Garo and Heta-uma × Story Manga

The polished, screentoned, formula-paneled commercial manga is the exact norm heta-uma rejects.

From the research on Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration)

Mix them and make something Garo and Heta-uma Story Manga

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Garo and Heta-uma, their arrangement from Story Manga, the finish from Story Manga. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration) Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)

Type from Garo and Heta-uma: Hand-lettering
Colour from Story Manga: Monochrome
Light ground
Form from Garo and Heta-uma: Distortion & exaggeration
Stylised figuration
Composition from Story Manga: Framed panels
Broken grid
Surface from Story Manga: Halftone & Ben-Day dots

Garo and Heta-uma avoids halftone & ben-day dots: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Garo and Heta-uma

Hello

Londrina Solid; Garo and Heta-uma used Uneven hand-drawn katakana and hiragana lettering inside the drawing and Hand-lettered Garo titles and credits in brush and pen

Text · Story Manga

The black-and-white narrative comic of postwar Japan, from Tezuka Osamu's Shin Takarajima (1947) to the weekly boys' magazines of 1959 and 1968 and the paperbacks that collect them. Pages read right to left; panels change size and slant, bleed off the page and are broken by figures, cutting like film. Grey comes from dot screentone; motion and feeling from speed lines, focus lines and a codified set of symbols. Dialogue runs vertically in tall balloons, sound effects are drawn into the picture, and big-eyed, simplified characters act against detailed backgrounds.

Shippori Mincho; Story Manga used Anchi-goshi balloon setting and Fine Mincho balloon setting

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Story Manga, with a counter-accent from Garo and Heta-uma. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration) Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)

#f6f3ea ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#d32f2f accent · 18%
#cfcfcf accent · 14%
#8a8478 accent · 10%
#4d4d4d accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f6f3ea;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #d32f2f;
  --accent-2: #cfcfcf;
  --accent-3: #8a8478;
  --accent-4: #4d4d4d;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics): Manga characters and series, from Astro Boy to Dragon Ball and One Piece, are in copyright and belong to their creators and publishers, and manga is the living work of professional artists and assistants: draw original characters in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for a named series, character or artist's hand, and label generated pages as AI-made rather than presenting them as a manga artist's work. Some of Tezuka's own books drew foreigners, including Black Africans and Asians, in exaggerated caricature; after protests from September 1990 by the Osaka-based Association to Stop Racism Against Blacks, Tezuka Productions put a disclaimer slip into his books. Give every character the same drawing care, and never use skin, lips or dress as ethnic shorthand.