T!M. Finney :: 80s & Up Vertigo

Anthony Bourdain's Get Jiro p. 4 by Langdon Foss

Artists: Langdon Foss (Penciller) , Anthony Bourdain (Writer) , Joel Rose (Writer)

1 Comment - 750 Views - 0 Like

Anthony Bourdain's Get Jiro p. 4 by Langdon Foss Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	Anthony Bourdain's Get Jiro p. 4 by Langdon Foss
Artist:	Langdon Foss (Penciller)
Artist:	Anthony Bourdain (Writer)
Artist:	Joel Rose (Writer)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Interior Page
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	750
Likes on CAF:	0 1
Comments:	1
Added to Site:	12/13/2017
Comic Art Archive:

Description

A couple of years back, Vertigo put out a graphic novel which I found fairly amusing called "Get Jiro." It is kind of like a Japanese cooking manga set inside a science fiction novel about class warfare (Los Angeles is walled off from the outside world, but instead of the hellish prison of "Escape from L.A." holding its felons in, it has become a foodie-version of Ayn Rand's Galt's Gulch wherein the undesirables are kept out).

These and a few other things are the entrees. The main course follows Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" fairly faithfully. However, instead of a ronin, played by Toshiro Mifune, arriving in a small town where competing crime lords vie for supremacy to the detriment of the regular citizenry, we get an immigrant Japanese sushi chef with a secret past and a few anger-management issues, caught between the machinations of two ruthless chefs with different culinary philosophies.

When I came to Japan, I already knew that the number of genres of manga was extensive, but still, some things surprised me. Sometimes the genres perplexed me. For instance, there were several manga about cooking with titles like "Kodoku no Gourmet," and "Cooking Papa." I never bought one, but you'd find copies of them in barbershops, cafes, and the like. These types of manga were meticulous in the details of the history and presentation of the many dishes around which their stories were crafted.

Anthony Bourdain, the late celebrity chef and TV host who was something of a Japanophile, said in an interview that he had come across the cooking manga, "Oishinbo." After reading it, he got the idea to combine a violent samurai/yakuza drama with the accurate sourcing and preparation of food found in the manga. To help him realize his vision, he teamed up with comic book writer, Joel Rose, and artist, Langdon Foss.

Foss' work is highly detailed and, in some ways, similar to how Seth Fisher would mix Japanese and European comic book art styles. The way he draws human characters reminds me a bit of Naoki Urasawa with maybe a bit of Los Bros. Hernandez thrown in (or maybe not; I'm not always good with such things), but it is the meticulous drawings of the places his characters inhabit and the food these characters prepare and eat that made reading this book a rather unique experience.

Coming late to the modern OA scene, I only recently found some of Foss' pages on Felix Lu's site. Since the graphic novel came out in 2012, most of the better pages had been picked over when I came to them. And, sure, it would have been fun to come across a scene where Jiro decapitates a customer who dares request a California Roll, or who stirs wasabi into their soy sauce. However, that stuff was the book's pickled-ginger garnish. For me, it came down to picking either a two-page sequence of Jiro eating a homemade meal in a down-and-dirty French restaurant or this page showing him waiting for customers to enter his sushi restaurant. I finally chose the latter because sushi is such a part of the culture in which I live.

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	Timothy Finney
Joined:	August 2006
Last Login:	September 2025
Country:	JAPAN
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Jeff Singh
Member Since 2004

Posted on 12/14/2017

Great summary of a fun book. I got to the art first so I actually have the decapitation page which follows shortly after your page. Langdon Foss and Seth Fisher were good friends and grew together as artists so their influences on each other comes through in their style.

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