Drawn & Quarterly Publisher Chris Oliveros has informed ICv2 that he is planning to publish A Drifting Life, a massive 810-page manga autobiography by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, the manga-ka who originated the gekiga (literally “dramatic pictures”) style of manga in the late 1950s.  Tatsumi’s work was realistic and “adult” in the very best sense of the word, and his gekiga style even managed to influence Osamu Tezuka, the “god of manga,” whose later work such as Phoenix and Adolf displayed gekiga tendencies.  Tatsumi has been working on A Drifting Life for 11 years, and it is clear that this autobiography will be an important milestone in the life of the artist who was born in 1935.

Drawn & Quarterly is quickly becoming the leading North American publisher of gekiga manga having released two volumes by Tatsumi, The Push Man and Other Stories in 2005, Abandon the Old in Tokyo in 2006, with a third, Goodbye, scheduled for July 2008, the same month D&Q is releasing another gekiga classic, Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi.