Back to work!

I’m back from my adventure-filled trip to Ireland (if you define “adventure” as drinking a lot of tea and getting lost on the one-way streets). If you’re curious, I posted a more-or-less real-time account at Twitter and I’ll be writing more at my personal blog, once I recover from jet lag.

Thanks to Kate Dacey for doing such a great job keeping the blog going while I was away!

Over at MTV Geek, I took a look at ten manga to look forward to in 2012, and I took a look at this week’s new manga.

Lissa Pattillo discusses her picks from this week’s new releases in her On the Shelf column at Otaku USA.

Sean Gaffney looks at next week’s new manga at A Case Suitable for Treatment.

Viz has licensed the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexa!

Speaking of Viz, if you haven’t downloaded their app onto your iThing yet, now is the time to do it: New users who download the Viz iOS app and create a new account between now and January 30 can get a free volume of any of their digital manga.

DMP’s Kickstarter campaign to fund the publication of Osamu Tezuka’s Barbara was big news while I was away, and Ed Sizemore, Johanna Draper Carlson, Alex Hoffman, Lissa Pattillo, and DMP’s Ben Applegate discuss the pros and cons in a special Manga Out Loud podcast.

JManga has added vol. 1 of Hyakusho Kizoku, an autobiographical manga by Fullmetal Alchemist creator Hiromu Arakawa, to its lineup. FMA fans be warned: It’s a gag manga with a definitely different tone!

Eiji Ohtsuka, the writer of MPD-Psycho and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, will give the keynote address at an event titled “Experiencing the Media Mix: Anime, Manga, Video Games,” part of Concordia University’s President’s Conference Series, on Feb. 4. His talk will be titled “The Unholy Alliance of Disney and Eisenstein: The Wartime Origins of Manga, Animation and Otaku Culture.”

News from Japan: Jormungand creator Keitarō Takahashi has a new series in the works, and it will launch in the May issue of Monthly Sunday GX.

Reviews

Chris Kirby on vol. 17 of 20th Century Boys (The Fandom Post)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 5 of Afterschool Charisma (The Comic Book Bin)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 5 of Afterschool Charisma (The Fandom Post)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 5 of Bakegyamon (Blogcritics)
Matthew Alexander on vol. 14 of Black God (The Fandom Post)
Chris Kirby on vol. 5 of Cross Game (The Fandom Post)
Connie on vol. 5 of Dogs (Slightly Biased Manga)
Ken Haley on vol. 4 of Dorohedoro (Sequential Ink)
Justin on vols. 1 and 2 of The Drops of God (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Connie on vol. 1 of Gate 7 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Justin on GoGo Monster (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Connie on vol. 7 of Kamisama Kiss (Slightly Biased Manga)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 5 of Kobato (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Matthew Warner on vols. 3 and 4 of K-ON! (The Fandom Post)
Connie on The Reason Why He Loves Him So Much (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 6 of Tears of a Lamb (Blogcritics)
Connie on vol. 3 of Wild Adapter (Slightly Biased Manga)