Look, I get it. Most of you aren’t comic book readers. It’s a genre still too stigmatized to be really acknowledged or embraced by most. Though I think we’ll all talk about the medium’s merits when it comes to youth literacy, I think any discussion of comics will end there. And as much as you may not be interested in them, there’s one we need to spend some time looking at. It’s a collection of manga (gasp). It’s called New Engineering.

Yuichi Yokoyama doesn’t draft narratives or tell stories in any traditional sense. Each story is a basic exploration of a specific theme or motif. Take the collection’s first story, “Book,” for instance [image above]: over the course of 18 pages, Yokoyama provides a near wordless fight that takes place in a library. No explanation of the source of conflict. No descriptions of protagonists or antagonists. Nothing but the essence of a fight. However, as the pages go by, it becomes clear that Yokoyma is establishing a clear grammar for how action is expressed. The text is difficult. Sure, there are only sound effects as far as actual words (these being translated at the bottom of the page beautifully: “BIRA BIRA BIRA sound of paper falling” or “DOSU DOSU sound of swords going into tatami mat”), but the reading of the story took me far longer than other comic books, graphic novels, etc. Seriously, this book of almost no text has a huge importance on my understanding of literacy. A great analysis of the fighting sequences in the collection can be found here.

More thrilling are the four Engineering stories included in the collection. Again a simple premise: people building stuff. However each page shows an entire world or ecology being constructed. First a machine rolling down extreme rock shards, or flooding an area, or building a huge pile of blocks. Next, individuals insert trees or roll out a huge tarmac of earth, or paint the details of a river, or who knows what. Being involved understanding the logic within each Engineering endeavor is thrilling. Where are these being built? What is the purpose? I am reminded of Zoom for no particular reason.

At the end of this collection, Yokoyama provides a sparse commentary for each story. These too only add to the allure of the minimalist yet dense collection:

BOOK
I wanted to explore the appeal of the formal qualities of the book, as an obect made of layers of paper. By throwing books, the protagonist is able to make his escape from assailants, who have their swords drawn. The book overcomes the sword.

Or

ENGINEERING 4
In a barren area in the middle of noweher, spring water begins flowing, and eventually becomes a river. Only the sound of construction and water are audible in this uninhabited land.

Or

WHEEL
People riding spinning wheels are falling form a building. There is a flower garden on the roof of the building. The buildings in this area seem to be built either on moats or on water.

Notice in this last one the emphasis on “seem.” I’m thrilled by this uncertainty. Often times I’m not entirely sure what is happening in a given panel or even whole series of pages. There’s a dream-like quality that nestles in these pages.

When I wrote more about music, in the past, I was usually drawn to the kinds of artists that created genres and lyrics and compositions that inhabited their own spaces. Tom Waits never ventures far out of a world of tin cans and calliopes that is truly his own. Likewise, Robyn Hitchcock is constantly identifying the taxonomy and politics of a world of fungus and vegetables and idyllic perversion. Deerhoof dabble in a form of pop music that is all too much their own. And can someone please explain Cliff Edwards to me? Amazing. In any case, Yokoyama illustrates the everyday actions and lifestyles of a world that’s not our own. It’s an intense process that continues to reveal the intricacies of our own lives. As a comic artist, there is no specific commentary or ideology being prescribed beyond the SHURURURURU or MOKU MOKU MOKU of constructed landscapes. But then again, I can’t imagine any other comics that so mordantly succeed at making the “invisible visible.”

Excellent! Looks like there is another Yokoyama book coming out next month.

[note: the images here are cribbed from places on the unreliable world of the ‘nets. Sorry in advance for when they slowly become big red x’s.]