Hard to believe, but Viz is 20 years old. Next year it will be legal!
Speaking of longevity, the Daily Yomiuri has an article on three manga that have reached the 30-year mark. They are Glass Mask, Royal Arms, and This is the Police Box in Front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward. That last is a one-panel gag comic, and a statue of its main character, a policeman, has been installed in front of the real Kameari Station.
From ICv2 comes the news that Harlequin is relaunching its manga line, taking control of distribution but leaving translation and packaging to Dark Horse. David Welsh beats me to it:
Dark Horse does a nice job with production, but the Harlequin books have always seemed like a particularly odd fit with the rest of Dark Horse’s line. (Zombies! Samurai! Assassins! Zombie samurai assassins!) And comic shops don’t seem like the best venue for them.
I have seen a few in the manga section of Borders, but I suspect they would sell better if they were displayed near the Harlequin prose novels. The first volume of Nancy Drew, has sold 40,000 copies to date and is expected to clear 75,000 by the end of summer because they are being sold in Target, supermarkets, and the kids section (not the graphic novels section) of bookstores.
Viz seems to have a new imprint, but Ed at MangaCast isn’t impressed.
With the World Cup in full swing, The Star of Malaysia reviews a selection of soccer manga. I’m keeping current by checking MangaCast, where Ed is changing the theme colors each day to honor the winning team.
This is a pretty cool story about an ordinary housewife in Indonesia who turned her house into a library to get kids hooked on books. The manga connection is tangential, just that that’s what the older kids read, but it’s an interesting slice of life.
“This is the Police Box” (or Kochikame, as its fans call it) isn’t a one-panel strip. When the mangaka called it “a one-shot gag cartoon,” he presumably meant that each episode is a complete story in itself (rather than there being a continuous storyline).