The Troublemakers by Baron Yoshimoto

A collection of some of the best stories by Baron Yoshimoto, one of the Japanese manga artists who helped develop the graphic novel form in the 1960s and 1970s by targeting an older audience with scintillating and exquisitely drawn stories about class, gender, ethnicity, and race. With an essay by noted manga historian and translator Ryan Holmberg. The stories included are “Eriko’s Happiness”, “High School Brawler’s Ditty”, “Insect”, “The Gambling Stripper”, “Nostalgia”, and “The Girl and the Black Soldier”. Baron Yoshimoto grew up in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, and helped build the graphic novel boom in the 1960s and 1970s. When he was at the height of his popularity, he concluded all of his serializations and suddenly left for the United States. In 1985, he returned to Japan and began to produce paintings, launching a new and innovative style. He has received critical praise for his painted works, where he uses the name Ryu Manji. Website: baron-yoshimoto.jp/ Twitter: @baronyoshimoto The Troublemakers is translated from the original Japanese by Ryan Holmberg, an art and comics historian whose many translations include Yuichi Yokoyama's World Map Room, Osamu Tezuka's Mysterious Underground Men, and Tsuge Tadao's Trash Market. More writing by Ryan Holmberg: tcj.com/author/ryan-holmberg/ 248 black & white pages with some color, 5.75x8.25 inches (14.6x20.9 cm), softcover graphic novel Debuting May 2018 at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival Reviews: The AV Club