The Artbook Review #1 - Cuties

By M.S. Feather November 18, 2010 5 Comments

128 pages.
Edition: Hardcover.
By M.P. Works, 2003.
 
Let me take you back, back to the swingin' '60's!  Now, imagine a young Japanese man hunched over his table, slaving away at dozens of comic panels to make his next deadline...

Yeah, that's the one!
 
Monkey Punch (real name Kazuhiko Kato) has been in the professional art trade for almost fifty years.  His style a devious mix of Sergio Aragonés and Haddon Sundblom.  Sex and violence is the name of the game and as you‘re about to see no one plays it better...  

Cuties is a collection of his classic pin-up work spanning 1967-‘76, a full decade of his trademark femme fatales.  The book is broken down into three sections; ‘Cuties’, 'Cuties & Beasts' and ‘Cuties as Comic Heroines’.  The ‘Cuties’ segment is an assortment of solo shots of women in interesting and compromising positions (let your imaginations soar!).  ‘Cuties & Beasts’ is an even more entertaining chapter and my personal favorite, of a few misleadingly dainty ladies taking out men (or beasts) in increasingly creative ways.  The final segment is a small assortment of the women from his various comic series featuring characters such as Fujiko ( Lupin III), June and Naomi (Siamese Cat).

Wicked, witty and one of a kind, Monkey Punch is my favorite artist from the east not solely for his skill or style as much as for the content

of his work.  He’s a storyteller as much as he is an artist and even in his singular pieces this secondary talent often shines through.  His work may be a tad outrageous for some but others will only see a compilation of work that never ceases to be entertaining.  For these

reasons and more, Cuties remains the crown jewel of my collection and I’m honored to have shared some of it with you.  

Hopefully this has sparked an interest in some of you to check out the artist and some of his other work.


 
 
~M.S.

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