Lockdown spawns humorous manga CLAMPdown book by UK Wolf man

Ian Wolf is a man with a plan

I am posting this on April Fool’s Day. But it is after midday, so all that follows is true. And today is also CLAMP Day. 

Next year, on 1st April 2022, it may be CLAMP Day 2… or it may not be. It is complicated.

A few days ago, I got an email from Ian Wolf. Although that might not be his name. It is complicated. The email was headed:

Autistic author releasing CLAMP book a-chapter-per-year for free until he finds publisher.

During the UK’s multiple COVID-19 lockdowns over the last 12 months, Ian Wolf decided to keep himself occupied by writing CLAMPdown – a humorous book about his favourite comic book artists – the all-women Japanese manga group CLAMP.

CLAMP is a group of four women who have been creating manga since the 1980s. The group consists of writer Nanase Ohkawa, artists Mokona Apapa (aka Mokona) and Mick Nekoi (aka Tsubaki Nekoi) and designer and art assistant Satsuki Igarashi. 

CLAMP in 2006 (Photo by John (Phoenix) Brown)

Their subjects range from Hindu mythology (RG Veda), ‘magical girl’ kids romance (Cardcaptor Sakura), the apocalypse (X), social commentary (Tokyo Babylon) and fantasy worlds where everything is named after a car (Magic Knight Rayearth) to lesbian sex comedy (Miyuki-chan in Wonderland). 

Frankly, in my view, you just can’t beat a good lesbian sex comedy.

Author Ian Wolf works for the British Comedy Guide website. He is their ‘Data Specialist’: 

“I write up articles for several shows,” he explains, “creating feature articles, reporting news stories, maintaining the TV and radio schedule and so forth. Probably my most famous work is collecting the reviews for all the shows during the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2015, I was given the first and only ‘Unsung Hero’ Award at the Ham Fist Prizes for my work. In 2019, I became a judge for the Increasingly Prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards.”

He also worked as an editor for the television website On The Box, having previously been a TV and radio reviewer for Giggle Beats.

Ian tries panda-ing to Eastern tastes

In early 2020, Ian also became a question writer for a couple of UK peaktime TV quiz shows Richard Osman’s House of Games and The Wall, under his real name (Ian Dunn).

He has also twice been a contestant on Mastermind – His specialist subjects were the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Bleak Expectations and the Four Gospels. 

He tells me: “I also wrote in the preface to CLAMPdown that I was a Countdown conundrum setter – but this is a mountweasel. I put in as a trap to make sure journalists are paying attention, as I later mention in the introduction that this is one show I did not work on.”

Ian is from Stockton-on-Tees and has a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, part of the autistic spectrum. 

Parallel to comedy, quizzes, Radio 4’s Bleak Expectations and entrapping unwary journalists, another area of interest for Ian is anime and manga. 

Ian as seen in Anime form…

“I wrote a Beginner’s Guide to Anime for On The Box,” he explains, “and I review it for the website Anime UK News.

He was also the manga critic for all 71 issues of MyM Magazine” (2012-18)

I said to Ian: “Just for my blog’s reader in Guatemala, explain the difference between anime and manga…”

“Anime is animation from Japan. Manga is comic books from Japan.”

He has struggled to find a publisher for CLAMPdown partly, he thinks, because of his Asperger’s Syndrome and the niche subject of his book. 

He says: “Having written a comic book (‘comic’ as in ‘funny’) about comic books (‘comic’ as in ‘graphic novel’), I have decided to go about it in a comic (‘funny’) way and so, having set up the Twitter account @clampdownbook, I want to make the publishers come to me, by publishing free entire extracts of CLAMPdown for all to read.”

Chapter 1: From Gay Guys to Genderless Gods covers the origins of CLAMP and their first commercially published work RG Veda, a series loosely based on the Vedic text the Rig Veda and focuses on Ashura, a genderless god of destruction. 

RG Veda, a series loosely based on the Vedic text

Ian says: “I am publishing one chapter of the book online, for free, until a publisher picks it up or the entire book is available for free. If I find no company willing to publish the book within a year, then I will publish Chapter 2 the same time next year.”

If a publisher is still not found, he will then publish a new chapter every year until a publisher does appear or the entire book is available for free online. As it stands, he says, “this would end in 2038, but it could become longer if CLAMP create any new works during that time. 

“Of course, I want a publisher to take an immediate interest in my work and offer me the chance to release CLAMPdown now for anyone to buy. However, if no publisher is currently interested, I’m happy to play the long game. Plus, I feel I can deal with rejection better if it is told to me gently over roughly two decades rather than straight away.”  

As well as manga comics, CLAMP’s work extends into anime TV series. The group have provided character designs for the forthcoming TV anime series Cardfight!! Vanguard overdress, which debuts on Saturday (3rd April).

