America's most numerate cartoonist.
"Not since I tricked Asian Week into printing a comic with Jimmy drinking his own urine have I been so proud of an accomplishment."
Jason Shiga (born 1976) is an independent author of comic books and newspaper comics. He generally draws his characters in a very cartoonish art style, which contrasts heavily with the serious (or at least mock-serious) and occasionally violent turns his stories take. Various puzzles also figure in his stories, as Shiga is a Mathematics major and fan of logical puzzles.
Almost nothing else is known about him. Years can pass between updates to his website
, and his weblog seems to have been abandoned since 2003.
He's republished most of his works on his website: http://www.shigabooks.com
Comic Books:
- Double Happiness (2000)
- Bookhunter (2007)
- Meanwhile (2010)
- Empire State (2011)
- Leviathan (2022)
Comic Strips:
Webcomics:
- Demon (2014–2016)
Tropes common to many of Shiga's works include:
- Asian and Nerdy: His protagonists tend to be, perhaps as a consequence of being based on the man himself.
- Big Beautiful Woman: One thing we do know about Shiga? He likes his girls with some meat on their bones. It's rare for his comics to not feature at least one cute chubby lady.
- Cast Incest: The same "actors" who play Jimmy and Sara in Empire State play a father and daughter in Shiga's most recent work, Demon or rather a daughter and the demon possessing her father.
- Reused Character Design: In the tradition of other great Asian cartoonists like Osamu Tezuka, the characters in his comics are designed to appear as if they're actors playing different parts across different productions. For example, Sara from Empire State, Sarah from Demon, Finch from Bookhunter and Jackson's girlfriend from Double Happiness, are all played by the same "actress".
- Sad Clown: His works are chock full of both wry humor and melancholy. Has an unhealthy obsession with suicide, and manages to work it into a story that also involve camel sex.
- Shown Their Work: Reading his work will teach you more than you ever thought you wanted to know about practical mathematics, library science, 1970s phone phreaking, Chinese-American culture and any number of other subjects.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Averted to hell and gone.
