Post tag: anime

The 85 Weirdest, Day 21: Bill Plympton

Filed Apr 17, 2008 by Weird Tales in Features, Nonfiction, The 85 Weirdest! • Swap text color

The March/April 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

You have to love the artist who foists his particular brand of weirdness on an unsuspecting world in the sneakiest of ways. Take animator BILL PLYMPTON (1946– ), for instance. His brilliant celebrations of the body grotesque have sold you everything from tacos to operating systems. Infiltration via MTV before it sucked? Check. The ’toons even spawned a snarky comeback (“So’s your face”). “More fun than nitrous oxide!” says a guy on the Internet. We couldn’t agree more.

Bill Plympton is a guest this weekend at the New York Comic Con. Also, Friday at the NYCC: the Weird Tales 85th anniversary panel discussion, featuring Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, WT editorial director Stephen H. Segal, artist Molly Crabapple, pulp historian and horror editor Stefan Dziemianowicz, and more!


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The 85 Weirdest, Day 19: Osamu Tezuka

Filed Apr 15, 2008 by Weird Tales in Features, Nonfiction, The 85 Weirdest! • Swap text color

The March/April 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Walt Disney, Hanna & Barbera, and Alex Toth aren’t on this list — but if they had all merged into one, single, ultra-historic, gestalt super-cartoonist? Now that would be weird. And that’s OSAMU TEZUKA (1928-1989). The father of Japanese anime, Tezuka effortlessly danced back and forth over the boundaries between storytelling styles and genres, remixing them as he went, from the all-ages android allegory of Astro Boy to the more mature mythic immortality quest of Phoenix to the demonic imagery of Dororo.

What’s new: In 2008, Dororo will become the latest of Tezuka’s manga to be published in English.


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The 85 Weirdest: 1923-2008

Filed Mar 25, 2008 by Weird Tales in Nonfiction, The 85 Weirdest! • Swap text color

Readers wrote us in record numbers when we asked you who, in your book, are the weirdest of the weird: the most influentially strange authors and artists and talespinners of all kinds to work their magic on the world in the 85 years since 1923, when Weird Tales was born. We asked that you not limit your suggestions to just fiction writers, and you responded enthusiastically, naming hordes of filmmakers, songwriters, cartoonists, and more. We took your ideas, added a few of our own, called some top fantasy professionals to put in their two cents, and then dove into the long and arduous process of winnowing the list down to a mere 85 names.

Our 85th anniversary issue — featuring fiction by Michael Moorcock, Sarah Monette, and Tanith Lee, nonfiction by Cherie Priest, and Jeff VanderMeer’s interview with China Míeville, and is still available for purchase online — introduced the 85 Weirdest Storytellers individually. If one of your favorite weirdos didn’t make the list, you can share your weird and let us know! Our 90th anniversary isn’t that far away…

Meanwhile:

WEIRD TALES presents: The 85 Weirdest Storytellers 1923-2005

 

Kudos to them all: creative geniuses whose work, in whatever form and flavor, has shown an affinity of spirit with the brilliantly freaky storytelling that’s been the hallmark of Weird Tales since the magazine was born 85 years ago this very month.

(Don’t see one of your favorites here? Help us compile more weirdness! Go to the Share the Weird page and tell your fellow readers about the weird storytellers you love the most!)


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