Boat Life GN (2022 Floating World Comics) comic books
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Published Nov 2022 by Floating World Comics.$20.00
Volume 1 - 1st printing.
Story and Art by Tadao Tsuge.
Serialized between 1996 and 2000, Boat Life stars novelist Tsuda Kenta, a lightly veiled stand-in for the artist, Tsuge Tadao, himself, as he pursues a life of reprieve and reverie on a small, makeshift house boat on a river outside of Tokyo.
Based loosely on the artist's own daily life, this charming story follows the hapless protagonist on a series of magical absurdist quests, featuring a panoply of personable characters, including a drunkard fisherman, a pervy monk, a talking corpse, a senile hermit, and a half-supportive, half-doubtful wife and adult son!
Softcover, 6-in., x 8-in., 324 pages, B&W.
Cover price $24.95. -
Issue #2-1ST
Published Jul 2026 by Floating World Comics.This item is not in stock at MyComicShop. If you use the "Add to want list" tab to add this issue to your want list, we will email you when it becomes available.
Volume 2 - 1st printing. Story and Art by Tadao Tsuge. Boat Life returns in Volume 2, with novelist Tsuda Kenta continuing to meander between home life, the family jeans shop, and days of solitude on the river. Among this graphic novel's colorful cast of friends, we meet a former manga artist who dives for curiously-shaped stones and sells them from a riverside hut, and an eager producer intent on a film adaptation of one of Tsudas novels. Unfortunately, Tsudas health is deteriorating. He learns from the doctor that his liver was damaged by working at a blood bank when he was young. But Kenta continues his dream boat life, while obsessed by an enormous fish. Don't miss the raucous night of Tsuda and his buddies boozing at a local temple. You'll be hard-pressed to find a more honest account in comics of how Japanese felt about life during and after World War II. While fans of Trash Market and Slum Wolf will enjoy this late-career elaboration of aprs-guerre themes Tsuge has been exploring since his debut in the legendary alt-manga magazine Garo in the late 1960s, fans of his brother Tsuge Yoshiharu's The Man Without Talent will appreciate the more relaxed and optimistic take on middle-aged reclusion and the grind of work and family. Softcover, 6-in., x 8-in., 296 pages, B&W. Teen+ Cover price $29.95.
