1983 Past Life Manga King

Chapter 20

Park Sang-sik, who was having breakfast in the room, quickly swallowed the rice he had put in his mouth and cleared the table.

“Eat slowly. What a great person you are.”

“Still, that’s not it. By the way, you just came.”

“Why?”

“I got a call last night.”

“Communication? where?”

“In the studio of another cartoonist other than Hyeongseok Kang. It’s a studio run by a cartoonist named Jeon Sang-gil, and he’s quite well known in the script room.

I am also a cartoonist who remembers.

There are not many works left, so he did not see a few works, but he knew very well that he was an active artist around 1980. Of course, there are no masterpieces that will be known to future generations, but he was a mid-level writer who was consistently hitting the mark.

“How did you know that I contacted you?”

“He knew well about our previous work, the Gomtangi series. You’ve probably heard it from your students. Cartoonists are connected here and there, but so are the students. Perhaps the story flowed out among the students of Professor Hyung-seok Kang.”

“Ah.”

“The teacher wanted to see us in his studio. She asked if she could come by herself.”

“okay?”

“Huh. I guess I’ll leave the story to you. I work steadily, but honestly, there aren’t any hits like this, so it seems like I’m looking for a good one.”

“Are you a manga artist specializing in scriptwriting?”

“uh. right. The publishing house seems to be pushing it, but I heard that the number of students has increased a lot recently. First of all, we met and talked about the story amount. What would you like?”

It’s not a bad opportunity even compared to Kang Hyung-seok.

I guess I was lucky that it didn’t tangle than I thought.

I nodded my head right away.

“I need to meet you.”

“What do you think about the story manuscript fee?”

“Well, we can meet and decide. I don’t know what the outcome will be anyway.”

“By the way, is there a story to start anew? So far, I’ve only written the Gomtangi series, but it’s very burdensome to suddenly move on to another story.

Park Sang-sik made a face of being burdened.

Maybe it’s because I decided that I should have at least one decent story before we met. In fact, the story we were making was all about the Gomtang series, so it’s natural to be worried.

I was in trouble for a while.

To be honest, there are countless interesting stories, and all of the famous works of unpublished authors are in my head.

If necessary, it can also bring out future blockbuster works.

However, I decided to distinguish the era and the environment.

In 1983, at a time when the script was dominant, would it be effective if we took the best Japanese manga decades from now? Rather, the times and circumstances are so different that it might just be buried.

I believe that money is important, but in order for masterpieces to come out, they need to be well-versed in the times and environment. And I don’t want those works to disappear just as they are consumed because of greed for money.

It may sound like a silly idea, but I am living my life realizing how attractive it is to be creative while working with Park Sang-sik recently.

As a result, the thought of making money by copying famous works in the future almost disappeared from my mind for a long time.

In the past, when my father’s business went bankrupt and my house was ruined, thanks to that, I also learned to be in vain with money.

If you have the ability to earn a certain amount of money, wouldn’t it be better to do something you can convince yourself rather than money after that?

Of course, many things can change as long as I’m involved.

The existing work may come out in a different form, or it may not appear at all. However, knowing the future, I cannot hope that nothing will change as long as I intervene, nor do I want to worry about that.

However, I’m just trying to avoid it as much as possible.

As long as I haven’t reached the stage of creating my own story yet, I think the best way for now is to mix and match the many stories in my head.

Speaking of going too far, I decided to start with Soje, who was riding the boom in this era.

“How about corporate cartoons?”

“Corporate comics? Are you talking about the chaebols or the presidents of large corporations?”

“It’s good to start from the bottom and succeed.”

“Oh, you mean something like Park Yong-sung’s ‘21-year-old chaebol’?”

“uh. That’s fine too.”

“It’s good, but what do you know about that side?”

“a little.”

Actually, I’m not very picky when it comes to comics. Of course, I also watched a lot of political and corporate cartoons in the 80s. But honestly, for a cartoon that was popular at the time, there aren’t a lot of facts that have been properly verified.

