Quick morning link post

My latest column is up at Comixpedia: It’s an interview with artist Sonia Leong and writer Lloyd Prentice about their new webcomic, Aya Takeo.

Viz has announced that manga-ka Arina Tanemura, creator of Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne and Full Moon O Sagashite, will be their guest at SDCC, and the August issue of Shojo Beat will include a Tanemura short story never before published in English.

For Extreme Lesiban Cuteness, check out Shaenon Garrity’s latest Overlooked Manga Festival, which features Rica Takashima’s Rica ‘tte Kanji. Best line: “everything in this manga is as cute as a blender full of kittens.”

On the non-kawaii side of the blogosphere, Ryan from Same Hat is goes shopping in New York, and the pair write about a French exhibit featuring the work of Suehiro Maruo.

People don’t post to the Manga Talk LJ community too often, but when they do, it’s always interesting. The latest is a scholar working on an ESL program using translated manga, who asks about the trend toward unflipped manga. As always, the readers oblige in comments.

Awards time: The nominations for the Quills Awards are out, and one manga made the cut: Ode to Kirihito was nominated in the Graphic Novels category. And the Harvey Award nominations were also announced this weekend, and it looks like the year of Uncle Scrooge, who got a slew of nominations. As for manga, not so much; the only nominations were for Abandon the Old in Tokyo and Ode to Kirihito in the “Best American Edition of Foreign Material” category. Given the critical and commercial success of manga in recent years, the list seems rather narrow.

Speaking of that, Diamond released its sales numbers for the first time, and they are pretty good: Gross sales of $350 million, about 100 million comics and graphic novels sold. And sales of GNs are up 10% in the direct market, which ICv2 says is a trend that has been going on for a while.

Nearly 60% of the respondents to a Chinese survey on leisure activities said that they “like” or “love” manga, according to ComiPress, which also has the latest on the fate of serials from the Japanese Monthly Shonen Jump, which is being replaced with a new magazine.

Reviews: Precocious Curmudgeon David Welsh reviews Solfege and the fourth volumes of Dokebi Bride and ES: Eternal Sabbath. Matthew Alexander reviews vol. 1 of My Heavenly Hockey Club at Anime on DVD. At the MangaCast, Mangamaniac Julie reviews vol. 1 of Yurara.

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Comments

  1. I didn’t even realise that there was an interview with Sonia over Aya Takeo. Sonia is out of the country at the moment, so I took the liberty of linking to your article from our forum:

    http://www.sweatdrop.com/forum/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=8075

    Great work as always Brigid, and thanks for all the manga news :)

Trackbacks

  1. […] The Letters to the Editor section in July’s Shojo Beat has announced that the magazine will host Arina Tanemura at Comic-Con International in San Diego, California during July 26-29. Tanemura is the creator of several titles in Shueisha’s Ribon sh?jo manga magazine, including Kamikaze Kait? Jeanne, Time Stranger Kyoko, Full Moon o Sagashite, and The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross. August’s Shojo Beat will include a short story of hers that has not been released in English yet. Source: tokyojupiter.blog via MangaBlog […]