Malaysia’s The Star carries what I think is an expanded version of The Daily Yomiuri’s profile of Lupin III mangaka Monkey Punch who, at age 70, discusses digital art and the 40th anniversary of his famous creation:
After graduating from high school, he moved to Tokyo and entered an electronics vocational school, while working a part-time job and creating stories for a fanzine, which he and his friends published, and also for a publisher that specialised in rental books and magazines.
His work was discovered by an editor of Futabasha, the company behind Weekly Manga Action, for whom he created the Lupin III series, loosely based on the Arsene Lupin novel series and 007 movies. The artist’s strange pseudonym, he explains, was given to him by his editor, who compared his characters’ faces to that of a monkey.
The Lupin III manga series still continues, but Monkey Punch remains only involved as a supervisor.
“Many contemporary comic magazines are weekly. So if I had a series in the magazines, I’d have no time to do what I want – researching possible manga digitalisation projects, for example,” he says. “And quite frankly, I want Lupin III to be a series that is written by a variety of young mangaka, just like the Spider-Man series has worked as a stepping stone for cartoonists in the United States.”
To mark the 40th anniversary of Lupin III, an exhibition called Monkey Punch Gengaten: Pen to Digital is being held at Japan’s Saitama Municipal Manga Kaikan.