The same was true for sports.

At this time, there were not many experts in a specific field, but since there was no information exchange through the Internet, the overall expertise was inevitably shallow. Therefore, it was judged that only a certain amount of investigation was sufficient.

And since I have a lot of knowledge through comics, the subject matter is not particularly important.

Anyway, Park Sang-sik is still worried about my words.

Of course it will.

In fact, the period when corporate comics flourished in earnest is from the time when Park Yong-seong’s blockbuster work ’21-year-old chaebol’ was released. Because of this, the system was not properly organized.

It would be a bit scary to jump in blindly.

“Do you have any stories in mind?”

“Well, a little.”

I didn’t think of it in advance, but something I came up with improvised.

The thought that popped into my head right now was how to make a cartoon in the style of ‘Tae-Rang Kim if Salary’, which will be serialized in Shueisa’s ‘Weekly Young Jump’ in about 10 years from now, exactly in 1994.

In fact, in the case of Kim Tae-rang, although it was a cartoon in the 90s, it was made with the sensibility of the 70s and 80s, and it was a huge hit that year, and it was made into a movie, an anime, and a game.

In any case, it is a cartoon running on the pole of macho, frankly showing a nonsensical development where coincidences and coincidences overlap each other, but it gained immense popularity due to its unique passionate feeling and the development that seems to be caught in madness.

In this day and age, considering that the main readers of the script are men in their 20s or older, this is a development that will work well enough.

Of course, the plot itself has absolutely nothing to do with Kim Tae-rang, but if you mix the good episodes with the unique macho feeling and madness, a pretty good work will come out.

In addition, there was a boom in the construction industry at this time, so if the background is a construction company, the situation is similar to that of Tae-Rang Kim.

The story of the main character, born as a late child, leaving his parents and coming down to the city to work on a construction site, where he takes care of a colleague’s child due to an accident and succeeds in a reckless challenge.

In reality, it is a story that lacks probability and lacks professionalism.

However, it is important to note that this style was clearly working at this time. Whether it is probability or workability, these things are not important.(Read more @ wuxiax.com)

It’s just important to create what the reader wants.

“I’ll give you a rough background, so listen and think about it.”

“Okay.”

I started to explain to Park Sang-sik the overall composition and background, the main character’s tendencies, and the basic episodes that would take place around him.

At first, Park Sang-sik listened silently, but as the story went on, he showed considerable interest, and soon turned into excitement.

Park Sang-sik seemed to be taking it with interest, even though he was talking about a story he had seen somewhere, packed with clichés.

“Ah, then, it would be nice to meet a successful businessman who became a relationship there. To be successful, you will need to roll from the bottom up.”

“You have to taste the humiliation. It would be even better if I was humiliated by a second generation chaebol that I will never forget.

“Oh, that’s good. right. It’s such a good progression.”

“Don’t forget, the main character is a human with a macho tendency. Anything can be solved with persistence. Madness is important.”

“It’s madness… is it like the feeling of an alien club in hell?”

“It’s kind of a gloomy feeling, somehow. This one is a bit brighter.”

Park Sang-sik and I started talking to each other in an exciting way and making it steadily.

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Manga Factory (1)

next day.

As usual in the morning, when I enter Park Sang-sik’s room, he is asleep, sniffing his nose excitedly.

I force myself to wake up, but I barely wake up.

“Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep because I was putting together your story again.”

“Ugh, it’s not even a story that needs to be completed, so why do it?”

“It was so much fun that I didn’t even know it.”

It seems that Heaven is also a storyteller.

This person is more talented than I thought.

He’s having a hard time, but he always enjoys making new stories.

Anyway, as soon as Park Sang-sik woke up, he frantically washed his face, and simply crumpled the bread he had bought in advance in his mouth, and set off with me to the studio of a cartoonist named Jeon Sang-gil.

