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Draft2Digital
draft2digital
Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: draft2digital
Type: Fiction
Pages: 134
Copyright: 2025
ISBN-13: 9798231544387
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Subtitled Analysis of a Sub-literary Cause Célèbre herein a book within a book, a metamorphic tale, a mongrelisation. Herein a history atop a history, Son & Daughter of O/V tells, with only descriptions of the pictures, of a comic book character's growth, his adventures and changes upon Earth and in space.
A book within a book Son & Daughter of O/V purports to be an analysis of, and a page by page description of a fictional graphic novel, child of time. Soon after its first publication child of time got condemned by a quasi religious group and copies publicly burnt. Defenders of free speech came to the book's defence. In the ensuing brouhaha the child of time's author, having published the novel privately under a nom de plume, had his real identity 'exposed' and his studio/office attacked. To be left in peace he gave up all rights to the book, let whoever wanted to copy and publish. Other groups took sides and many of these new copies continued to get burnt, bringing yet more freethinkers to the novel's defence. It is one of the unburnt copies of child of time that is in Son & Daughter of O/V having its drawings and text page by page analysed and described....
Excerpt
Page 3 has a full length drawing of an archetypal Japanese schoolgirl – short pleated tartan skirt, calf-length socks, flat shoes and white blouse.
She has one arm outstretched, about to push open a glass and metal shop door. Could be a café door. And she has turned, full face on, as if someone has caught her attention. One small line indicates her nose, another her closed mouth. Typical large round eyes look out from under a ragged fringe.
Part-turned the pull of the girl's blouse hints at the possible bulge of a pubescent breast. Take that in conjunction with the preternaturally long white shanks emerging from the tartan skirt's pleats, and in just this one drawing are all the usual hints of manga's erotic potentialities.
The street retreats from her in faint architectural lines.
Over that depiction of girl and street has been 'placed' a finger-width and metallic looking circle, its outer edge touching both sides of the page. A diagonal bar, same width, cuts across the drawing of the girl.
Below the circle and attached to it is a rectangular box. A road sign warning of dangers ahead it has pressed into the box the letters NOT MANGA. Like the circle this rectangular box is also lit to look as if stamped out of a metal sheet.
The new reader, one supposes, is to take from this that child of time is not to be read as Japanese originals of the graphic novel, where the spine is placed to the right and one reads the book from right to left. I should think though, that having already got just this far with child of time – the top-to-bottom cover having told the prospective reader which way up the book should be held – even the most imperceptive of readers would be aware that the spine is to the left,and that the novel has to be read from left to right.
More likely what is intended to be presumed from the 'NOT MANGA' is that there will be no more suggestive drawings of pubescent schoolgirls with their round eyes of innocence, no sleaze-like hints at unawakened sexuality, no curved crease of buttocks or almost-peeked up short skirts. If child of time's reputation is to be believed, and if there is sex depicted here, the assumption has to be that it will be explicit.
This same page has apparently been a regular feature in other graphic novels by this author/artist regardless of his/her nom de plume.
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