MangaBlog

Yes, it’s that time of the week again: Jack and I get our podcast on about anthologies, drunken manga-ka, and underage manga-cafe denizens. Check it all out at the MangaCast. For further reading, here are the show notes:

We want anthologies!

Queenie Chan, part 1
Queenie Chan, part 2
Pata on how we read and how comics complicate computer interfaces
Rivkah on digital ink

Netcomics releases web manwha simultaneously in U.S. and Korea

Osamu Akimoto: “Booze is my enemy.”

Jakala to Dark Horse: Get the lead out!

Edits to FMA 8

Viz on edits: Who cares?
ChunHyang72: All manga are edited!

New title announcements

New manwha from Netcomics and Dark Horse, at MangaCast
Lengthy press release on upcoming Viz titles
Ode to Kirihito: So good we just can’t stand it!
Hints on new Broccoli titles, so obscure even insiders can’t figure them out

Analyzing the August direct market sales figures

ICv2: graphic novels sales
ICv2: August overview
Analysis at Love Manga

Manga cafe busted for letting kid stay all night

Incoming

New manga releases this week:

After School Nightmare
Night of the Beasts
Kurogane
Wallflower
Berserk
Anne Freaks: No link because it’s not on the ADV site. Helloooo… anybody home??
Orphen
Oyayubihime Infinity
Gerard et Jacques
Naked Jewels
White Guardian

Volume 11 of Naruto makes it to week six on the USA Today top 150 books, and the book hasn’t slipped much, moving from number 43 last week to 46 this week.

Telophase’s latest manga column is up at the Tokyopop site, and it’s a brief history of Osamu Tezuka.

MangaCast checks this week’s comics list. Read it before you head to the store!

PW Comics Week explains what Broccoli is all about. The article notes in passing that Yoki, Koto, Kiku goes into wide release next month, and I’d definitely recommend picking it up if you think manga noir would be to your tastes. It’s wicked funny, emphasis on the wicked.

Also at PWCW, Kate Culkin writes about Mangaka America, due out in November from HarperCollins. Editors Tania del Rio and William Staehle went to 11 artists working in manga-influenced styles and asked each to put together a tutorial about how they handle a particular task. Contributors include Rivkah Greulich, Svetlana Chmakova, and Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges.

The Japanese-American newspaper Nichi Bei Times interviews cartoonist Jason Shiga. My favorite quote:

Libraries are great! Can you imagine if they had libraries of any other consumer item? Like a car library where you could borrow a car for three weeks? The American library is like some nutty communist experiment that actually worked.

There’s more to love at Shiga’s website. (Via Andre’s blog.)

Anthology update: Although we’d love to have ’em here, manga magazines are in a slump in Japan. ComiPress translates an article about the publisher Shogakukan’s plans to create online versions of two of its magazines. They will be available on the web using a manga viewer from the U.S. company Zinio. It looks like the folks at Shogakukan have been thinking about the issues we have been discussing, such as cost, convenience, and the desire to hold a physical book in your hands, so the article is worth a click.

Also on ComiPress, a discussion of the U.S. manga market that helps put things in perspective: In 2005-2006, the 8 volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist released in the U.S. sold a total of 348,000 copies, while the 14 volumes of that same series sold over 20,000,000 copies, admittedly over a longer time period.

At Manga Talk, Lillian DP has found some videos about drawing manga.

Basically, it’s an older guy with an overhead projector and a nodding panel of spectators, breaking down how popular manga work visually and storytelling-wise.

Now the bad news: They’re in Japanese. But still possibly worth a look.

Reviews: At TokyoSpace, ChunHyang72 hearts Sorcerors and Secretaries. Over at the MangaCast, Jack takes on three shonen titles and Ed counters with some shoujo. And Johanna at Comics Worth Reading reviews the first volume of Queenie Chan’s The Dreaming.

Ed Chavez and the MangaCast crew have been tinkering with the internets again, and look what they came up with: PodViews, previews that you can subscribe to and download just like audio files, so you don’t have to go through all the hassle of visiting the company’s website and trying to find the previews there. The details are here.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, so Love Manga has the shopping list. It looks like Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is finally coming out—or is Dark Horse just toying with us again?

