Your Mother's A Tracer

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 15, 2006 4:24PM

Kyra Kyles takes a break from writing about the trials and tribulations of CTA riders and turns her attention to geek culture and comics. Specifically, manga.

The rise in popularity of these art forms comes as no surprise to Chicagoist since we hung out with the dudes who were into it in college. Well, “hung out with” might be a little strong. “Borrowed their bootlegged copies of Red Dwarf” might be more apropos. The piece delicately touches on some of the more salacious brands of manga out there. We won’t go into it here but…well, there are tentacles involved. Yeeagh.

While we're on the subject of comics, we saw this article in the Near West Gazette on Bridgeport comic artist Jose “Nino” Mesarina. Mesarina is the creator of Unbelievable Laundry Detergent Man, a character that lives and fights crime on Morgan Street. He pencils and inks (traces?) the comic himself and even has to deal with gang members taking umbrage at their portrayal. You can see more of Mesarina’s work at his website 209studiocomics.com.

Finally, we’d like to give a shout-out to a Friend of Chicagoist, Scott Carlson, and his comic Out Of My Head. His strip appears weekly in the Columbia Chronicle newspaper and has garnered awards from the Columbia University Cold Circle and the Illinois College Press Association. Archives appear on the Out Of My Head blog found here.