Archives for December 2009

Aimee Levitt of the (St. Louis) Riverfront Times goes to Bishie Con and reports back on what she saw. The story attracted some commentary at The Yaoi Review, but considering the foreignness of the subject matter to both the reporter and the intended audience, it didn’t seem too bad. Several people say in comments at TYR that they were misquoted, which is unfortunate, but they seem happy with the publicity. Another theme that emerges in comments is that Twilight fans are really yaoi fans. Really?

At Icarus Comics, Simon Jones puts the nook through its paces as a comics reader, and he provides a link to one of his adult comics so readers can try it for themselves. His description sounded sort of buggy to me; he found a lot of fixes for the problems, but someone (like me) who is impatient and not particularly technologically inclined would probably throw the thing out the window.

David Welsh’s latest license request is Shoujo Manga, one of the manga honored in the recent Japan Media Arts Festival Awards.

Looking for something to read? Danielle Leigh suggests 10 underrated shoujo manga in her latest Manga Before Flowers column at Comics Should Be Good, and Lori Henderson picks the best of this week’s all-ages comics and manga at Good Comics for Kids.

Digital is running a contest starting at noon (PST) today: Rent any Harlequin manga at their eManga site and you are entered in a contest for a free copy of vol. 1 of Itazura Na Kiss. And Lori Henderson is giving away a set of the trilogy The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, the Color of Heaven at Manga Xanadu.

Erica Friedman invites Okazu readers to ask her their burning questions.

News from Japan: A number of news sites have sprung up recently that give the news in manga form; from this survey, it looks like readers don’t know they exist but might read them if they did. Also interesting: Slightly more people report reading manga, at least occasionally, than admit to reading newspapers. Here’s a sample, all in Japanese, of course. Barefoot Gen artist Keiji Nakazawa will give his original drawings for the manga to the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

Reviews: Stop that train! Today’s review of the day is Noah Berlatsky’s meditation on Yuichi Yokoyama’s Travel at comiXology.

Todd Douglass on vol. 1 of Beast Master (Blogcritics)
Emily on Boyfriend (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Snow Wildsmith on Boys Love (Fujoshi Librarian)
Kate Dacey on Butterflies, Flowers and Natsume’s Book of Friends (The Manga Critic)
Jason Yadao on vol. 1 of A Distant Neighborhood (Otaku Ohana)
Joy Kim on vols. 1-3 of Fairy Tail (Joy Kim)
Jessica Severs on The Ghost in the Shell (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
Nick Smith on vol. 1 of King of RPGs (ICv2)
Julie on Millionaire Husband (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Greg McEhlatton on vol. 1 of Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture (Read About Comics)
Connie on vol. 19 of Nana (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 27 of One Piece (Slightly Biased Manga)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 9 of One Thousand and One Nights (Manga Bookshelf)
Derik Badman on vol. 1 of Ooku: The Inner Chambers (Madinkbeard)
Andre on vol. 1 of Queen of Ragtonia (Kuriousity)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 2 of Rasetsu (Mania.com)
John Zakrzewski on vol. 1 of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (Mania.com)
Phil Guie on World of Warcraft: Death Knight (Manga Recon)
Matthew Alexander on vol. 14 of xxxHolic (Mania.com)

So, the new Comics Journal/Journalista site turned into scrambled eggs while I was having a busy week, and it took me a while to get it sorted out, but now that I have, I’m impressed. The new writers include Anne Ishii, Roland Kelts, and Shaenon Garrity (creator of the single greatest manga feature ever, Overlooked Manga Festival), and the site will soon be hosting one of my favorite blogs, The Hooded Utilitarian. And they have lots of good stuff going on right now: Shaenon gives a quick course in Fumi Yoshinaga, Roland reviews the Rough Guides to Anime and Manga, and Anne takes a look at insiders’ picks for the best manga of the year. Oh, and I found Journalista; it’s right here. So go, click, subscribe, bookmark, etc.

Speaking of site changes, Lissa Pattillo of Kuriousity has launched a companion site, Boys-Luv.com, about—well, you know. And back at the home front, she has some questions about her readers’ preferences for design and content.

Writer, editor, and ultimate manga authority Jason Thompson is the guest on the latest Anime World Order podcast.

At The Anime Almanac, Scott VonSchilling courageously revisits his 2009 predictions on anime and manga.

Professional translators Alethea and Athena Nibley give their opinion of fan translators at Manga Life.

David Welsh continues his trek through the shoujo-sunjeong alphabet with the letter I.

