narrative about gender relations and female empowerment. It serves as a great companion piece to her earlier Koyama book, Hot or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists. After that they discuss the largely wordless text, Soft X-Ray/Mindhunters. As with his previous work, Mighty Star and the Castle of Cancatervater, A. Degen challenges the boundaries of storytelling, and Paul and Derek have fun attempting to decipher the text. And it says something that, compared with the work of A. Degen, Michael DeForge's latest book A Western World is understandable and more "traditional." This is a collection of various DeForge stories, some of them previously published in his Loseseries, and it would serve as a great introduction to the creator's style.

Next, they focus on the latest installment of Ben Sears's Double+ world, The Ideal Copy. Following 2016's Night Air and last year's Volcano Trash, this book has Plus Man and Hank out of work as treasure hunters and having to take temporary jobs as caterers...and while doing so inadvertently discovering adventure. Perhaps the most abstract and narratively challenging work of the bunch, Michael Comeau's Winter's Cosmos, is a curious mix of media, photography and illustration. Its the offbeat story of two space travelers on a mission, each with varying degrees of seriousness and dedication. Paul and Derek wrap up their Koyama Press spotlight with a discussion of Fiona Smyth's Somnambulance. This is the longest text of the bunch, and it's a fascinating retrospective of Smyth's comics from the 1980s to present day. For those unfamiliar with this creator's comics, Somnambulanceis the perfect overview.

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