Broken Frontier

Setsuko is your ordinary Japanese freshman in high school. During the day you can find her studying half-heartedly for exams, going to class, socializing with her peers, battling off giant killer robots, preventing global conspiracies from running rampant, eating lunch, destroying alien invaders, doing homework, annihilating restless spirits of the dead, and other mundane things. Oh yeah, she also manages to babysit sometimes at a very reasonable rate of $10 per hour.

Using only his pop culture knowledge of Japan (having never visited the place before) creator Andy Ristaino (Life of a Fetus) brings us his own unique perspective of the land of the rising sun through Setsuko's daily adventures in SLG Publishing's special oversized printing of The Babysitter. But why attempt to recreate an entire country that he hasn't visited? "It seemed like a good idea to make the comic about living in Japan based soley on my pop culture knowledge that I've gathered from a lifetime of studying far too much manga and anime," Ristaino says.

The book's unique art style, inspired by Will Eisner and Ristaino's own studies of claustrophobic art, is intended to parody and deconstruct established manga conventions. Where manga tends to be small in size, easily read, with clean art lines, The Babysitter represents the complete opposite in its mammoth presentation, dizzying art panels, and bold style. "I wanted to create a book that you couldn't just skip ahead and read the last panel to find out what happens… something you had to translate, concentrate on…like one of those magic eye puzzles," says Ristaino.

The Babysitter Collection (ISBN 9781593621346) arrives in stores this August at 112 pages and measures at a colossal 9.5 x by 15 inches. The volume collects issues #1-3 of The Babysitter and is packed with special features including concept art and a brand new full length color story. It will be available in bookstores, comic stores and at SLG Publishing's website, www.slgcomic.com