Secret Cloverfield manga unveiled

The crack team of investigators at Comic Book Resources has found an online manga (click “open” to read it) tie-in for the upcoming movie Cloverfield. The manga is in Japanese, but the CBR folks summarize it a bit, and they’re looking for help with translating it.

David Welsh presents the cream of this week’s new manga. Johanna Draper Carlson looks at Viz’s February titles at Comics Worth Reading.

At PWCW, Kai-Ming Cha talks to SVA prof Adam Sexton, who worked on Wiley’s Shakespeare manga, and English prof Peter Platt, who isn’t sold on them. And buried in the briefs is the news that DC/Wildstorm is doing a Batman manga series. (Caught it: Manga Jouhou.)

Anime blogger Scott D compares the Tokyopop and ADV versions of Aria at Tea Shop Beloved. In the end, he gives Tokyopop a slight edge.

The dialogue at the Iris Print blog is getting interesting, with guest blogger Nicole Kimberling of Blind Eye Books using real numbers to explain the challenges of small-press publishing. A commenter chimes in with different opinions on marketing and e-books.

Everyone thinks their kid is brilliant, but John Jakala knows: His two-year-old daughter picked up Gon and “read” it (it’s wordless) in the right direciton; she understood the plot and even offered a mini-review. Click for cuteness! Also: It’s not manga, but Jakala’s attempt to explain the latest Spider-Man twist to his wife is too funny to miss. (Because manga is so totally logical, we would never have this problem, right? Right?)

How do the Japanese read manga so fast? Charles Tan says readers can process kanji more quickly than words.

Khursten continues her history of the love affair between fujoshi and Shonen Jump at Otaku Champloo.

Deb Aoki picks Hollow Fields as the best global manga of 2007. Excellent choice!

The book distributor Biblio, which handles Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s titles, has been sold to AtlasBooks.

Adult section: Canned Dogs has the Best Eromanga of 2007, as voted by the sophisticate readers at 2chan. (Images are NSFW but pretty small; I can’t vouch for any of the links, however). Also: Heisei Democracy learns that Futaket 4 is definitely on for this spring.

Reviews: NotHayama reviews Gin Tama at Sleep Is For the Weak. Jenni checks out vols. 1 and 2 of Death Note and The Twelve Kingdoms at Borderline Hikikomori. Ferdinand relaxes with vol. 1 of Aria at Prospero’s Manga. Julie reads The Manga Bible and vol. 1 of Dragon Eye at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Tiamat’s Disciple posts an overview of Negima. Gary Thompson reviews vol. 1 of Pumpkin Scissors at Anime on DVD. Michelle reads the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle Character Guide and the novel Never Let Me Go at Soliloquy in Blue. Brian P checks out vol. 6 of Emma at MangaCast.

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Comments

  1. I really hope that Cloverfield isn’t some glorified Godzilla-like version of ‘The Kraken Wakes’.

  2. I was trying to think of which manga would sound the most bizarre if I tried to explain it to my wife (Bleach? Death Note? JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure?) but I came up blank. I think the problem is I’m so immersed in manga it doesn’t seem as dumb to me, even if the premise might sound stupid on the surface. Also, even bad manga usually has some kind of internally consistent logic, unlike the annulment of the Spider-marriage. (Well, except for Bomber Girl, but I don’t want to admit to my wife that I read that.)

  3. Any yaoi manga automatically qualifies, and I have a hard time explaining Fruits Basket to my co-workers. On the other hand, they totally got it when I described Antique Bakery as “pastry porn.”

  4. Strangely enough, my partner, who generally has no interest in comics or cartoons, really enjoys weird, expressionistic anime. So basically, the harder it would be to explain, the better he likes it. Or likes it at all, I guess I should say.

    As for Cloverfield, I’m going back and forth between suspecting it might be really cool (because the Statue of Liberty’s head lands in New Jersey and I’m NOT MADE OF STONE) and fearing it will be incredibly irritating and unsatisfying. I have no idea what kind of critical opinion will sway me one way or the other when it finally opens, but I’m hoping A.O. Scott reviews it for the Times.

  5. David: I found a spoil for Cloverfield at another blog, pic of the monster and everything. It sounds like it might be cool, and I’m quite happy it has nothing to do with mutant Calamari.

  6. The head doesn’t land in jersey. it lands in Manhattan. They are trying to make it to brooklyn.

  7. As far as the manga-based prequel for Cloverfield dubbed ‘Kin Hin’ is concerned, you’ll enjoy it if you’re a manga fan, but if you’re reading it to merely receive greater understanding on the origins of the creature and the basis of the sequel… well, it won’t provide any information that you couldn’t figure out on your own by brainstorming the vague hints provided in the motion picture and concepts used in previous giga-creature films such as classic Godzilla and King Kong.
    You’ll discover that the oil tanker which blew up near Lady Liberty wasn’t an oil tanker but in fact was a shipping vessel that was carrying the creature. The creature is prehistoric temnospondyli from the Triassic era that grew so big that it could only sustain itself on the abundance of marine creatures of the ocean. That is how it was able to survive the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, and since it’s main source of food would have been large animals such as whales, sharks, and giant squids, it would have no need to make it’s way to surface levels where it would have been discovered by humans, except to regulate it’s body temperature on occasion and there are plenty of oceanic locations on Earth, where a human couldn’t be found for hundreds and maybe thousands of miles.
    The creature or rather creatures normally co-habitate at the furthest ocean depths of the Pacific near Marianas Trench Guam which is well over 35,000 feet below sea level and since no human or human invention has ever gone deeper than 24,000 feet, it would be quite possible for a creature of giga-monster proportions to remain hidden and go unnoticed since humans first appeared on Earth.
    The discovery of the creature will be directly linked with a company harvesting a special type of seaweed for energy drinks.
    So enjoy and no need to thank me for doing all the thinking for you. j/k!

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