Good news for Shutterbox fans: Creators Rikki and Tavisha Simons are selling volume 5 of Shutterbox (which was originally published by Tokyopop and never finished) digitally for just $2.99 a volume. And they haven’t given up on getting it into print, either.
IKKI Comics has released all of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No. 5 as a four-volume e-book through the iTunes Store. At About.com, Christopher Butcher interviews Matsumoto and Deb Aoki shows off a preview gallery of art from the books. Someone priced it right: The eight-volume series is being released as four double volumes, with the first one priced at 99 cents (at least for now) and the other three at $4.99 each.
Roland Kelts takes a look at recent cases of government officials confiscating manga as porn.
It’s not available in English, but Erica Friedman makes Thermae Romae, a manga about ancient Roman dudes who travel to modern Japan via a secret underground tunnel in their public bath, sound mighty tempting. In other comics-you-can’t-read-yet news, David Welsh, intrigued by a recent mention on NPR, takes a look at the works of Yumiko Ôshima.
A blogger takes apart the Digital Manga Guild contract and finds it exploitative in many ways. While the basic analysis is reasonable (DMG members’ hourly wage is probably going to be pretty low), the article goes a bit too far in condemning specific clauses of the contract. I’m not a lawyer, but I have worked with freelancers as an editor (and I’m now a freelancer myself), and I can see that some of the clauses are there to allow Digital the freedom to function as a business. They have to be able to reject substandard work or change the prices of the books (in order to have sales and such), and the termination clause looks pretty reasonable—if you bow out, you still get royalties for four years. Also—and this comes in for some discussion in comments—the blogger seems to underestimate how well these books sell. It’s hard to say, because no one is very forthcoming with the numbers, but I believe yaoi manga in digital form is a better bet than this writer thinks.
News from Japan: Kodansha will publish a monthly manga magazine in China as part of a joint venture, beginning next year.
Reviews
Connie on vol. 1 of Bad Teacher’s Equation (omnibus edition) (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lexie on vol. 1 of Cardcaptor Sakura (omnibus edition) (Poisoned Rationality)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 2 of Cardcaptor Sakura (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Connie on vol. 4 of Grand Guignol Orchestra (Slightly Biased Manga)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 4 of House of Five Leaves (The Fandom Post)
John Rose on vol. 5 of Ichiroh! (The Fandom Post)
Connie on vol. 4 of Karakuri Odette (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 9 of Kimi ni Todoke (Slightly Biased Manga)
Angela Eastman on vol. 3 of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (The Fandom Post)
Chris Beveridge on vol. 11 of Otomen (The Fandom Post)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 6 of Toriko (The Comic Book Bin)
TSOTE on vol. 1 of Totsu Gami (Three Steps Over Japan)
Greg McElhatton on vol. 1 of Wandering Son (Read About Comics)
Connie on vol. 12 of Zombie Loan (Slightly Biased Manga)