At Tokyopop, ChunHyang72 has the latest roundup of blogs and columns worth reading. It’s nice that she highlights the editors’ blogs, as they would otherwise get lost. And I like the suggestion made by blogger Andre (love the banner, too) that readers be allowed to post reviews, a la Netflix.

Your Japanese lesson for today, courtesy of Manga Junkie: Why the police refer to crime victims as “Buddha.”

Job postings: From Deutsche Mangaka comes word that the German manga publisher Fireangels is looking for submissions. And you don’t have to know German to enter. (Via Guns, Guys, and Yaoi.) Prism Comics posts to the TCJ message board that they are looking for writers to review comics with LGBT content. No pay, just the glory of being published. And Kids Love Comics is looking for samples of work by people who make comics for kids.

If you think being a manga reviewer is all beer and skittles, Pata has some bad news for you.

Review of reviews: At AoD, Ed Chavez reviewsVs., a new series from CMX. Comics-and-more devotes Manga Monday to two titles I haven’t read yet, Blue Spring and Flowers and Bees. Blogcritics gives the nod to Monster, a favorite of mine:

I wonder how many teen readers will get caught up in this well-mounted serial’s moral ambiguities which, in best noir fashion, are effectively designed to make the reader question what at first seem fluorescently lit moral certainties.

In this week’s Flipped column, David Welsh interviews David Wise, the CEO of Go!Comi.

The Japan Times interviews manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi, author of The Push Man, and reviews his new book, Abandon the Old in Tokyo. (Via Journalista.)

The anthology discussion continues, and it’s getting a bit technical: At Irresponsible Pictures, Pata discusses the mechanics of reading manga and the difficulties of translating a vertical page to a horizontal screen:

If I try to fit the whole page onscreen, I can’t read the text. If I want to read the text, I can’t fit the whole page onscreen. GAR.

His followup post has more links, for those fascinated by the idea of e-anthologies. Meanwhile the MangaHusband, who reads Slashdot so I don’t have to, sent me this post on comics and micropayments. And several people have pointed to DriveThruComics, which seems to be translating the theory into experiment with a site that sells inexpensive comics downloads. No manga yet, but they say they are working on it.

At Icarus Comics, Simon Jones adds his two cents. And it’s worth pointing out that Icarus publishes Comics AG, (NSFW!) a dead-tree anthology that is up to issue 45.

There are several yaoi anthologies in the works, and Love Manga has the scoop on the new Iris anthology, When Worlds Collide. However, yaoi publishers seem to face a unique problem: Resistance from the printers. Tina Anderson has the story and she links to this post by Kellie of Iris:

It’s funny—it honestly never occurred to me that a printer who was okay with “graphic sexual content” would suddenly change their tune when that turned to “graphic homosexual content.” A cock is just fine, but two cocks…oh, no, missy, that’s just wrong.

Neanderthals.

Simon of Icarus also extracts the manga data from the Coldcut top 200 list. The top nine titles are from Viz, but the tenth title on Simon’s list (number 29 overall) is volume 2 of Finder Series, from BeBeautiful. Then it’s Viz, Viz, Viz, Viz, volume 1 of Finder Series,, Viz, Viz, Vizzzzz….. Actually, the entire list is Viz and BeBeautiful, because Coldcut only carries a limited range, but it’s still interesting to see what the rankings are, and as Simon points out, manga dominates the graphic novels category.

If you’re in the mood for a taste of a Japanese anthology, the latest FutoMaki at MangaCast looks at Monthly Shonen Companion.

At Shojo Beat, Kaze Hikaru is out and Backstage Prince is in. I love the editors’ explanation:

“Replacing beloved serialized titles with new ones can be bittersweet, but manga are like people: You like some more than others, you miss those whom you no longer see regularly, and you can never be introduced to too many. And don’t forget, you can still read more Godchild and Kaze Hikaru in their manga volumes!”

It strikes the perfect balance of philosophical insight and self-promotion!

Review-o-rama: The Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s Wilma Jandoc writes about Scrapped Princess, both the manga and the anime. Kadzuki at the Star of Malaysia reviews a book I really enjoyed, Genju no Seiza by Matsuri Akino, the creator of Pet Shop of Horrors. Blogcritics has been going to town on manga lately; their latest post is a review of volume 1 of Dragon Head.