“If you’re interested in trippy, hippie shit and like weird manga, this is the book you were seeking. It’s also beautifully designed, and the work is presented in a friendly and pretty way.” — Nick Gazin, Vice
“To pick up the latest issue of Garo and see a new Maki work felt like opening a door onto another world. When you opened that door, a new special wind rushed in, from who knew where. It filled my lungs and made me feel like fresh blood coursed through my body.” — Murakami Haruki
Breakdown Press are once again very excited to announce that we’ll be releasing Ding Dong Circus and other stories 1967-1974 by the great avant-garde Japanese artist Sasaki Maki in a br and new edition this May.
This collection presents the best of Sasaki Maki’s work, mainly from alt-manga super magazine Garo. Drawn between 1967 and 1974, the fifteen stories here follow Sasaki’s groundbreaking exploration of collage methods in comics storytelling, weaving through references to R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, the Vietnam War, Andy Warhol, the Summer of Love, the Beatles, British humour, and the wacky world of Japanese consumerism. Ding Dong Circus demonstrates what manga fans already knew: that in Sasaki Maki, Japan can claim not only a pioneer in experimental comics, but one of the world’s masters of Pop Art and a trenchant avant-garde critic of the Sixties.
