Back to the blog!

I’m back home again, ready to adjust to the new normal. Again, thank you for all your kind comments and condolence messages. Last week was bleak at times, and it was really comforting to hear from so many friends.

Needless to say, I returned to over 500 RSS feed notifications and about as many e-mail alerts, so I’ll be going back and looking things over, picking the cream of the older posts as well as what’s new.

ICv2 makes it easy by posting a very significant story this week: A four-part interview with Gonzalo Ferreyra, Viz’s VP of sales and marketing. Here’s part one; follow the links for the rest.

Also, Comix Talk posts an interview I did with Tokyopop’s Jeremy Ross a few weeks ago about their Manga Pilots program. It’s really more about the new interface and the direction they’re going in than the contracts thing, which has been extensively covered elsewhere (and which I doubt is going to change anyway).

Matt Thorn tracks the popularity of the term “shoujo” to describe girls’ magazines, as well as the changes in content over the years, at his blog. He also provides a peek at some early Japanese animation.

Speaking of shoujo, Danielle Leigh discusses Itazura na Kiss, both the manga and the anime based on it, and explains how the manga introduced some of our standard shoujo cliches.

Japanator posts this week’s new releases.

ANN’s Smart Women on Anime roundtable (I think that’s what they meant to call it, but there was a typo somewhere) takes on alpha and beta males in manga and anime.

Manga online: Concordia University professor Matthew Penney has translated and posted the short story War and Japan by GeGeGe no Kitaro creator Mizuki Shigeru. (Via ANN.)

This is a big weekend, with both Yaoi-Con and NYAF going on at the same time. At About.com, Deb Aoki lists the manga-related events at NYAF and the Yaoi-Con highlights to help you choose.

Gia has coverage of the Dark Horse panel at AWA.

Kai-Ming Cha has a piece on Afro Samurai, the manga, at PWCW.

Zig*Zag and Beauty Honey are coming to an end in Japan.

Reviews: There’s lots more to come, but here’s a start. Christopher Butcher has started posting reviews on Tuesdays, and so far he has posted thoughtful discussions of Disappearance Diary and vol. 1 of Black Jack. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson recommends vol. 10 of Nana but is less impressed by vol. 9 of Beauty Pop and the online version of Princess Ai: Encounters. Deb Aoki checks out vol. 1 of Blank Slate, vol. 1 of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Future Lovers, vol. 1 of Sola, and vols. 1 and 2 of Black Lagoon at About.com. Dave Ferraro reads vol. 1 of Me and the Devil Blues at Comics-and-More.

Did you enjoy this article? Consider supporting us.

Comments

  1. Welcome back! Hope to see you at the Del Rey panel on Saturday.

  2. Welcome back Brigid – you were missed.

    Hopefully we can catch up on Saturday at NYAF. I’ll be there from about 4 on.

    Cheers,

    Erica

  3. Welcome back! (^_^)

  4. We missed you! Hope you’re holding up okay.

  5. Good to have you back, Brigid!

  6. Glad to see you back!