Cigarette Girl is a collection of short manga (Japanese comics) pieces by Masahiko Matsumoto from the early 1970s. Matsumoto was working here in the gekiga genre, with an ambition towards more dramatic and artistic work (as opposed to comics aimed at children).
Most of the stories in this collection are far from heavy, though. Matsumoto gives us slice-of-life vignettes and miniature urban dramas — lightly humorous, gently romantic, and unassumingly poetic. There's a sweetness and humanity that Matsumoto shows his characters, and us by proxy. And there's a lot of unrequited love, eating, and blushing.
These are the moments that add up together to make life, warm in his simplicity and understatement.
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SFR Galaxy Awards' pick for Best Sci-fi Romance Webcomic of 2016, my comic Flesh Machine, continues at michaelavolio.com, where I'll post new pages sometime after getting home from work tonight. It's not exactly the most romantic bit of the story, so it clashes a bit with today being Valentine's Day, but what can ya do? I dunno, maybe read the new pages tomorrow morning in the cold light of day if you want to go to sleep happy tonight like some kind of weirdo.
Thanks for reading...
Michael Avolio
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