Well, I'll file this under "Things I've Done When I Should Have Been Writing." I was looking through my old magazines for photos to use as a project, when I came across my copies of
Shojo Beat and
Tokyopop magazines. There's three of them, and all of them were published in 2007.
Shojo Beat I bought from Wal-Mart- more on that issue latter; look at that beautiful cover!
Back when I was obsessed with the TOKYOPOP website, I was subscribed to their free manga magazine. I probably received three or four of them; two I've kept. I have no idea if they're still sending them out, but I hope that they are. I love getting magazines just as I love buying books. It's going to sound crazy, but I started scanning the images from the magazines because I love the way they looked scanned.
The cover is of Raven from
Vampire Kisses, the manga version by
rem (I love her art!) What I love about the two issues of TOKYOPOP that I saved is that they both deal with Gothic Lolita fashion. This brief history of Gothic Lolita is from the same issue.
Here's another article on the history of Gothic Lolita fashion. This came from the spring of 2008 (not 2007). They break down the origins of Lolita fashion and give the different types of Gothic Lolita. I love the layout of these pages. All the illustrations were drawn by
Aimme Steinberger (passive sentence!)
Going back to the issue of TOKYOPOP with
Vampire Kisses on it, it was really interesting to read the manga sample inside. Because, two years later,
Vampire Kisses- the book, not the comic -helped shape my protagonist from my book idea (that I should be working on). Here are the sample pages. The words in the speech bubbles have been intentionally blurred, whited-out, etc, 'cause I'm not offering scans of comics (though, I wonder if it's wrong to do it for articles?).
There's also an interview with
Anike Hage author of
Gothic Sports, a manga/comic I have wanted to read since I heard about the premise: a girl starts her own soccer team and to make them stand out, they wear Lolita-styled outfits. Awe. Some.
And one final thing from the issue. This ad for
Beck, a Japanese manga about a group of boys forming an indie rock band, caught my eye. I fell in love with that manga two years ago and it got me into Nirvana, which then inspired a story of mine that branched out into other stories. It was just interesting to remember where it all came from.
I had somewhat of a thrill going through my copy of
Shojo Beat- March, 2007. The reason for it was because, along with it being "the art issue", it was also an issue on vampires. I remember trying to read
Twilight in 2007 but could never finish it and I wonder if the editors were aware of the book back then. Judging by this page highlights of famous vampires and vampire slayers, I would say that it hadn't reached the level on insanity quite yet.
It's just really strange that there was a time before
Twilight. Anyways, the cover for this issue features the characters from
Vampire Knight, a manga that is now more popular but one that I could not get into.
The one good thing I can say about
Vampire Knight is the artwork. Matsuri Hino can draw her ass off. Seriously, the hair! Moving on, one vampire comic in the anthology that I liked was
Millennium Snow by Bisco Hatori, best known for
Ouran High School Host Club. I watched a few episodes of
Ouran and loved it, though it had the habit of reminding me of
Fruits Basket. A year later, though, I came up with a story whose main character was similar to Chiyuki from this comic but was inspired by a Nirvana song (re: the
Beck ad.)
There are some more comics in the anthology but, with the exception of
Millennium Snow and
Vampire Knight, I hadn't read them. Technically, there was one that I read but not from the magazine. In 2007 or 2008 I became obsessed with
Nana. The story was essentially the lives of two young women, both named Nana. Though the same age, one was more mature than the other, having came from a tough background; and the other is more naive, having been spoiled by her parents. I just love this story and love Ai Yazawa's art and fashion.
That lighter in the girl's, Layla/Reira, hand belongs to the boy, Shin. It's designed by Vivienne Westwood and I want one really,
really bad. And I don't even smoke. I don't know how to get one. All I know is that they are rare and that they're pretty expensive. Back to
Nana, the random thing that I loved about it was that each chapter either started or ended with "Hey, Nana." It makes me nostalgic for some reason.
I think that's enough blogging about magazines and comics.
I have a tumblr now. Started it a few days ago. Really addicting the first day. I love that, unlike blogger, it's mainly about quick blogging. Like twitter yet more literate for some reason :) There I'll post random photos taken with my crappy camera. Like sunflowers. I have too many photos of sunflowers. And bubbles.
