MangaBlog

The latest volume of Vampire Knight tops the Bookscan August graphic novel chart, one of three vampire manga in the top 20 (the other two are Rosario + Vampire and new Tokyopop title Bloody Kiss).

Lori Henderson ponders the question of whether “taboo” describes an actual genre of manga. (I would say it’s too vague, myself, but I do think there are enough stepsibling romances for that to be its own genre.)

Apparently believing that there are not enough cat manga in the U.S., David Welsh asks publishers to please license Chi’s Sweet Home.

It’s not too often that my husband comes up with a link for MangaBlog, but this one is in his field: Symmetry magazine (subtitle: Dimensions of Particle Physics) has a boffo manga cover and an interview with Youhei Morita, who draws an “edutainment” web manga for the website of the Japanese particle accelerator KEK. (Also, this is OT but too cute to pass up: Particle plushies!)

Reviews: David Welsh explains why Real is more than just a sports manga at Precocious Curmudgeon. Kate Dacey has some short takes on Black Lagoon, Dogs: Bullets and Carnage, and Zone-00 at The Manga Critic.

Erica Friedman on vol. 2 of Aoi Shiro (Okazu)
Connie on vol. 27 of Berserk (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 4 of Beauty Is the Beast (i heart manga)
Danielle Van Gorder on vol. 4 of Captive Hearts (Mania.com)
Connie on vol. 3 of Gestalt (Slightly Biased Manga)
Shojo Flash on vol. 11 of High School Debut (Shojo Flash)
Michelle Smith on vol. 11 of High School Debut (Soliloquy in Blue)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 7 of Honey and Clover (There it is, Plain as Daylight)
Emily on Kataomoi no Mukougawa (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Tangognat on vol. 1 of Maria Holic and vol. 1 of Mad Love Chase (Tangognat)
Julie on vols. 6 and 7 of Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Bill Sherman on vol. 1 of Venus Capriccio (Pop Culture Gadabout)
Erin Finnegan on vol. 1 of Vermonia (Erin Finnegan’s LJ)
Connie on vol. 5 of Wild Act (Slightly Biased Manga)
Edward Zacharias on vol. 1 of Wolverine: Prodigal Son (Animanga Nation)
Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of X-Men: Misfits (Comics Should Be Good!)
Nick Popio on vol. 1 of X-Men: Misfits (Girlamatic)
Nick Smith on vol. 1 of X-Men: Misfits (ICv2)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 1 of Yokaiden (Kuriousity)
Dan Polley on vol. 1 of Yokai Doctor (Comics Village)

Manga artist Kano Miyamoto (Say Please) will be a guest at Yaoi-Con.

The Capcomm folks have posted Street Fighter Legends: Chun Li #1 in its entirety for your online reading pleasure, and the Udon folks have a meaty preview up of Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius: Complete Edition.

Wally Xie has a simple plea: Continue buying Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, so that maybe Viz will also pick up Steel Ball Run, by the same creator.

Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka is due out soon, so she links to the press release and adds some thoughts of her own on her blog.

Gottsu-Iiyan shows off some art from the latest chapter of Vagabond.

Reviews: Lori Henderson reviews a fistful of global manga at Good Comics for Kids. The long hiatus is over at Sleep Is For the Weak, where Bad Jew explains why 20th Century Boys is so great and Lianne Sentar does the same for Ooku. At The Book Bark, L. reviews the Kindle version of Maximum Ride.

David Welsh on vol. 4 of Astral Project (Precocious Curmudgeon)
Connie on vol. 26 of Berserk (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 4 of B.Ichi (Kuriousity)
Anna on vol. 1 of Cat Paradise (2 screenshot limit)
Ron Quezon on vol. 1 of Doors of Chaos (Mania.com)
Patricia Beard on vol. 10 of Ghost Hunt (Mania.com)
George R. on vol. 4 of Hidamari Sketch (Japanese edition of Sunshine Sketch) (Okazu)
Connie on vol. 11 of I”s (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 2 of Kitchen Princess (i heart manga)
Billy Aguiar on vol. 1 of Leave it to PET! (Prospero’s Manga)
Connie on vol. 4 of Magic Touch (Slightly Biased Manga)
Julie on vol. 1 of Queen of Ragtonia (Manga Maniac Cafe)

The Tokyopop Webinars are a great idea. Not such a great idea: Trying to listen in while babysitting my nieces and nephew. Due to background noise, I missed a lot of the audio for the first part of the presentation, which is too bad, as it sounded like everyone was having a lot of fun. Senior Editor Lilllian Diaz-Pryzbyl emceed and presented most of the news, and I’m afraid that the NOISE LEVEL in my living room was such that I didn’t catch any of the names of the guests.

