Thursday, January 24, 2008

Vertigo Pop Tokyo 1, page 10

I love this page from Vertigo Pop Tokyo. If you have ever been shopping in Japan you know that the image at the top center is not really exaggerated, just seen from the eyes of an outsider: the girls in uniforms shouting absurdly polite greetings to passers-by, and handing out fans with words written in English but not as English speakers would ever use them. ("Video Duck" is certainly a Seth-made term. He always thought "Duck" was funny: both the word and the bird. Wasn't it a duck on the Groucho Marx show that came down on a string to bring the secret word? Seth was a great fan of Groucho.)
So this page follows Seth's Tip 25: Find the center of interest on your page and make sure something interesting is happening there. In this case, something interesting visually is happening, with all the TV monitors in the background showing the identical picture, and the girls in the foreground alike but not alike with their carton of fans. But the interest is also the same interest as a "gaijin" (foreigner) in Japan would have at the pecularities of the culture. And at the same time, Seth was amusing himself with words, or rather one word: "duck", repeated over and over.

1 comment:

j_ay said...

Also interesting about the monitors is that Seth actually drew each monitor (possible light boarding the original) and gave each (at least each column) a tiny little difference. A reward to those paying attention.
The lazy artist (or “artist”) would write “stat” in each area and have a computer person insert the image from the previous screen.

Nice to know Seth got a kick out of Groucho.
And thanks for the clip, funny stuff.
Ducks indeed. Groucho ducks, Duck Soup, Daffy and Donald, etc.