No longer licensed

Oops! Vertical, Inc., announced at NYCC/NYAF that it had the license for Usumaru Furuya’s No Longer Human, but the company seems to have jumped the gun a bit:

Due to a communication error between the company’s New York and Tokyo offices, the property was falsely presented as slated for publication. While the licensors for this series and Vertical are currently actively in contract negotiations, the North American rights have not been secured. Vertical, Inc. will continue to work with the rights holders for No Longer Human with hopes to properly acquire the license, and it apologizes to all parties involved in this unfortunate and unintentional error.

Also, Tokyopop will be publishing its Blu manga on Digital’s eManga site. This isn’t the first time manga publishers have crossed boundaries like this—Yaoi Press also publishes at eManga—but it’s an interesting experiment. The books will be $5.99, cheaper than print editions but dearer than eManga’s other offerings. (Although Melinda Beasi points out in comments that if you consider the rent-to-own model, it’s not that much more expensive.) Rob McMonigal has some thoughts.

Both Dark Horse and Yen Press announced at NYCC/NYAF that they would be building their own digital platforms, rather than hopping onto something like comiXology; Lori Henderson thinks that’s a bad idea.

Asako Suzuki, who was responsible for licensing some of my favorite manga as the editor director of manga at CMX, is back in the biz—her Facebook now lists her as a manga line editor at Tokyopop.

Sean Gaffney looks forward to next week’s new manga.

Melinda Beasi inaugurates a new feature, Three Things Thursday, with a look at some good shoujo manga. David Welsh chimes in with three of his favorites at The Manga Curmudgeon.

David also posts his weekly license request: Yuu Watase’s Sakura-Gari, which is very different from her other work.

Jason Thompson looks at Gold Ring (Siwari Al-Dhahab), a collaboration between a United Arab Emirates writer and a Japanese artist.

At Kuriousity, Shannon Fay continues her Halloween-themed roundup with a look at Cowa!

NYCC/NYAF news: Alex Leavitt posts full audio of the Anime in Academia panel, featuring Casey Brienza, Mikhail Koulikov, and Jennifer Fu. Ed Sizemore has posted his con report at Comics Worth Reading (part 1, part 2)

Reviews

Alexander Hoffman on The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven (Manga Widget)
Kristin on vol. 21 of Hikaru no Go (Comic Attack)
Erica Friedman on vol. 5 of Octave (Okazu)
Tom Spurgeon on the October issue of Shonen Jump (The Comics Reporter)
Victoria Martin on solanin (Manga Life)