Best-of lists and back-issue woes

Lori Henderson discusses why Yen Press doesn’t sell back issues of Yen+ magazine at Manga Xanadu.

This article from The Independent does state the obvious (Manga is popular! It outsells The Beano!), but it is a nice overview of the UK manga scene. (Via Gia.)

It’s mid-December, and you know what that means: Year-in-review lists! New York Magazine lists the top ten graphic novels of 2008 in a format that makes MySpace seem user-friendly by comparison; no text in the post itself, just a slideshow with commentary. Two manga made the list, Disappearance Diary and Travel, which is an interesting pair of choices. (Via Deb Aoki, without whom I would never have found it, as the site is well-nigh unnavigable.) Also, NPR’s Laurel Maury made her graphic novel picks last week, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Good-Bye was the one manga to make the list. So, the non-mainstream stuff at least is making an impact. Douglas Wolk’s list for the New York Times includes Travel as well.

It seems to me that this was announced last summer, but here it is: Udon is teaming up with Crunchyroll. Isn’t everyone?

Here’s your distraction of the day: Jason Thompson directs us to the grandiosely named Great Catalog of MANGA, which features descriptions of all kinds of manga, many not translated yet. Click on “ENGLISH” to get a machine translation of the page.

Erica Friedman rounds up the week in yuri at Okazu.

At Fujoshi Librarian, Snow Wildsmith has the Deux Press release schedule for this spring.

Double congratulations to longtime manga editor Jake Forbes: He’s celebrating his first anniversary of blogging at Gobblin.net and he’s getting married!

Manly Manga and More has Tokyopop Germany’s weekly top 20.

News from Japan: Ed Chavez posts the Dec. 8 manga rankings from Taiyosha at MangaCast. One Piece, still vigorious at vol. 52, tops the list. He also posts the 2008 best seller lists, which include plenty of familiar titles, and the Dec. 6 doujin rankings from Toranoana.

Reviews: Faith McAdams finds plenty to say about vol. 6 of High School Debut at Animanga Nation. Mangamaniac Julie reivews vol. 2 of A Gentleman’s Kiss at MangaCast and vol. 6 of Alive at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Charles Tan has high praise for vol. 1 of Real at Comics Village. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie reads vol. 5 of Let Dai, vol. 19 of One Piece, vol. 9 of Hellsing, vol. 13 of Nana, vol. 7 of Golgo 13, and vol. 1 of Embalmer. Cynthia posts her take on Lovers and Souls and The Dawn of Love at Boys Next Door. Johanna Draper Carlson gives her stamp of approval to vols. 12-14 of Nana. Michelle Smith reviews vol. 1 of Papillon at Manga Recon. Deb Aoki gets a chuckle out of vol. 1 of Yokaiden at About.com. Lori Henderson reviews vol. 3 of King of Cards at Manga Xanadu. Tiamat’s Disciple shares his opinions on vol. 1 of V.B. Rose. Lissa Pattillo reviews Secret Comics Japan and guest reviewer Gizmo checks out vol. 1 of Fate/Stay Night at Kuriousity. Erica Friedman reviews the light novel Wild Bouquet at Okazu.

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Comments

  1. I’ll never know why people team up with crunchyroll. The site looks so unprofessional & ugly, that my eyes start bleeding just from looking at it.
    The news posts, the design, the content, just everything… looks really amateurish and basically screams “LOW QUALITY”.

    I mean: WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!

  2. Oh thank heaven for machine translation…

  3. Because it makes the human translators look so good? ^_^

  4. i don’t think machine translation good enough. so many wrong grammars.

  5. Exactly, Brigid. It’s thanks to machine translation I have a job.