News from Japan: If you ever wondered what Naruto would look like if he were drawn by Takeshi Obata or Akira Toriyama, check out the new Naruto fan book, with homages by a variety of prominent manga artists.

Reviews: If you only have time to read one review today, make it David Welsh’s entertaining take on vol. 1 of Butterflies, Flowers at Precocious Curmudgeon.

Connie on vol. 9 of Arm of Kannon (Slightly Biased Manga)
Michelle Smith on vols. 6-8 of Black Cat (Soliloquy in Blue)
Snow Wildsmith on vol. 1 of Four-Eyed Prince (Good Comics for Kids)
Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane on vol. 9 of Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden (Manga Life)
Julie on Honor’s Promise (Manga Maniac Cafe)
D.M. Evans on vol. 1 of Jack Frost (Manga Jouhou)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 8 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (i heart manga)
Noah Berlatsky on vol. 2 of Ooku the Inner Chamber (The Comics Journal)
Connie on vol. 7 of Real (Slightly Biased Manga)
Snow Wildsmith on vol. 1 of Time and Again (ICv2)
Barb Lien-Cooper on vols. 5 and 6 of Yotsuba&! (Manga Life)

As I noted yesterday, the Good Comics for Kids gang posted our picks for the best comics for kids and teens of 2009, and there were quite a few manga on the list. Gia linked to it at Anime Vice, and her fans have some suggestions of their own for younger readers. Gia also wonders if digital distribution would work for a manga magazine in the U.S.

Are manga and anime dying in Japan? Roland Kelts makes that bold assertion in a recent blog post at the new Comics Journal site, and he enlarges on that point in this audio interview at The Monocle. Gottsu-Iiyan adds his thoughts on what ails the industry at The Eastern Edge.

Noting that the same book may appeal to different readers in different ways—one may like the characters, while another may be reading strictly for plot—librarian Joy Kim suggests some different “doorways” into manga for new readers.

David Welsh and Kate Dacey take a look at this week’s new releases, and both David and Tangognat look over the upcoming titles featured in the December Diamond Previews.

Kate Dacey is giving away a fresh copy of Butterflies, Flowers, which has been getting a lot of ink lately; check the details here at The Manga Critic.

Tokyo Scum Brigade (warning: rather off-putting header art) interviews manga creator Kazuo Umezu (part 1, part 2). In a totally different vein, Kurutta posts some beautiful old shoujo manga art by Macoto Takahashi and wonders who he is. (All these links have in common is that I got them all via Same Hat.) And I may stick with Kurutta after looking at the latest post, which is some nice Taiyo Matsumoto art.

In case you missed it, I posted short takes on three manga this week in my contribution to the What Are You Reading? column at Robot 6, and several other contributors, including guest Charles Hatfield, are reading manga as well. Also, while they are not manga, you might enjoy the two laugh-out-loud webcomics I reviewed in this week’s Unbound column.

Reviews: Carlo Santos checks out a handful of recent releases in his latest Right Turn Only!! column. EvilOmar has some brief reviews up at About Heroes as well.

Derik Badman on vol. 1 of A Distant Neighborhood (Madinkbeard)
Lori Henderson on vol. 5 of Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President (Manga Xanadu)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 1 of Itazura Na Kiss (Comics Worth Reading)
Julie on vol. 19 of Kekkaishi (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 7 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (i heart manga)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 2 of Lucky Star (About.com)
Erica Friedman on vol. 2 of Lucky Star (Okazu)
Emily on Otona no Jikan (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Joy Kim on vols. 11 and 12 of Ouran High School Host Club (Joy Kim)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 13 of xxxHolic (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Jason Punda on vol. 1 of Yotsuba&! (Manga Jouhou)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Yotsuba&! (i heart manga)

ICv2 posts the latest sales numbers from Diamond, and despite mutterings about the death of periodical comics, they seem to be doing just fine—in comics shops, that is, which is the market Diamond serves. Graphic novels have slipped since this time last year, partly because Watchmen isn’t big news any more. ICv2 also gives us the November graphic novel chart, in which Berserk is the top-rated manga and Vampire Knight lags way behind.

Going for quality over quantity, the Good Comics for Kids team lists their picks for the best kid- and teen-friendly comics and manga of 2009.

Digital announced yesterday that they will publish Under Grand Hotel under their 801 imprint, which is usually reserved for the steamy stuff.

Danielle Leigh has more recommendations in her latest Manga Before Flowers post at Comics Should Be Good.

