Wielding the AX

The big news of the day for Serious Manga Readers is that Top Shelf will be publishing AX, the alternative manga anthology. Same Hat has the details, along with a cover of the sampler they will be handing out at SPX. It sounds like lovers of gekiga are in for a treat!

ComicMix has more on the Yen/Orbit consolidation, pointing out that Yen hit the market with an ambitious publishing schedule right around the time that retailers started getting a bit more conservative, at least in terms of numbers. At Manga Widget, Alex Hoffman says that the consolidation may be a good sign for Yen fans. Tiamat’s Disciple will be happy as long as nothing changes.

Manga Recon has a cover gallery of this week’s new releases, and the MangaCast team posts the new release list and their recommendations.

Even if you don’t read Japanese, the news that Kodansha will post three entire issues of Morning2 magazine online is good news, because you will get to see the cool art, including Saint Young Men and Felipe Smith’s Peepo Choo. You have to download Crochet, a free comics reader, but the good news is that for once, it works for Macs as well as those other things, so I’ll actually be able to use it.

Adam Stephanides is excited about a new art book, Usamaru Furuya’s Flowers.

Graphic designers critique Peter Mendelsund’s cover designs for Dororo at Book Covers. (Via Journalista.) Bonus link: Mendelsund talks about working for Vertical:

Whereas the Knopf list is all literary gravitas (which is of course, fantastic in it’s own right), the Vertical list is all aliens, manga, j-horror, sex and derangement. It’s the perfect foil to the Knopf work. The two jobs complement each other perfectly.

Dororo was the first job I did for Vertical—it’s three books actually, all by manga granddaddy Osamu Tezuka. And, well, being able to use Tezuka’s artwork was the biggest plus for me. That and the fact that the Vertical people weren’t squeamish at all about covering the book in internal organs and viscera.

Former Vertical cover designer Chip Kidd talks about Bat-Manga.

Here’s an art break: Sho Murase posts some pages from the upcoming vol. 16 of Nancy Drew.

Manga makes it into the New York Times yet again, in this story about a librarian who gets maybe a bit too enthusiastic about promoting his daughter’s book, one of Wiley’s Shakespeare manga titles.

Mark your calendar: Kensuke Okabayashi, author of Manga for Dummies, will be at the Kinokuniya bookstore at 1073 6th Ave. in New York at 3 p.m. tomorrow.

News from Japan: Switch is coming to an end. And Berserk creator Kentarou Miura will draw an alternate cover for an upcoming volume of March Comes in Like a Lion, by Honey and Clover creator Chika Umino. Umino recently drew a cover for Berserk.

Reviews: Alex Hoffman takes a look at vol. 1 of Zombie Powder at Manga Widget. Carlo Santos checks out vols. 7-8 of Love*Com at ANN. Julie gets a bit ahead in that series with a look at vol. 9 of Love*Com at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Lissa Pattillo enjoys vol. 3 of Tokyo Pet Shop of Horrors at Kuriousity. At Comics Worth Reading, Ed Sizemore is not as enthusiastic as I was about vol. 1 of Astral Project. Don MacPherson reviews vol. 1 of XS Hybrid at Eye on Comics (via Journalista). Ken Haley reads Blood: The Last Vampire 2002 at Manga Recon. Midori Matsuzawa writes about the series Kaze Hikaru at the Daily Yomiuri. John Thomas takes a look at vols. 1 and 2 of Astro Boy at Comics Village. Win Wiacek says the starter pack of vols. 1-6 of Dark Edge is a good deal at British blog Now Read This! Michelle Smith has some good things to say about vol. 1 of Ghost Hunt at Soliloquy In Blue. Erica Friedman checks out vol. 2 of Lady Snowblood at Okazu. Emily’s latest find is Joousama no Tamago at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page. Deb Aoki reads vol. 1 of Hitohira and vol. 1 of Papillon at About.com. Dick McVengeance reviews vol. 1 of Black Lagoon at Japanator. Kris checks out Alley of First Love, vol. 1 of Passion, and Play Boy Blues at Manic About Manga. Snow Wildsmith reviews Ruff Love at Fujoshi Librarian.

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Comments

  1. I can’t see this having a huge impact on Yen Press to be honest. A lot of companies are trying to cut costs, and this is just one of them. That said they’ve spent to much time, money, and effort to slow down now.

    I was just looking through their release schedule, and nothing seems to have been changed. There’s still a good number of releases. That said i’m getting a bit angry over the UK distribution side of things. It’s still really hard to get things over here. We end up having to get them through US imports, which kinda invalidates the purpose of doing UK/US dual releases.

  2. everymac.com/articles/q&a/windows_on_mac/faq/run-windows-applications-directly-in-macos-x.html

    Try one of those, Brigid.