Manga deemed insignificant by The Onion

David Welsh beats us all to the end-of-the-year story with his summary of everything he is grateful for (manga-wise) in 2009.

Kate Dacey, David Welsh, and Brad Rice take a look at this week’s new magna, and the Comics Village crew picks the best of last week’s releases.

At PWCW, Kai-Ming Cha talks to Yen Press honcho Kurt Hassler about his plans for manga adaptations, the place of Yen Plus magazine, and more. Also: Steve Bunche interviews Helen McCarthy about her new book, The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. And their comics reviews include a short take on GoGo Monster (scroll down).

At Robot 6, Sean T. Collins looks at the Onion A.V. Clubs list of the Best Comics of the 00s and takes them severely to task for completely ignoring manga:

I’ll be the first to apologize if a separate, all-manga list is forthcoming. But as it stands now, the lack of a single Japanese comic on a best-of list for a decade during which such comics reached unprecedented popularity in the North American market — and during which an equally unprecedented number of acclaimed titles from nearly every time period and genre have finally seen the light of English translation and publication — is utterly egregious.

At the original post, a staffer defends the omission on about page 4 of the comments (there doesn’t seem to be a way to link to individual comments) on the grounds that he doesn’t know enough about manga. That seems rather dismissive; you can’t write about “comics” and just ignore a huge swath of the market. Either learn or hire someone. David Welsh takes steps to remedy this at Precocious Curmudgeon, where he nominates his top manga for the decade and invites others to join in.

Also at Robot 6: It’s not manga, but if you’re looking for something new to read over the long weekend, check out the webcomics buffet in my latest Unbound column.

The Yaoi Review follows its discussion of yaoi for beginners with an even more interesting question: Which yaoi manga should beginners avoid?

In Danielle Leigh’s latest recommendation post, she picks three manga based on the keywords “giant robots, adventure, and optimism.” Now there’s a challenge!

Helen McCarthy uses the British Museum as a springboard for her discussion of the work of Professor Munakata creator Yukinobu Hoshino, who actually wrote a manga about the museum, which in turn has devoted an exhibit to the manga. It all sounds very cool.

Here’s an interesting bit of dialogue-by-blog: Daniella Orihuela-Gruber posts about why she doesn’t like manhwa some aspects of manhwa at her blog, All About Comics. Tari (troisroyaumes) responds by pointing out that (1) manhwa is a medium in its own right, not an imitation of manga, and (2) the manhwa being translated is not representative of the medium as a whole in Korea. Then Danielle responds, and to her credit, I really don’t think she should apologize. I think her critique is actually pretty good, if it’s understood as a critique of translated manhwa—a lot of the stories are shallow, and anyway, there’s never any need to apologize in matters of taste. (Found via Melinda Beasi on Twitter.)

Holiday giveaway time: Melinda Beasi is giving away three boys’ love manga from Digital at Manga Bookshelf. And don’t forget that we are giving away five complete sets of the manhwa trilogy The Color of Earth at Good Comics for Kids.

Reviews

Kris on vol. 1 of Close the Last Door (Manic About Manga)
Emily on Daite Daite Daite Darling (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Lori Henderson on vols. 5-7 of Goong (Comics Village)
Kris on vol. 1 of Hey, Class President! (Manic About Manga)
Snow Wildsmith on vol. 1 of Honey and Clover (Fujoshi Librarian)
Alexander Hoffman on vols. 1-2 of Magic Touch (Comics Village)
Edward Zacharias on vol. 44 of Naruto (Animanga Nation)
Gia Manry on vol. 1 of Night Head Genesis (Anime Vice)
Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Oh! My Brother (Prospero’s Manga)
Connie on vol. 8 of Wild Ones (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 14 of xxxHolic (Slightly Biased Manga)
Michael C. Lorah on vol. 2 of Yokaiden (Blog@Newsarama)
D.M. Evans on vol. 6 of Zombie-Loan (Manga Jouhou)

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Comments

  1. Hi! Just to let you know: I DO like manhwa, just not some aspects of it and my first name is spelled with an ‘A’ at the end. Thanks so much!

  2. Fixed! Sorry, Daniella—I was a bit bleary this morning. Anyway, the whole dialogue made interesting reading—thanks for sharing your thoughts!

  3. It’s fine! People get my name wrong all the time! I’m glad you enjoyed the discussion. I have too, it’s been really enlightening.

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