Coffeeandink has some harsh words about Butterflies, Flowers.

David Welsh posts some short takes on his weekend reading and some alternate cover designs for Red Snow at Precocious Curmudgeon.

Tangognat invites manga bloggers to be profiled on Manga View.

News from Japan: There’s a new Code Geass manga in the works.

Reviews

Dan Polley on vol. 1 of Deka Kyoshi (Comics Village)
Ed Sizemore on vol. 2 of A Distant Neighborhood (Comics Worth Reading)
Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of Itazura na Kiss (Comics Should Be Good)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 2 of Jack Frost (Kuriousity)
Julie on Married Under the Italian Sun (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Julie on vol. 14 of Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Tiamat’s Disciple on vol. 1 of Pandora Hearts (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews)
David Welsh on Red Snow (The Comics Reporter)
Dave Ferraro on vol. 1 of Rin-ne (Comics-and-More)
Tangognat on vols. 1 and 2 of V.B. Rose (Tangognat)
Kinukitty on The Wallflower (The Hooded Utilitarian)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 7 of Yotsuba&! (Comics Worth Reading)

David Welsh highlights the manga selections at France’s Angoulême comics festival and unleashes a barrage of license requests for books honored at Angoulême and the Japan Media Arts Festival.

Snow Wildsmith interviews Makoto Tateno at Graphic Novel Reporter.

Lori Henderson posts her digest of the week’s manga news at Manga Xanadu, and Erica Friedman brings us up to speed on all things yuri at Okazu. Melinda Beasi rounds up recent manhwa news and reviews in her latest Manhwa Monday feature at Manga Bookshelf.

Nightschool and Dramacon creator Svetlana Chmakova is resuming work on her webcomic Chasing Rainbows, which is hosted at the Girlamatic. Watch for a podcast interview on the site soon.

The Manga Village writers reveal their picks from the past week’s manga releases.

The New York Times “graphic books” best-seller list is up, and the YA global manga Warriors tops the manga list.

In case you missed it, we announced the winners of our Color of Earth trilogy giveaway at Good Comics for Kids.

ANN’s Evan Miller talks to artist Hanjun Ni.

News from Japan: ANN has Oricon’s list of the top-selling manga series for the year 2009, and the list should look familiar to American readers: One Piece, Naruto, Bleach… It’s an interesting list and worth a look. They also post individual volume rankings (top 25, next 25) Meanwhile, One Piece is all over, popping up in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and the fashion magazine Men’s Non-No, where Monkey D. Luffy is the cover model for Januar. The late writer Kaoru Kurimoto, who wrote the Guin Saga novels and manga, has been given a posthumous Nihon SF Taishō award. Fed up with manga, Zenki creator Yoshihiro Kuroiwa is selling his manuscripts from earlier Shonen Jump series. And Takashi Takeuchi (Type-moon) and Jin Kobayashi (School Rumble) are teaming up to make their own doujinshi.

Patrick Macias has one more look at the gekiga Jaws.

And if you’re in the mood for a bit of swordfighting (hey, Monday does that to me), check out these pages from Blade of the Immortal at Jog’s blog.

Reviews: The Manga Recon team greets the new week with a new set of Manga Minis. At Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie reviews two of Digital’s Harlequin e-manga, Prisoner of the Tower and Sale or Return Bride. And I’m posting Scott VonSchilling’s review of vol. 2 of Yokaiden with some reservations. Scott didn’t read vol. 1 and complains that he couldnt pick up on the story; I think that’s the fault of the reviewer, not the book. While Scott argues that regular recaps are a feature of Japanese manga, Yokaiden was not serialized in a monthly magazine and shouldn’t be expected to follow that format. Scott has some other comments as well, so read it and judge for yourself; feel free to post your take in comments.

