In part two of this three part series on Massive-Goods.com, Creative Directior Graham Kolbeins opens up about tapping the untapped market of gay (bara) manga and how he and the team at Massive-Goods.com are bringing it to a wider audience.
An Interview
By
David Rondinelli
Graham Kolbeins has built an extensive line up of creative material that spans everything from documentary filmmaking, web series, blogging, and photography. Some of his work, such as Rad Queers have featured in various gay film festivals such as Outfest. Now, the Los Angeles native is adding co-editor and creative director to his growing list of credits as he brings us his latest project with Massive.
Massive is an anthology collection that brings together some of Japan’s most groundbreaking gay comics creators and their work. With an emphasis on hyper masculinity and muscle love making, some readers might remember Kolbeins editorial contributions to the first book he helped put together featuring the work of Gengoroh Tagame, which was titled The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame. Now as the creative director for Massive-Goods.com an extension website that offers clothing and merchandise of the same image, Kolbeins hopes to bring the genre of manga to a wider American audience. In this interview, he opens up about how Massive was put together, what is was like photographing the artists, and what the landscape of gay comics is in Japan.
David Rondinelli: How did you get involved in the project?
Graham Kolbeins: I'd been writing about gay manga on my old art blog, Future Shipwreck, and decided to try and interview some gay manga artists, because few of them had ever been interviewed in English. I got in touch with Anne Ishii and it turned out she'd been doing some translating of Gengoroh Tagame's manga for the private collection of Chip Kidd. The three of us agreed that someone needed to put this work out in English, so we joined forces and pitched two books to the late, great PictureBox: The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame (which came out in 2013) and Massive.
DR: You are familiar with this sub-genre of manga, how did it feel the be a fan and then get to work on a project that deals with bara comics?
GK: It was extremely thrilling for me as a fan to go beyond simply appreciating the images online to meeting the artists in person. Anne and I went to Tokyoand Sapporoin 2012 and had the privilege of interviewing Gengoroh Tagame and most of the other artists in Massive. We worked with them over the next two years to put Massive together, and it was an honor to collaborate with some of my favorite artists on the planet.
DR: Are you a comics fan too, or just a fan of Bara?
GK: Yes! I love the limitless potential of comics as a medium. I grew up reading Archie and The Simpsons comics before getting into the more alt comics territory of Daniel Clowes, and Adrian Tomine in high school. I spend a lot of time at comic cons and art book fairs and always come home with luggage bursting with comics. Right now some of my favorites include Eric Kostiuk Williams, Nicholas Sumida, and Eleanor Davis.
(Art by Jiraiya)
DR: You photographed many of the artists. Take us through the experience of being in Japan and photographing them.
GK: For many of the artists in Massive, privacy is a big issue. They may live very full gay lives with all of their friends, but still want to maintain a sense of anonymity because their families and co-workers don't know they make gay erotic comics. So when photographing them, I was careful not to step over any boundaries. We still managed to get some nice portraits of the artists, even the ones who wanted their faces obscured. On the other end of the spectrum, Gengoroh Tagame has no qualms about his public image - so it was fun shooting his portrait in the middle of a busy street in Shinjuku Ni-chome.
DR: What was it like to be in Japan, and to see their comic community? Are there any similarities between theirs and Americas? (Like do they have a lot of comic conventions, festivals, or regular markets for their work to be sold at?)
GK: It was fascinating seeing the gay comics scene inJapanfirsthand. The artists in our book definitely participate in plenty of conventions including Comiket, Booket, Kemoket (a furry-themed convention), and Yaro Fest. Because of the aforementioned privacy issues, photos are generally forbidden at these conventions. Unlike in the States, the stores that carry gay comics in Japan are mainly gay sex shops. Those all-male environments aren't always friendly to female fans, but on the other hand they help put manga at the forefront of Japanese gay culture. Many gay bars in Japan also have a small library of manga and gay magazines. I'd love to see American gay bars start buying queer comics too!
(A flexing Graham)
DR: Scanned images of the artist's manga has proven to be a problem for just about all the artists. How can people in America, who want to support the artists, purchase their work?
GK: Many of the artists sell their work online these days through platforms including Pixiv's BOOTH, Digiket, and the Big Gym Data Market. I always try to include links to where you can purchase the work when I post on Tumblr, and I have a handy resource of links to gay manga artists' pages here: http://gaymanga.tumblr.com/artists
When in doubt, try reaching out to the artists on Facebook or Twitter and asking how you can purchase their work!
DR: How would you characterize the differences between Japan's gay community and America's?
GK: They're so unique in so many ways, but also so intertwined. On the surface level, there's more fragmentation in the physical spaces of Japanese gay life. Tokyo's gay neighborhood, Shinjuku Ni-Chome, has over 100 bars servicing the LGBTQ community in the area. While Ni-chome has a few bigger dance clubs, the average bar is pretty tiny, with maybe enough room for a dozen people or less. This produces an atmosphere of compartmentalization, where each bar serves a different micro-niche, but also an atmosphere of intimacy, where the bartenders take on more of an entertainer role and each bar has its core group of regulars.
DR: There appears to be a wide range of genre's and themes in many manga. What are some of the other genres that you discovered in Japan that you think American's might find appealing, or at least interesting? Was there anything that shocked you completely?
GK: I'm really interested in lesbian manga, sometimes called rezu or yuri, futanari manga that plays with gender in unique ways and newhalf manga with real-world transgender themes. There's plenty of fascinating stuff to be found in all genres of manga! Nothing really shocks me anymore, but I do get creeped out by the sexualized depictions of minors in the "lolicon" and "shota" genres.
DR: There are some obvious censorship regulations inJapanwith their adult material. How does their gay adult industry work compared to America's, especially since homosexuality still has a stigma attached to it?
GK: The creators of adult content in Japan, whether drawn or photographic, live under the constant threat of criminal indictment. For over a century, there's been an ill-defined "Obscenity" statute on the books that has been selectively used to prosecute queers and female artists at the whim of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Most artists and publishers self-censor out of fear of running astray of the law, which accounts for the black bars and pixelation applied to erotic content of all kinds. I've written about a few instances of censorship on the Gay Manga tumblr here: http://gaymanga.tumblr.com/tagged/obscenity
DR: Many of the artists expressed wanting to tell stories that don't concentrate so much on erotic situations, with the prolific popularity of non-pornographic Yaoi and Yuri titles, why are these artists unable to make more mainstream series?
GK: Until now, gay manga has mainly been marketed in adult spaces like magazines that include photographic pornography, and sold in gay sex shops. As a result, fans have come to expect erotica from the genre, even if it's a self-published work. However, gay mangaka like Kuro Nohara and Sansuke Yamada have played outside the traditional erotica mold, and even Gengoroh Tagame is writing his first (and wildly successful) manga for an all-ages audience, published in the mainstream magazine Monthly Action. But some artists just love drawing erotica! (And we love reading it). I do foresee will be more experimentation in non-erotic content in the future.
DR: What are some upcoming projects or titles we can expect to see from you & Massive-Goods.com?
GK: We're currently working on a suite of t-shirts by Jiraiya, Tagame and Seizoh Ebisubashi. There is more collaboration with Opening Ceremony and other fashion brands. We want to try digital publishing and see if we can deliver manga directly from the artists to the fans. Anne's been translating loads of gay manga for Bruno Gmunder. And we will be bringing more gay mangaka out toNorth Americathis year!
Find out more about Graham Kolbeins at his website: http://grahamkolbeins.com
Be sure to find more Massive merchandise at Massive-Goods.com.
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