Repozine.com - 11/21/04

Cool Jobs: Tak Toyoshima
Think your job sucks ass? You're right! Well this guy has a sweet job. Let's just say there's fire and heroin involved.

Tak Toyoshima is a Cartoonist. Yes, you heard us he's a Cartoonist and he happens to be Asian American (well we have some amateur cartoonists here on our staff if you count drawing stick-figures of each other doing it in the bathroom stalls). That's why he's cool enough to be recorded in the annals of Repozine lore. In our undying quest to find Asian American guys with cool jobs we ran into Tak HERE where he posts a weekly comic strip called "Secret Asian Man." We then proceeded to waste 15 minutes of his life with some totally asinine questions.

REPO: How did you get into being a comic writer?

TAK: It's really just a result of a lot of my influences and experiences. I've always had an interest in drawing and telling stories. I've logged on thousands of hours playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid and it really fueled my visual imagination and gave me a lot of practice in developing character personalities. Comic books were all over the house growing up - American comics as well as Japanese manga. I love movies and comics are movies put down on paper.

REPO: Man the 20-sided die must have been the coolest shit ever made. Ever give yourself +5 Dexterity when no one was looking?

TAK: My brother was the DM so it was pretty hard to cheat on my attributes. I did however add a few thousand gold pieces to my treasure at convenient times.

REPO: Did your parents freak out when you told them what you wanted to do?

TAK: Not really. My parents are both artistic. I'm sure I've done much freakier things when I was younger like the time I set the garbage can on fire in the kitchen or when they found a hypodermic needle behind the radiator in my bedroom.

REPO: Oh so when it was a choice between Cartoonist or a heroin-addict pyro they liked Cartoonist better?

TAK: Yeah, cartoonists tend to chug less cock in dark alleys than heroin addicts. Although I think there's more money in arson.

REPO: Has your job helped you get laid?

TAK: Actually, being married tends to help me get laid. I did get an "Are you married?" at a signing I did at Borders here in Boston.

REPO: So no Cartoonist groupies giving you room keys?

TAK: Too conventional. Cartoonist groupies do things like send you granola bars and knit things for your characters to wear. My very first fan letter was from a guy in Brazil who was dying to be my sex slave.

REPO: True or False: Cartoonists can draw their own porn.

TAK: Yes, yes we can. But in the end it's like trying to get off on your own reflection in the mirror.

REPO: Has your cartooning skills ever gotten you out of a tough bind? Say a hostage negotiation?

TAK: There was this one time when I was waiting for a subway late at night when this 6'6" super-intense looking black dude stepped right up to me and told me he was so mad that he felt like killing someone. Immediately I saw the situation from a comic strip perspective as if I were reading a strip about the situation at hand. I told him that sucked and asked him what was pissing him off so much. He said, "Cops, fucking white cops. Always fucking with Rich." (he spoke about himself in the third person). So I said, "Yeah, those fucking whities." We then proceeded to have a much more relaxed conversation, got on a train together and continued discussing "those fucking whities" across the train from a group of white yuppies. I wonder what ever happened to Rich ...

REPO: Oh shit you know Rich? He's our PR guy!

TAK: Does PR stand for Prison Rape?

REPO: At our mag...yes it's pretty much the same thing. Who's the most bad ass Asian guy in the world?

TAK: Living, I'll say Beat Takeshi. Dead, I give it up to Mahatma Gandhi.

REPO: I would say Beat Takeshi minus Kikujiro.

TAK: Yes, but Zatoichi is on the way. As much as I love Shintaro Katsu, I'm looking forward to Takeshi's version.