PW sampler

This week’s PW Comics Week has a little of this, a little of that. The lead story is on last weekend’s BookExpo America, where graphic novels were a notable presence. One interesting aspect of the article is how many obviously literary, ambitious graphic novels are out or in the works. Some look intriguing, although I don’t really think the world needs another biography of Richard Feynman. Anyway, we’re all about the manga, so if you didn’t get to the expo, here’s the 411:

This year Viz is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The manga publisher is continuing to move piles of Naruto books and preparing to launch the semi-self-referential Shojo Beat Mango Artist Academy, an unusual narrative manga how-to book, as well as its own version of original manga. It’s a soccer manga/promotional title called Next Stop: Germany, created as part of a World Cup promotion in conjunction with the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team, which will be available only at the two U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team exhibition games later this month.

Tokyopop’s venture into youth prose novels gets a mention, along with the planned Star Trek and Hellgate titles. And in the “Potpourri” category,

Vertical is following up its recently concluded Buddha series with another Osamu Tezuka project, Ode to Kirihito, launching this fall, and next year will see Keiko Takemiya’s science-fiction shojo manga To Terra. Watson-Guptill is preparing another of Christopher Hart’s popular how-to-draw-manga books, Manga Mania: Magical Girls and Friends. And Robert Napton, director of Bandai Entertainment’s recently launched manga publishing unit, announced a collaboration with Top Cow on a manga-sized edition of a Lara Croft, Tomb Raider book.

Elsewhere in Comics Week are a brief article about two new CMX properties, which focuses mainly on the hotly anticipated Train Man, and a preview of Dokebi Bride.