Kiyohiko Azuma
Kiyohiko Azuma is an author.
Two series in a quarter century is the whole career, which in manga is either a confession or a boast. From 1999 to 2002 Kiyohiko Azuma drew Azumanga Daioh, a four-panel comedy about a group of high school girls, later animated by J.C.Staff. Since 2003 he has drawn Yotsuba&!, serialised in the monthly Dengeki Daioh, about a five year old and the small suburban neighbourhood she keeps mistaking for an adventure.
The four-panel form taught him timing, and the timing is the whole thing. A gag strip has to set up, escalate and land inside four boxes, and Azumanga Daioh runs that engine for years without letting its characters flatten into their own jokes. Yotsuba&! keeps the timing and throws away the punchline. Nothing happens in it. A child encounters a cicada, or air conditioning, or rain, and takes it with total seriousness, and the comedy comes from the adults rearranging themselves around her enthusiasm.
The drawing is the underrated part. Azuma renders ordinary Japanese suburbia with an almost architectural exactness, empty streets, power lines, convenience store interiors, then drops a scribbling child into the middle of it. That contrast is what makes the small stuff read as large. Ten volumes across seven years, which is what the credits below show, is also a fair indication of his pace.
Books (4)
Where to start with Kiyohiko Azuma
Yotsuba&!, Vol. 1 is the place to start, though the volumes barely need reading in order, which is part of the appeal: each chapter is a self-contained afternoon. The first one establishes the only rule the series has, namely that a five year old meeting something ordinary for the first time is enough material for a whole chapter.
Yotsuba&!, Vol. 6 is the series at its most confident. Yotsuba&!, Vol. 10 shows how little has changed and how much has deepened, which is a strange thing to say about a comic with no plot, except that by then the supporting cast has quietly become a real neighbourhood.
Azu Manga Daioh is the earlier work and a completely different discipline: four panels, a punchline, repeat. It is faster, funnier and shallower, and it is the better recommendation if what you want is jokes rather than atmosphere.