But I did catch the new title announcements, as well as some good news about some existing series.

First, of all, the series that I, Kate Dacey, and Robin Brenner have been lobbying shamelessly for for a year is going to live again: vol. 4 of Suppli is back on the list. I didn’t catch the date, but other new volumes that are due out soon include vol. 5 of Pick of the Litter, vol. 5 of Monochrome Factor, vol. 9 of Never Give Up, vol. 7 of Nosatsu Junkie, vol. 8 of Satisfaction Guaranteed, and vol. 23 of King of Hell. And vol. 5 of I.N.V.U. is due out in November, which I think we already knew.

They also made some new announcements, although word has gotten out about a few of these already. The first is Deadman Wonderland (link is to the Wikipedia page, so beware of spoilers), by Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou.

Next is Hanako and the Teller of Allegory, by Sakae Esuno, creator of Future Diary. This is a four-volume series, and vol. 1 is out in March. I did catch that this is based on a traditional Japanese ghost story.

Then a whole lot of .hack stuff: .hack//Alcor, which was noted in their latest press release, is coming in November, but watch out as well for the two-volume novel .hack//Cell and, inevitably, .hack//4Koma. Oh, and there’s a .hack//Legend of the Twilight omnibus coming in December.

The other books that were mentioned seem to be already out there: This Ugly Yet Beautiful World was also announced in the press release, and ICv2 posted recently that they had Remember, by Benjamin (the creator of Orange).

Lillian also highlighted a few of Tokyopop’s licensed properties, Warcraft: Death Knight, due out in December, and StarCraft: Ghost Academy.

Other news… Vol. 3 of Vampire Kisses is coming out, and the art will be by someone other than rem, which is a shame as I really like her style.

There were a lot of questions about manhwa titles, which Lillian found amusing as apparently it doesn’t sell that well for Tokyopop. With regard to Queen’s Knight, she said, “We’ll have to see how the market develops. It’s tough for long series, and it’s tough for Korean series.”

(By this time the kids had left and I could hear.)

Demon Sacred, by Jyu-Oh-Sei creator Natsumi Itsuki, is still on the schedule and will be officially announced later this year.

Finally, with regard to losing the Kodansha licenses, Lillian said what we have pretty much heard all along: It wasn’t a surprise, Del Rey was getting all the good licenses anyway (due to their closer relationship with Kodansha, and Tokyopop has been preparing for this moment for over a year.

Johanna Draper Carlson posts her summary of the conversation, and she has screen grabs!

I wrote about the Vermonia manga series for PWCW this week, and at Robot 6 I took a look at the finalists for the Ignatz awards, which will be voted on and handed out at Small Press Expo later this month.

Reactions and addenda continue to pour in to the news that Kodansha has ended its licenses with Tokyopop. Heidi MacDonald has a very thorough roundup at The Beat, and Tom Spurgeon reflects a bit at The Comics Reporter. At Anime Vice, Gia Manry interviews Tokyopop Marketing Manager Kasia Piekarz but doesn’t get much out of her other than the fact that Tokyopop was ready for this. Sesho adds his commentary on the matter in his latest podcast.

David Welsh and Shojo Flash both take a look at this week’s new releases, while Danielle Leigh looks ahead with a peek at the September Previews.

At the Yaoi Press blog, YP publisher Yamila Abraham has a really interesting post on the possibilities the Kindle opens up overseas—or would open up if it weren’t region-blocked. (Not that there aren’t ways around that sort of thing.) This is of more than academic interest, of course, as YP will be releasing books to the Kindle soon.

Kate Dacey profiles manga-friendly comics store Comicopia at The Manga Critic.

You can win a copy of vol. 1 of X-Men: Misfits at Comics Worth Reading.

News from Japan: Things have been slow lately, but we did get word that the creator of Marmalade Boy is launching a new series.

Reviews: Carlo Santos files another edition of Right Turn Only!! at ANN. Go, read. Park Cooper has some short reviews of recent titles and Joy Kim takes a look at the September issue of Yen Plus at Manga Life.

Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Dark Hunters (Manga Xanadu)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Detroit Metal City (i heart manga)
Deb Aoki on vol. 1 of Four-Eyed Prince (About.com)
Oyceter on vols. 2 and 3 of Goong (Sakura of DOOM)
Shevaun Morrison on vol. 1 of Higurashi When They Cry: Cotton Drifting Arc (Kuriousity)
Emily on Kanchigai Musume to Bichigire Ouji (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 3 of Love Com (MangaCast)
Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane on vols. 17 and 18 of Nana (Manga Life)
Katherine Farmar on vol. 1 of Pure Heart (Comics Village)
Ken Haley on vols. 1 and 2 of Samurai 7 (Manga Recon)
Erica Friedman on vol. 1 of Tenbin ha Hana to Asobu (Okazu)
Julie on vol. 3 of Togari (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Snow Wildsmith on You Make My Head Spin (Manga Jouhou)

The capes-and-tights crowd may be busy discussing Disney’s acquisition of Marvel (and making weird parodies and imaginary memos) but on this side of the blogosphere everyone was talking about Kodansha dropping all their licenses with Tokyopop. Here’s reaction from Deb Aoki, Kate Dacey, Alex Hoffman Gia Manry, Brad Rice, and David Welsh (don’t forget to check the lengthy comment string).

At Icarus Comics (not entirely appropriate for work), Simon Jones muses a bit on the deeper meaning of Kodansha’s move and the possible fate of the books left behind. And Deb Aoki takes a closer look at Tokyopop’s Kodansha titles and notes which have already been rescued, which are complete already, and which will be left “in limbo.”

Meanwhile, Kate Dacey takes a look at this week’s new manga at The Manga Critic.

John Thomas has some snippets of Dark Horse news (better paper for Berserk, possible new volume of The Monkey King) and hints that more is to come at this weekend’s Kumoricon panel.

Gia has three new titles on this week’s Manga Watch-List, with a bit of info about each and speculation as to who will license it in the U.S.

Reviews: Joe McCulloch (Jog to his readers) posts an interesting list of Odd Manga at Bookforum.

Erica Friedman on vol. 1 of Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan (Okazu)
Tangognat on The Color of Earth and The Color of Water (Tangognat)
Connie on vol. 30 of Detective Conan (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 2 of Detroit Metal City (Slightly Biased Manga)
Julie on vols. 4 and 5 of Kiichi and the Magic Books (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (Comics Village)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Maid Sama! (i heart manga)
Edward Zacharias on vol. 40 of Naruto (Animanga Nation)
Danielle Leigh on vol. 5 of Real (Comics Should Be Good!)
Dave Ferraro on Swallowing the Earth (Comics-and-More)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 1 of A Tale of an Unknown Country (Comics Worth Reading)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 1 of Tale of the Waning Moon (Kuriousity)
Grant Goodman on vols. 1-6 of Yotsuba&! (Manga Recon)

The Japanese publisher Kodansha has decided to let its licenses with Tokyopop expire, according to Marketing Manager Kasia Piekarz, which means that series in progress will not be completed by Tokyopop and existing volumes will not be reprinted. Accordingly, a number of series have been put on the Out of Print list. Tokyopop made the following official statement:

The Japanese publisher Kodansha, from whom TOKYOPOP has licensed many terrific series over the years — Chobits, Love Hina, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Rave Master, Initial D, Kindaichi, Life, GetBackers, and Love Attack, to name a few — has decided to let all existing contracts with TOKYOPOP expire on all manga series that they have licensed to us. As a result, Kodansha will not renew any licenses with TOKYOPOP for any new manga volumes. What does this mean? TOKYOPOP will not be allowed to complete the publication of any series that is currently in progress; in addition, TOKYOPOP will not be allowed to reprint titles after the current inventory has been sold out, so once these series are sold out at retail, they will not be available for consumers to purchase. The reasons for Kodansha’s decision were not communicated to TOKYOPOP.

We have received many emails and phone calls about titles related to this announcement, and given the nature of the negotiations, we could not definitely answer any of those questions until now. We love all of these series, and we are disappointed that we will not get to enjoy the outcome of some of our favorite manga. We hope to see these series completed some day…. However, if they are ever published again, they will not be published by TOKYOPOP.

Given that Tokyopop seems to have turned the corner lately, I wonder what Kodansha is up to. Remember they refused to renew their licenses with Tokyopop Germany earlier this year.

ETA: David Welsh has a list of affected titles at Precocious Curmudgeon.

ETA2: And here’s Tokyopop’s full Out of Print list, which includes some non-Kodansha titles.