Peepo Choo, Volume 1

They say you cannot choose where and when are born; we are gifted into the worlds are parents are living at the time. Whether a blessing or a curse, as individuals we must make the most of our environments to advance as best possible given the circumstances present. For the cast of Peepo Choo, their places of birth, whether they be the suburbs of Tokyo or the South Side of Chicago, appear to be a curse they cannot escape...until they realize the world is a much smaller place than they thought.

On the surface Milton appears to be your average a high school student living in the thugged out streets of Chicago's South Side. As is the case with many teens looks can be deceiving. When he's not at school or riding the metro, he is at the local comic shop cosplaying as his favorite Japanese animation character Peepo Choo! A hardcore fan, Milton knows every line from the Peepo Choo animation by heart. He can happily replicate the Peepo Dance with ease, and genuinely believes the world depicted in this cartoon is "the real" Japan.

On the other side of the Pacific lives Reiko. A teenage model on the rise, she also has another side of her. Reiko is a feminist working hard to someday move overseas to a place where she could be treated equally and fairly by men and women. In Japan, Reiko feels she is a teenage sex object, and after a number of interactions with young Americans in Tokyo she begins to believe that her American dream is going to be painfully similar to her worst Japanese nightmares.

Chance would bring the two teens together. But in this case fate comes in the form of the underworld!

"Now that Smith is producing works for a Japanese audience under the editorial guidelines of Kodansha--doing what Paul Pope in the 1990s ultimately could not do--it's going to be fascinating to see how his already amazing talents change and grow."--Jason Thompson, ComiXology

Author: Felipe Smith
Publisher: Vertical Comics
Published: 07/13/2010
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.59lbs
Size: 7.62h x 5.56w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781934287835

About the Author
Felipe Smith was born in 1978 in Akron, Ohio. Raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Felipe comes from the most unlikely of backgrounds for a manga artist published in Japan. Educated in an international school, while other kids where playing soccer and basketball, Felipe was considered the school's artist.

Upon moving to the US for college, Felipe studied at Chicago's Institute for the Arts where he was exposed to a number of art styles and forms of visual animation. Influenced early by the hyper-real designs found in Heavy Metal and later on by cartoon styles found in Japanese animation, Felipe's art style is a unique blend of East and West that is destinctively Felipe. Felipe work has been published by IMAGE and TokyoPop; with his first serialized comic MBQ receiving critical acclaim.

Felipe went on to win a number of comic awards, eventually earning him international attention. Now working in Tokyo, Felipe is currently drawing his culture clash-romance for Japan's largest publisher Kodansha in their experiemental comic anthology magazine Morning Two.