Akira Toriyama died at the start of the month from a subdural hematoma. He was 68. His studio released an announcement yesterday, March 8th.
I have been trying to find a way to write about Toriyama’s gifts as a cartoonist for a few years now, since I sat down to read the whole manga several years ago. But the task always felt too monstrous, too large. His work just in Dragonball is so sprawling, so charming, and so precise.
To say Toriyama was underrated is probably inaccurate—but he was certainly taken for granted. Here in the west, we don’t hear Toriyama’s name bandied about as trailblazer in the medium. But his influence is inescapable, particularly as generations who grew up reading him when Dragonball grew into a global phenomenon in the nineties and early aughts have begun to make comics. Without Toriyama, there is no Dan Mora or Jorge Jimenez or Peach Momoko or Zoe Thorogood or Humberto Ramos or Bruno Redondo—to name just a few. It’s easy to miss how brilliant the man’s cartooning is because he made it feel so effortless and the way that he captures motion and power on the page have become so ubiquitous.
There are few creators whose talent and imagination were so vast that they transformed culture and the medium of comics (in any language). Jack Kirby. Moebius. Will Eisner. Otomo. Toriyama belongs in any counting of the greatest to ever make comic books. Perhaps we forget how brilliant his work in manga was because DBZ conquered so many other media. But none of it would be were it not for his abilities as a visual storyteller.
Just as one example: Look at this page from Dragonball, of Piccolo and Goku at the 23rd Tenka'ichi Budōkai. Here, Piccolo reveals his new ability to grow in size. It’s a shocking display of power. It conveys that total awe. Toriyama’s sense of scale is dramatic and imposing. But what truly makes this page brilliant are the subtler choices. The action lines simultaneously indicate vertical movement—signaling Piccolo’s rapid growth—and panel lines, which break that growth up over a period of time. They also reinforce the height difference and scale. With Piccolo standing over Goku with no lines, it is imposing. But the thick white lines cutting across the image create motion. In time and space.
Of course, Toriyama was also a writer with an undeniable sense of fun and a natural instinct for what would appeal to readers. He was bold and obviously gifted at improvisation. He was able to retrofit Dragonball, its world, and its characters to suit any kind of story he wanted to tell. It started out as a simple fantasy gag book, until he decided he wanted to tell an action story. When he decided martial arts tournaments weren’t enough stakes, he had Goku take on the military and assassins. When that got old, he had Goku face off against the devil. When he decided he wanted to pivot to sci-fi, SURPRISE! Goku is an alien now. And the devil? He was an alien too. And on and on. Goku was a blank slate for readers and viewers to project their story onto.
There has been an outpouring of artists and fans from all over the world remembering Akira Toriyama the last few days. His impact spanned the globe. The loss is immense. Personally, Dragonball has immense sentimental value, creating connections at at a time when I had very few and offering a daily escape into a world of boundless imagination.
But there is also the character of Gohan—a young boy with immense potential who struggled to tap into it and become who he was destined to be. A smart but meek child who spent as much time fighting his own fear as the bad guys. But when it counted, when his friends and family needed him, he could tap into that potential. I could relate to that fear of my inadequacy, the apprehension that I would never live up to what people told me I could grow up to be. For more than a decade, my online handle was GohanWinner (the Winner part being a Gundam reference). I was called Gohan for years by online friends. The name became a secret identity…the person I wanted to be but struggled to bring forth in person. Toriyama, in a roundabout way, gave me that confidence to explore the hidden me.
Random Comic Panel of the Week
Turtle Club Comics Reviews
I haven’t been as faithful to my weekly Patreon reviews as I’d like. This week I’ve got two reviews of some hyphenated heroes in The Spectacular Spider-Men #1 and The Bat-Man: First Knight #1. Patreon supporters can read it now by clicking the below image. I’ve got an excerpt of each one here in the newsletter.
The Spectacular Spider-Men #1
Writer: Greig Weisman
Penciler: Humberto Ramos
Inker: Victor Olazaba
Colorist: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Editors: Kaeden McGahey and Nick Lowe
A proper team-up book between the two Spider-Men now that Miles Morales is firmly entrenched in the Marvel Universe proper has felt like a no-brainer idea for a long time now, so when it was announced I was intrigued. The creative team is promising, if not superstar–Greg Weisman, who created and executive produced the fan-favorite Spectacular Spider-Man animated series, and Humberto Ramos, who has become one of the defining artists of the modern age of Spider-Man. Unfortunately, Weisman’s script is too concerned with trying to be clever than in delivering an interesting story or character development.
For some reason, the issue is structured in such a way that it flashes back and forth between the moments leading up to the where the issue starts, with the two Spider-Men fighting a monstrous version of Peter’s old nemesis The Jackal. There’s no compelling reason for this, no surprise revelations. It just unfolds this way. It interrupts the flow of both the flashbacks and the action in the “present.” Weisman also has various one-page asides to unrelated random people. One can assume these vignettes of everyday life will pay off in the future and prove to be connected to this mindless Jackal monster, but who knows? The dialogue is equally tedious, with labored metajokes about how long each character has existed, phrased in almost the exact same way. We also get a bunch of other meta one-liners. And it’s all done by sacrificing any character development or even memorable interaction between Peter and Miles.
The Bat-Man: First Knight #1
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Artist: Mike Perkins
Colorist: Mike Spicer
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Editors: Matthew Levine and Chris Conroy
Batman’s first story, The Case of the Chemical Syndicate has been re-told, as best I can figure out, six times. My initial understanding of this book was that it was another remix of that. It’s actually a new take on another oft-told tale. But the specifics are less important than the setting and tone, which seeks to capture the feeling of the pulp noirs and horror films
of the 30s that directly inspired Batman’s creation. This is firmly a period piece, set in the years prior to World War II and very much leans into the lore and concepts of the earliest years of Batman’s publication history. It’s a great idea to go back and reexamine that era and tell a story set during the time Batman first appeared. It is perhaps the purest way to go back to the roots of the character, and it’s a take I have not seen very often. Sure, lots of Batman stories have been directly inspired by these same pulps and detective stories but not firmly set in the time and place of post-World War I America. I enjoy the idea of taking a classic story and retelling it with modern storyetlling sensibilities and lack of constraints and keeping the original setting, not updating it to present day.
This is a Gotham City in the final days of the 1930s, firmly in the throes of the Great Depression, grappling with the anxieties of the rise of Hitler and other fascists in Europe. People are desperate. A second World War is inevitable. Jurgens’ script taps into those anxieties primarily through the fluoride dialogue, which takes up a lot of real estate in the pages of this book. We get a whole lot of “telling, not showing” about the State of Things. A sequence where Bruce Wayne and Gordon drive through the streets of Gotham could have been used to show the rampant crime that surrounds the two men…
Writing Round-Up
While the newsletter has been quiet, I’ve been around the web a bit.
At The Comics Beat, I’ve been contributing to the weekly Marvel review roundup.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the end of Spider-Man’s Gang War event. Spoilers: it made me mad.
This week, I was part of a roundtable discussion of the delightful first issue of Peach Momoko’s Ultimate X-Men
On the main site, some recent fun includes:
A review of Mad Cave’s Hound graphic novella.
Another review, this one of the graphic memoir Polar Vortex by Denise Dorrance.
That’s it. Bye.
Tim