Top sellers, Handley pushback, bookstore taxonomy

ICv2 lists BookScan’s top 20 graphic novels for May. Naruto dominates, and Vampire Knight, Otomen, and Return to Labyrinth also show up on the list, suggesting a certain concordance with the New York Times Graphic Books best-seller list.

At The Eastern Edge, Gottsu-Iiyan pushes back on the Handley case and suggests that the slippery slope could go the other way:

Even free democracies have to draw lines around freedom at some point. I think children is the perfect place for society to dig their trenches and tell people who enjoy seeing children in sexual situations to stay the hell on their side of the line or suffer the consequences at the hands of the rest of us who don’t want to let society become a place where children are fair game.

He also makes some salient points about the place of lolicon and hentai in Japanese society.

Anna encounters the problem of the missing middle volumes at 2 screenshot limit.

It’s more general than just manga, but at Rocket Bomber Matt Blind treats us to a taxonomy of bookstore customers and the opportunities they present for retailers.

News from Japan: ANN has the weekly comics rankings from Oricon and Tohan.

Reviews

A Library Girl on vol. 1 of Blank Slate (A Library Girl’s Familiar Diversions)
Emily on Fly High (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Michelle Smith on vols. 1 and 2 of Future Lovers (Manga Recon)
Julie on Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Justin Colussy-Estes on vol. 17 of Kekkaishi (Comics Village)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 3 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Kuriousity)
Tangognat on vol. 1 of Moon Child (Tangognat)
Oyceter on vol. 21 of Nana (Japanese edition) (Sakura of DOOM)
Sean Gaffney on Negima! (Okazu)
Laura on Nodame Cantabile (Heart of Manga)
Di on Oh My Goddess! Colors (Otaku Public Library)
Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Rasetsu (The Manga Critic)
Lorena on chapter 6 of Rin-ne (i ♥ manga)
Ed Sizemore on vols. 1-3 of St. Dragon Girl (Comics Worth Reading)
Laura on vol. 3 of St. Dragon Girl (Shojo Flash)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 1 of Sumomomo, Momomo: The Strongest Bride on Earth (There it is, Plain as Daylight)
Deb Aoki on vol. 1 of Yokai Doctor (About.com)

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Comments

  1. Ed Sizemore says

    I understand Gottsu-Iiyan’s reaction. I just find it too knee-jerk to be of any real help in the conversation. If he thinks that reading lolicon shows a proclivity toward pedophilia, then what of the actual artists? Also, I would like to see what he thinks of Lost Girls. How does it effect his reading to know it’s done by a husband and wife team? In the end, his post simply equates to “this stuff is sick, and you’re sick for reading it, sickos should be either be ostracized or jailed.”

  2. Some good responses to the Handley post.

  3. Steven R. Stahl says

    People have had strongly negative reactions to LOST GIRLS, but those reactions are misplaced. A work can have pornographic elements without being mere pornography. In the case of LOST GIRLS, the political and psychosexual elements and literary references have intellectual weight. Even if Moore and Gebbie’s efforts weren’t entirely successful, the intentions were good:

    Intriguingly, none of the participants seem entirely taken in by Lost Girls – Kenneth Kidd finds himself “more bored than titillated,” while Meredith Collins suggests that the text frequently “derails into a pandering sexual utopia.” Or, as Charles Hatfield puts it, “the project is a boondoggle.” Even Eklund, who seems most credulous towards the possibilities of the text, seems to note a didactic tone in how the work is “structured as a magic ritual that uses the reader as much as it serves him or her.” But despite what is, on the whole, a skeptical outlook on the text, all of our reviewers seem also to find a certain power in it. Even Hatfield notes that the text’s failures are somehow spectacular, and Kidd seems, in the end, to zero in on a degree of arresting spectacle within the text, noting that the text “forces us to look twice” before making the traditional “I know it when I see it” judgment of pornography.

    SRS