A Comic Office: 'The Adventures of Johnny Bunko'

ONE MIGHT BE TEMPTED to think that "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko" ($15, Riverhead Trade) is a joke, or at the very least, mis-shelved. What's this comic book doing in the career section, anyway? But author Daniel Pink, who last year received a fellowship to study manga (Japanese comics) in Japan, is serious about his new manga-style business book. The thin volume contains six "big-picture" career lessons ("Persistence trumps talent," for example) about how to succeed in today's workplace, delivered by a bevy of big-eyed, small-mouthed characters slogging away in cube hell. Sailor Moon this definitely ain't.

» EXPRESS: Why does America need a manga career book?
» PINK: Maybe not all of America, but there are several million readers who need it. A lot of career information is available online, like how to go on a job interview or what to put in your resume. That kind of info shouldn't be in books. But what can a book do that Google can't? I think it can give people big-picture information in a way that is more fun, more compelling, and more memorable than a Web site can. So, I decided to use this incredibly expressive form of manga to give people six lessons about careers that I wish I had known 25 years ago, and to do it in a way that is fun.

» EXPRESS: How did you become interested in manga?
» PINK: I saw manga becoming very popular here. ... It was basically a no-brainer to try to do one. We [as a culture] have mistakenly said that this is a medium that's only for kids when there's proof that it's not. In Japan, manga is for everybody. You can get a manga political tract, a guide to time management, or history, or whatever.

» EXPRESS: How did the format influence the content or vice versa?
» PINK: I'm a writer; I'm not a comic book person. Most of the stuff I've created in my professional life has had things like sentences and paragraphs. One of the joys about working with Rob [Ten Pas] is that he taught me how powerful the images could be. I wrote scenes and Rob would sketch it out and I would say, "Oh, man, this is totally overwritten."

» EXPRESS: Is it tough convincing people to pick up a book that is stereotyped as a kids' product?
» PINK: I think that some people don't get it until they actually touch the book. And that emphasizes the — I don't want to get too highfalutin on the cultural theory here — but books are physical products. I think there's something about the physicalness that is valuable. Once people hold it and turn the pages, I think they become very absorbed in the story.

» EXPRESS: So, where do your six principles about work come from?
» PINK: A lot of it came from my previous two books about work, which took me to a number of college campuses to talk about those ideas. Many of those people who are 20 years younger than I am were operating under the same false premises I was under when I was their age. So, I started thinking about the sorts of things that I know now that I wish I had known as a 20-something.

» EXPRESS: Like the pointlessness of a 10-year plan?
» PINK: I knew from my first day of college that I was going to go to law school, which is just preposterous when I think about it. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you. When I got to my early 20s, I was realizing the uselessness of a carefully architected plan and decided to live with a certain amount of ambiguity. [But I still went to law school.] I went, hell, yes, I went. I'm a slow learner. I graduated from law school, but I never practiced law.

Right now, if you ask me what's my plan for the next 10 years, I gotta tell you I really don't have one. Part of me is a little worried about that, but I think that the greater danger is having a plan only to alleviate your anxiety.

» EXPRESS: So, how do you answer the "Where do you want to be in five years?" interview question?
» PINK: Tell the truth. I would say, "You know what? I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing in five years or 10 years, but here's what I'm good at. And what's more important, here's how I can solve your problem." I think that so much of these job interviews are just kabuki theater; rehearsed questions and answers. I think this would be a really refreshing answer.

» EXPRESS: How do you read this book?
» PINK: One of the big takeaways of studying manga in Japan is speed. Manga is built to move fast, to the point where some manga publishers and editors will time readers to make sure they're reading it quickly. The goal of this book was that people could read it in less than an hour. If it takes longer, then I've failed. But then people tell me they've read it in five minutes and I say, "You've missed the point — you haven't even looked at the pictures!"

Written by Express contributor Rachel Kaufman
Art from 'Johnny Bunko' courtesy of Riverhead Trade