The studio was not far from the house, but unlike the village where Kang Hyung-seok’s studio was located, it was located near a rather prosperous downtown.

The studio was located on the second floor of a three-story building.

As we enter, someone greets us.

The room is bigger than expected.

“Come here.”

“Good morning. Teacher.”

Oh, this guy is the best.

He has a shaggy beard and tired eyes.

“Um, is this your friend making a story together?”

When she looked at me and asked, she bowed her head.

“Good morning. This is Yunhwan Lee.”

He nods his head as he greets me.

“Nice to meet you. I am the way forward.”

He led us to the sofa in the center.

One of the staff puts coffee in front of us.

Jeon Sang-gil pulled out a cigarette and handed it to us.

Park Sang-sik nodded his head, feeling nervous, and took a cigarette with both hands.

He offered it to me right away, but I refused.

“I quit smoking.”

“Oh, right? great.”

Saying so, he puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it.

In the meantime, I sit and look around the studio.

It seems that there are about 15 students who work here. Seeing that there are so many students, this place seems to be returning to the center of the main office, as I heard from Park Sang-sik.

I looked around and asked Jeon Sang-gil.

“There are a lot of people here.”

He exhaled the cigarette smoke he had been holding in and answered.

“This is not all.”

“Isn’t that all?”

“This is Team B.”

“Team B?”

“Do you know what Team B is?”

I nodded at his question.

“I know.”

Team A is directly managed by the cartoonist, and Team B is a team created by a separate drawing man, although they go out under the name of the cartoonist.

To put it simply, Team B uses the name of the cartoonist, but actually someone else draws it.

From around 1983, when ‘Hell’s Alien Club’ hit the jackpot and small-script comics were activated in earnest, comic books that had been completed as short as 3-5 volumes began to gradually become feature-length.

In addition, customers’ desire to see interesting cartoons quickly was added, so it was a time when an atmosphere was being created that a large amount of cartoons had to be made quickly.

And the cartoonist who ignited the war in earnest was Park Yong-seong from Busan.

He hit the jackpot as a chaebol 21-year-old, signaling the start of a full-fledged factory cartoon.

In its heyday, there were more than 10,000 script offices across the country, and in a word, it was a battlefield for cartoonists who could fight over quantity.

It was a time when these cartoonists were so-called factory managers.

Of course, I’ve only seen this in books, but it was the first time I’d seen it in person.

Anyway, Jeon Sang-gil looks at me as if it was a surprise.

However, Park Sang-sik looked back at me as if he was surprised.

“Are you more optimistic about the circumstances of the manga industry than you think?

“Well, they came and went and picked it up.”

“I think a lot of people know.”

I just laughed at that.

“Anyway, Team A’s office is upstairs.”

Park Sang-sik and I nodded, and he immediately talked about the main point.

“Actually, I’m a little busy because the publishing house asked me to do more than 15 books a month. But, as you all know well, it’s a painting. Well, it can be solved by hiring more people. The story is different. All the well-known kids were thrown away by other cartoonists.”

In the end, they called us because they needed a story writer. Rather than just one or two stories right now, someone who lives here and writes stories.

I came here only knowing that he was a cartoonist for the script, but this place also seems to want a story writer.

“I think the story is good and it seems to be fast, so there is already a story writer for Team A, so I would like you guys to take on Team B. How about working with us for once?”

“Are you saying you want to belong?”

“It’s normal for story writers to belong to a studio, so why don’t you like it?”

“Because we are freelancers.”

“Oh yeah?”

Surprisingly, he nodded his head in agreement.

“Well, I almost heard it. If the affiliation is awkward, you can’t do it. I suggested it just in case, so don’t feel too bad.”

“No, thanks.”

“Then I’m happy. By the way, will you take the story of our B team?”

Park Sang-sik, who was standing by Jeon Sang-gil’s words, turned to me.

His expression seems to be saying, “What?”

I looked at the front of the road for a moment and asked.

“Then how much work does Team B have per month?”