Saturday miscellany

MangaCast posts Ed’s interview with Lara Yokoshima and links to previews of When Worlds Collide (written by Tina Anderson) and more Chikyu Misaki (here and here.)

At Tokyopop, editor Tim Beedle writes about Mitsukazu Mihara’s Haunted House, which he edited. Tim points out that it was adapted by Christy Lijewski, so if you liked Re:Play, you might want to check it out.

Shaenon K. Garrity winds up her Overlooked Manga Festival with a set of picks from Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, who throws in her top five untranslated manga just for kicks.

Just in time for Halloween, Dark Horse is having a horror contest.

Today’s Group Hate is aimed at Tony Long, of Wired, who deems graphic novels to be undeserving of National Book Awards. I once got a free subscription to Wired, but I never read it because it was so jargon-heavy I couldn’t even understand the titles of the articles. So I sort of wonder who died and left Tony Long king of the literary critics. Also, the fact that he writes “He produced a graphic novel (or “comic book,” as we used to call them)” suggests that he doesn’t actually have any idea what he’s talking about. Neil Gaiman has a tart response: he points to numerous other award-winning books, then adds

I like the bit where he says that he hasn’t read the comic in question, but he just knows what things like that are like. It’s always best to be offended by things you haven’t read. That way you keep your mind uncluttered by things that might change it.

At Blogfonte, Mitch wonders why manga are shelved by title in bookstores. My guess is that most readers think in terms of titles rather than creators, partly because they are coming from anime (remember the cartoon network effect?), partly because foreign names are harder to remember, and partly because some manga publishers downplay creators, often omitting their names on their websites and in catalog listings.

From ComiPress comes news of a new magazine, Mangazine, this one in Spanish and published by AniMangaWeb.

At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna looks at volume 4 of Crimson Hero, which has apparently changed quite a bit since the first book. Lyle takes a first look at Backstage Prince, which just started running in Shojo Beat. At AoD, Matthew Alexander reviews Because I’m the Goddess, and Robert Harris gives high marks to Welcome to the NHK.