Afternoon miscellany

The Tintin Pantoja lovefest continues at the Newsarama blog. And it just might be working.

David Welsh checks out this week’s comics and warns us: volume 12 of Naruto comes out today. (But my daughter’s friend already picked it up this weekend.)

As the Minx-storm begins to die down, Simon Jones has an interesting observation on targeting comics to a single sex:

I’d agree that there are few storytelling elements that can be said to be the exclusive domain of either sex. But I feel the specialization in manga, and in magazines, is important to not only their success, but the balanced representation of sexes in their respective readerships. No one would call magazine publishing a boy’s club, but the comic book in America definitely is.

Publisher’s Weekly’s daily newsletter has a piece on Seven Seas’ plans for YA novels, which includes republishing the Avalon: Web of Magic series and publishing two unreleased volumes.

At The Pulse, Jennifer Contino interviews Steve Cummings, but you’re going to have to scroll down to find it because I couldn’t locate a permalink anywhere. Anyway, Cummings, who studied comicking in Japan, is taking Batman to Akibahara in his next issue of Legends of the Dark Knight. Cummings is also drawing Pantheon High for Tokyopop.

At Okazu, Erica’s review of volume 2 of Strawberry Panic made me laugh. That’s the Japanese edition; the U.S. edition isn’t due out until next April. Holly Ellingwood at Active Anime has an early review of Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl, a new title from Seven Seas. At Eye on Comics, Don MacPherson finds Mail Order Ninja a bit juvenile, which is a good and a bad thing.