Felipe Smith to draw Morning 2 manga

First, some news without a link: I got an e-mail from Yukari Shiina of Kodansha yesterday, telling me that Felipe Smith, creator of the global manga MBQ, will be drawing a new manga serial for the Japanese magazine Morning 2. You may remember this as the magazine that hosts the international manga competition. The first episode, which will include six color pages, will appear in the issue that hits newsstands on June 21. Smith will also draw the cover of that issue. After that, the story will appear monthly. Here’s a preview of what Smith’s life may be like in the immediate future (language is NSFW).

Japanator has a good, brief analysis of the slowdown in the manga market, followed by some interesting comments. Danielle Leigh presents her own take in her Manga Before Flowers column at CBR.

Fun with fujoshi: Khursten’s essays on the slashability of Shonen Jump have John Jakala reading shonen in a whole new way.

Deb Aoki has bigger, better previews of the art for Del Rey’s Wolverine manga at About.com.

Starting in May 2007, the artist formerly known as Koge-Donbo will now be referred to as Koge-Donbo*. This is for copyright purposes, according to the dot-anime USA blog, but that’s not a very enlightening explanation.

Another day, another chapter of the 18th Maria-sama ga Miteru novel. You go, Erica!

Reviews: At Comics Worth Reading, Ed Sizemore tells us why he enjoys vols. 1 and 2 of Dragon Eye so much. Xavier Guilbert reviews Santa Inoue’s Tokyo Burger at du9 (review is in French). EvilOmar posts some brief manga reviews at About Heroes. Like lots of other people, Kethylia is ambivalent about vol. 12 of Hot Gimmick. Matthew Alexander reviews vol. 1 of Dark Metro and Danielle Van Gorder reads Maybe I’m Your Steppin’ Stone at Anime on DVD. Lissa Pattillo checks out vol. 2 of RE:play at Kuri-ousity. Julie has an early look at vol. 6 of Absolute Boyfriend at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Tiamat’s Disciple finds Voices of a Distant Star a worthwhile read despite quality problems and some variations from the anime.