The ultimate sequels aka Asia loves you,哈利波特July 20th, 2007 by Roy Berman |
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To tie in with the world-wide media extravaganza that is the release of the final volume of the megaselling Harry Potter series, today I would like present scans from three lesser known sequels in my collection.
First is the China exclusive 2002 release, Harry Potter and the Filler of Big, a title made only slightly less mysterious when one realizes that the Chinese title translates rather more accurately into Harry Potter and the Big Funnel, although you’ll need someone with better Chinese than mine to describe the plot of this gloriously audacious illegally published novel-length fanfiction.
Front cover- note the official Harry Potter logo, as well as the Chinese name of both J.K. Rowling and the official translator. The art seems to be intended to reflect the style of the American book covers, and comes close except for sucking.
The rear cover shows us the title in English, as well as the official price- a steal at 24.8RMB!
The first page shows the Chinese book bootlegger’s mastery of clipart-based graphic design, and both typography and paper which suggest the finest of 1970s telephone directories.
Next we bring you another China exclusive installment in the Harry Potter series, this time from the good people at the Inner Mongolian People’s Publishing Company.
Perhaps the people of Inner Mongolia weren’t able to get access to any third rate illustrators for the cover, so they were forced to base their cover on the movie poster, with clip-art based additions of, in what I hope is a major new character, a Triceratops.
If we open the cover and turn out the inside flap, then we see an old friend, making his first appearance in the Harry Potter universe- Flick, of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life.
The rear cover shows the rest of our Triceratops hero, and what is very possibly his little cartoon buzzard sidekick.
While at this point you may be suspecting that this book is some sort of unlicensed product, produced by a greedy and overenthusiastic minor publishing house, but a quick glance at the copyright page should clear things right up.
And after all, who would have the nerve to publish a fake Harry Potter sequel, and then stick J.K. Rowling’s actual photograph and official author’s biography on the rear flap?
The Inner Mongolian People’s Publishing House shows their attention to detail and quality even in this page, showing a spread of the cast of major characters, so clear and crisp that one can almost tell where one character ends and another begins.
For a change of pace, we now turn from China to Japan, from prose to manga, and from fake sequel to fan tribute. In a word: dojinshi.
Dojinshi (amateur / fan comics) such as these are a relatively large phenomenon in Japan, traded at conventions and sold in a high proportion of manga stores. In some cases, such as this one, the art is of surprisingly pro looking quality, which largely explains how the self-publishing manga press is a sort of minor league for recruiting future professional manga artists.
While dojinshi has a well deserved reputation as a vehicle for pornographic, often of an out-of-character homoerotic nature, material. This particular dojinshi is, however, a quite tasteful rendition of childhood antics in Hogwarts, and I leave the acquisition of Harry/Snape/Malfoy wandplay as an exercise for the overly curious and unpleasant reader.
When the sixth Harry Potter book came out, in 2005, I was living in Taipei. On the day it was released I took the subway out to the closest branch of the Eslite (誠品) bookstore, and then got home just in time to crack it open before the weekend-long typhoon to hit the city. While I don’t expect the postman dropping off an Amazon.com box of The Deathly Hallows to be quite as dramatic a scene as that was, it will be satisfying to finally read the end of the series. And for those readers whose goodbye to Harry and the gang is too bittersweet, don’t worry-if you’re lucky China will be producing sequels for years to come!
July 21st, 2007 at 10:50 pm
[...] Link! [...]
July 21st, 2007 at 10:58 pm
大漏斗 should be translated as “Big Dipper”, not “Filler of Big”.
July 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 am
Check out wikipedia’s article on”Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon
(excerpt)
“Harry doesn’t know how long it will take to wash the sticky cake off his face. For a civilised young man, it is disgusting to have dirt on any part of his body. He lies in the elegant bathtub, keeps wiping his face, and thinks about Dudley’s face, which is as fat as Aunt Petunia’s ass.”
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:17 am
Trackback! I’m collecting Potter fakes, so anyone who has any, get in touch!
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:03 am
cool!
July 22nd, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Seeing as how the ‘official copyright’ has been so clearly indicated, Rowling should sue for non-payment of royalties.
July 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] can’t read Chinese characters but I gather from the pictures on this blog that Harry gets sick of fighting bad wizards and demons and instead, engages in an epic battle with [...]
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
HAHAHAHAHA!
Love the Triceratops and Flick from Bug’s Live.
All makes sense to me.
I guess that there is little worry that we’ll have plenty more Harry Potter to enjoy in the future.
July 22nd, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Can’t wait for “Harry Pot-Head and the Sorceror, Stoned”
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:38 am
[...] it comes to showing bottomless appreciation to the awesomeness of Harry Potter, these Asian fakes read like, uh, magic. Share This Post:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers [...]
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:23 am
[...] no blog Mutant Frog, especializado em cultura oriental, que por sua vez saiu no Boing Boing. Dessa vez a vítima é [...]
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:04 am
[...] I love Perry Hottar. [...]
July 24th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
[...] the many thousands of readers who can’t get enough of fake Harry Potter, NPR’s Morning edition had a story on Chinese sequel-legging for their July 13 broadcast. And [...]
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:22 pm
[...] Some borrow little more than the names of Ms. Rowling’s characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like “Journey to the West.” Harry Potter and the Big Funnel? I’ve heard of that one somewhere before… [...]
August 5th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
The fakers of “Harry Potter and beaker and burn” list it as copyright by J.K. Rowling. Even if she didn’t want the thing pulled and stopped instantly, wouldn’t this mean she was legally entitled to profit from that thing? I understand it’s meant to convince fans that it’s not fake, but it’s like saying she legally deserves profits from the fake.
August 13th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
“Even if she didn’t want the thing pulled and stopped instantly, wouldn’t this mean she was legally entitled to profit from that thing?”
Regardless of whether they put her name on it, she is legal entitled to ALL profits, including beyond that for damages. But fat chance unless some politician makes this a talking point of trading negotiations.
August 17th, 2007 at 3:15 am
[...] read), but people actually make their own sequels (and yet claim that they are written by Rowling): Harry Potter and The Filler Of Big (wherein Harry finds a big funnel), Harry Potter and The Beaker and Burn (and you can see the cover [...]
August 21st, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I think you’re giving the first one too much credit when you comment on the cover art—from here it looks like they took Harry’s head and photoshopped it (badly, I might add) onto some character from an 80’s movie…
September 16th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
cool
August 25th, 2008 at 9:16 am
[...] silly unofficial bootleg sequels floating around out there in other parts of the world (books like Harry Potter and The Filler of Big, for example). With that in mind, there’s an Indian movie called Hari Puttar: A Comedy of [...]