One of CLAMP’s older titles, occult detective series Tokyo Babylon, was the subject of a planned TV adaptation entitled Tokyo Babylon 2021, but production was cancelled on Monday after production company GoHands reportedly committed multiple acts of plagiarism. There are plans to restart afresh.

“What is your favourite anime TV series?” I asked Ian.

“The sci-fi comedy Gurren Lagann. Think Carry On Pacific Rim – big giant robots, and at one point a woman’s bikini flies off Barbara Windsor style.”

“I will keep that image of an anime bikini flying off into the air in my mind for some considerable time,” I told him.

“In anime and manga,” Ian emphasised to me, “there is something for everyone.”

The drunken death of British comedian Bob Slayer on tour in Australia

When I reached puberty, obviously, I started to masturbate. And some might say that wanking figuratively continues with this blog. Especially if, as I am about to, I describe the aim of this blog as quirky peeps into various sub-strata of society in the early 21st century.

A sort of Peeps Diary.

See?

Still wanking.

One thing which I have tried to develop is a cast of subsidiary characters threaded through the blogs – Hello there comedians Lewis Schaffer, Charlie Chuck, Bob Slayer, the late Malcolm Hardee et al.

I still have hopes of persuading Kate Copstick, doyenne of Edinburgh Fringe comedy critics, to contribute occasional offbeat reports from the slums of Nairobi in Kenya and to blog myself about seeing a haggis piped-in in Kiev and eating ice cream in North Korea. Stranger things have happened.

In the meantime, Bob Slayer has reached Perth in his mini-comedy-tour of Australia and, despite large intakes of drink and his larger-than-life fingers having to type on an iPad’s keyboard, his contribution perhaps gives some hints of what the hell is currently happening to him Down Under:

________

SO IT GOES IN AUSTRALIA
with Bob Slayer

I am an ex-Bob. It is hot and I have expired. An intravenous flow of Coopers Pale Ale is somehow keeping my clinically dead corpse in suspended animation until they can find a cure.

But, before I became recently deceased, I managed to go to the Wai-Con anime convention at Perth’s Convention Centre. Unfortunately I defied convention by not dressing as my favorite Japanese animated character, but fortunately that did not bar me from cashing-in on the free hugs being offered by young girls dressed as boys, cats and nuns with rabbit ears.

The event was co-hosted by the very funny and very boy, girl, nun-like John Robertson and his banjo in whose spare room I am currently living. He also performed his show: Dragon Punch! for me, his mum and around fifteen hundred 90s and noughties anime kids. This was the show I booked into The Hive last Edinburgh Fringe, only now it’s anime’d up with props and biscuits and runs an hour and a half. The kids loved John and Tweeted and Facebooked their approval afterwards like mad, in a sort of extended virtual applause…

How exciting it was. And very thirst making.

I found Marcel Lucont propping up the bar in my venue, supping a red wine and looking all mysterious. He shrugged his Gallic shrug and informed me that Bob Log III is in town.

Oh!

How much do I love Bob Log III?!

He is my spiritual father and hero.

He used to be the drummer in a band called Doo Rag. He regularly swapped his drum kit for drink until he gave up on owning drums altogether and would make up his kit entirely out of things he found in and around whatever venue he was playing. The band dissolved before they killed each other.

Now he tours the world near constantly as a one-man band. He sits magnificently behind a single bass drum and a low-slung high-hat cymbal at the front of the stage. He wears his spandex jumpsuit and a crash helmet with an old telephone receiver stuck in the visor as his microphone.

He plays the most amazing and raw blues guitar. He informs the audience with his southern drawl that he has not made one mistake tonight so we can all put away our Bob Log mistake books. He shrieks and wails his way through classics such as Clap Your Tits, I Want Your Shit on My Leg (a love song) and Boob Scotch (Put Yours in Mine).

I first saw him in maybe 2000 supporting Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at the Forum in London. He totally and brilliantly split the audience. I was firmly in the blown-away camp and ended up in the flat of some music writer with a dozen strangers who had all been similarly affected and we stayed up all night discussing our new hero.

The next day, I caught a train to Bristol to visit a friend. After a boozy lunch, he had to go back to work for a couple of hours so, to kill time, I went to a music shop, bought a guitar and went busking for the afternoon.

Bob Slayer, street performer, was born.

I have seen my spiritual father many times since in Europe, America and Japan. He has become an underground legend around the world and recently, after marrying a pair of erotic dancers, he has moved to Australia.

Did I tell you how much I love Bob Log III?

My Perth gigs start tomorrow with a few slots and then my own shows are from Wednesday onwards. Tickets for Bob Slayer Will Out-Drink Australia are selling, but anyone who knows anyone in Australia should send them along for me to fall in love with…

Please also send money and clean underpants, as I am running out of both.