#batkid — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #batkid, aggregated by home.social.
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#MangaMonday 118 “Bat Kid” by Inoue Kazuo
“Bat Kid” was the leadoff serial in the influential magazine “Manga Shōnen,” starting in 1947 (cover date Jan. 1948.) It was immediately popular, with this book collection published in June 1948. Sadly, Kazuo died young—less than a year later.
The #manga itself is a slice-of-life, which was novel at the time, about a #baseball obsessed kid named Bat. There’s a puzzle section at the end that includes a description of a baseball inning that reads like something by Ryan North.
This volume (Bubbles Zine, 2nd Ed. 2024, print only) is a gorgeous reproduction, with alternating color and monochrome spreads. The original is 107 pages, but this edition adds 62 pages of material, mostly translator Ryan Holmberg’s excellent essay on Kazuo, manga, and Japanese baseball with accompanying illustrations. I assumed that baseball in Japan was a result of American Occupation, but it dates back to the 1890s—before Honus Wagner took the field!