Bartkira - Bart Simpson Meets Akira

Press Releases
Bartkira - Bart Simpson Meets Akira
By The Editor
June 10, 2014 - 10:35

Writer(s): Ryan Humphrey

Back in the early 1990’s, when anime was still called “Japanimation” and The Simpsons still featured Phil Hartman, no one could have conceived of the concept of Bartkira. Yet 23 years later, in Neo-Britain, artist Ryan Humphrey gave life to the unimaginable. His pages for the mind-bending crossover comic ignited a fire in the mind of comic artist James Harvey, who proposed the impossible:

Recreate every page of Akira using characters from The Simpsons.

It would take 768 artists, each contributing five pages, to redraw the full six volumes of Katsuhiro Otomo’s masterwork. A monumental group comic project unlike any other inspired working illustrators, comics professionals, and even some who had never drawn a comic in their lives. Now for the first time, the project that some have heralded as the greatest thing to ever happen to the Internet is here.

Floating World is proud to present an exhibition book collecting 80 pages from the Bartkira project as well as a 16 page full color gallery section. Featuring contributions by 19 artists: James Harvey, Danny Hynes, Marcel O’Leary, Michael Kim, Erica Henderson, Jacob Chabot, Cameron Stewart, Ben Ommundson, Brenton Barnes, Luke Novel, Richie Pope, Jon Huddleston, Jason Rainey, Cory Tran, Bodie Chewning, Alchemichael, Frans Boukas, Tyler Patrick Boss, and Ben Jelter. The full color gallery section includes illustrations by Wyatt Carroll, Jeremy Arambulo, Areil Vergez, Jaime Munoz, Alexandre Ghostthead, Rawn Gandy, Nick Sumida, and Ryan Humphrey. This exhibition book was curated by Frans Boukas with design assistance
from Matt Deans.

Bartkira is intended to be a fan tribute to Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Matt Groening’s The Simpsons. This project is not endorsed by, nor affiliated with, either creator and does not represent itself as an official publication of any kind. All characters and location depicted herein remain the trademarked possessions of Otomo and Groening.

Image Gallery: