I’ll admit that I have become obsessed with reading comics on the K Manga app on my e-reader. It’s run by Kodansha, one of the big manga publishers these days, and I’ve picked up on a handful of series that I’m really enjoying. It’s where I discovered the wonderfully written teen romance The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity, whose main characters Rintaro and Kaoruko have been showing up as pictures and gifs here over the last few months. [I’ve been enjoying that series so much I’ve been tempted to do a mini-series here about it.] Every night when I get into bed, I’ll turn on the app and catch up on a few titles.
The other night, I was thinking: y’know, I have this physical pile of books next to my bed that haven’t been picked up lately, I should probably do something about that as well instead of reading comics every night. But maybe this is part and parcel of my wanting to change up my creative outlets? Over the past several years I’d become super-picky about the novels I was picking up, and even then some of them haven’t been resonating with me as much as they used to. It’s not that they’re bad or that the latest trends aren’t speaking to me, it’s merely that I’m not feeling the spark of excitement like I used to. I’m not as voracious a reader as I was, at least not right now anyway.
So why not see this burst of interest in comics as a plus and not a minus? After all, that’s how I started reading more in the late 90s, isn’t it? During the HMV years when I suddenly decided that I would take those Wednesday drives to the comic book store every week, that sparked off a new love of reading that I hadn’t really had before. What started as a focus on just a few titles bloomed into several, which then expanded into different styles, different genres. And those, in turn, inspired my writing style and ideas.
And somewhere along the lines, I suddenly found myself interested in reading books again. It all felt fresh once more.
So perhaps it’s fine that I embrace this medium again for the time being. Reading comics like Fragrant Flower have reminded me that both inspiration and influence lie in interesting places, and it’s up to me to search for them when I need them. Perhaps now it’s time for me to learn not just the art of visual storytelling, but to learn how to see and understand things in new ways.
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