Connie on Apothecarius Argentum (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 8 of Arm of Kannon (Slightly Biased Manga)
D.M. Evans on vol. 3 of B.Ichi (Manga Jouhou)
Sophie Stevens on vol. 1 of Black Bird (Animanga Nation)
Connie on vol. 1 of Breath (Slightly Biased Manga)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 1 of Butterflies, Flowers (Manga Bookshelf)
Connie on vol. 1 of Butterflies, Flowers (Slightly Biased Manga)
Erin Jameson on vol. 1 of Butterflies, Flowers (PLAYBACK:stl)
Nick Smith on vol. 1 of Butterflies, Flowers (ICv2)
Tiamat’s Disciple on vol. 8 of Comic (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Deka Kyoshi (MangaCast)
Ken Haley on .hack//Alcor (Manga Recon)
Tangognat on .hack//Legend of the Twilight (complete collection) (Tangognat)
Erica Friedman on vol. 3 of Hanayashiki no Junin-tachi (Okazu)
Michelle Smith on vol. 7 of Honey and Clover (Soliloquy in Blue)
Tangognat on vol. 3 of Honey Hunt (Tangognat)
Carlo Santos on vol. 3 of Ikigami (ANN)
Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Itazura Na Kiss (The Manga Critic)
L. on vol. 1 of Mad Love Chase (The Book Bark)
Zaki Zakaria on vol. 1 of The Manzai Comics (The Star of Malaysia)
Tiamat’s Disciple on vol. 7 of Moon Boy (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews)
Rob on vol. 1 of Nana (Panel Patter)
Diana Dang on vol. 1 of Nightschool (Stop, Drop, and Read)
Connie on vol. 26 of One Piece (Slightly Biased Manga)
Tiamat’s Disciple on vol. 1 of Raiders (Tiamat’s Manga Reviews)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 13 of School Rumble (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Laura on vol. 1 of Shinobi Life (Heart of Manga)
Lori Henderson on the January issue of Shonen Jump (Manga Xanadu)
Rob on vol. 1 of Tanpenshu (Panel Patter)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 24 of Tsubasa (Kuriousity)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 2 of Two Flowers for the Dragon (i heart manga)
Lori Henderson on vol. 3 of Vampire Hunter D (Comics Village)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 7 of Yotsuba&! (Kuriousity)

Recession? What recession? The manga companies seem to be jumping with both feet into 2010. Yen Press, which already has a best-seller in their manga adaptation of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride novels and will probably make out like bandits on their Twilight manga, announced another adaptation today: Cicely von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl YA novels will be rendered into sequential art by Korean artist HyeKyung Baek. It looks like the comic will be debuting in the pages of Yen Plus magazine.

Unlike Yen’s other projects, the Gossip Girls manga will not follow the original story but will be a side story set in the world of the novels and featuring two of the characters. This is a strategy that has worked pretty well for Tokyopop, with their Warriors manga. Read on for all the juicy details.

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 2, 2009 – Yen Press has announced that it will publish a manga adaptation of Cecily von Ziegesar’s New York Times bestselling series, GOSSIP GIRL, about the lives of girls at an elite New York City private high school. GOSSIP GIRL: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY will be serialized monthly in the YEN PLUS manga anthology, starting with the January 2010 issue.

Unlike other manga adaptations that Yen Press has undertaken in the past, GOSSIP GIRL: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY will be an original re-imagination of the girls’ senior year focusing on the lives of Blair and Vanessa, written and illustrated by HyeKyung Baek.

Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers’ Poppy imprint, the series, called “deliciously catty and immediately engrossing” by Kirkus, launched in 2002 and has sold over 5.3 million net copies. There are 13 original Gossip Girl books in addition to 4 books devoted to “The Carlyles” as well as a hit television series airing on the CW. The New Yorker noted that author Cecily von Ziegesar “pulls off the tour de force of wickedly satirizing the young while amusing them” and The New York Times notes that “these novels are fantasies and projections of imaginary world where…lost boys and girls struggle on their own with good and evil, or in this case, Bergdorf Goodman and evil.”

Kurt Hassler, Publishing Director of Yen Press says: “There are few series in the publishing world that have been as impactful or successful as Cecily von Ziegesar’s GOSSIP GIRL. The novels have captured the imaginations of young women around the world, and we look forward to demonstrating with GOSSIP GIRL: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY that graphic novels as a medium can be just as welcoming to girls as it is to boys.”
Cecily von Ziegesar is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Gossip Girl series. She grew up in Manhattan and attended a small private girls’ school on the Upper East Side. She began writing poems and short stories as soon as she could hold a pen. Gossip Girl was her first novel. She has always lived in New York City. You can read Gossip Girl’s juicy secrets at www.gossipgirl.net

HyeKyung Baek, a renowned manga artist in South Korea who made her professional debut with HAPPY SPIDER has since established herself with her beautifully detailed art, fresh characters, and a unique sense of humor that maximizes the effect of the medium. Her best known titles, Bring It On! and Chiro specialize in capturing the hearts of teenage girls, and as a huge fan of von Ziegesar’s GOSSIP GIRL, Baek is the perfect artist to bring these characters to life, in manga.