Weekly Discoveries 04.10.2015 – Justin Hager and Berserk

Alex

Berserk

I’d like to preface this week’s discovery with a statement: I am not what you would call a “manga fan.” Sure, I read Dragonball in middle school and watched Cowboy Bebop in high school, but Japanese comics and/or animation are generally not my thing. This past week, however, I played through Bloodborne, the latest offering from From Software, the Japanese video game studio behind the Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls video games. Fans of the Souls games know that the series’ creator Hidetaka Miyazaki draws a ton of inspiration from Berserk, a Japanese manga introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I saw a ton of references to the manga popping up on the Bloodborne subreddit so, starving for anything related to Bloodborne and the other Souls games, I picked up the manga’s first volume. The story follows Guts, a wandering mercenary who hunts down monsters known as the “Apostles” (sound familiar?). It’s every bit as demented and unforgiving as the games it has inspired, and I’m loving every minute of it.

[separator style_type=”single” top_margin=”40″ bottom_margin=”40″ sep_color=”” icon=”” width=”” class=”” id=””]

Mahlon

Justin Hager

I actually stumbled upon Justin’s work late last year, but had forgotten to mention it here until now. His work focuses on wordplay and mashups utilizing pop-culture references. Here are a couple of my favorites. Feast your eyes and take it all in:

He produces new content pretty regularly. You can check out a good chunk of it on his Instagram.