MangaBlog

This one gets its own post. Ed Chavez reports that Digital Manga announced two new titles, Moon & Sandal, by Yoshinaga Fumi, the creator of Antique Bakery, and Megami DX. Check Ed’s post for more on yaoi manga creep.

SDCC is winding down, but there are still a few things to report. Toon Zone has learned that the Guardians of Luna animated series will be made into a manga by DrMaster and DGN. This is interesting:

It is expected to be in black and white, about 168 pages and will likely be produced in Japan using a traditional manga style.

At the AoD blog, Ed Chavez has news of two more DrMaster titles, Chinese Hero ~Tales of the Blood Sword and Purgatory Kabuki. He also reports that Viz announced two new Shonen Jump titles, Yu-Gi-Oh GX and Houshin Engi, as well as Gintama, which had a trial run in the magazine recently and got a “huge” response.

SignOnSanDiego has an interview with Kazuo Koike, in which they describe Ogami Itto, the hero of Lone Wolf and Cub, as a “sword-wielding Dr. Spock.” And Koike himself shows that he gets it:

“Comics are carried by characters,” he has preached over and over. “If a character is well-created, the comic becomes a hit.”

Active Anime has info on new CMX titles Canon, The Time Guardian, Go Go Heaven!! and Apothecarius Argentum Look on the CMX website, and all you’ll find are cover scans. Apparently they’re too busy to post their own press releases.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin looks at Remote and Ghost Hunt.

The Orlando Sentinel does a nice turn on the Manga 101 story. I particularly liked the ending:

Tommerdahl said Florida is cosmopolitan and diverse so it should not be unexpected that manga fever has taken hold in even the smallest communities.

“What would surprise me is if they had manga collections in isolated communities in the heart of the country, someplace like Garden City, Kansas,” Tommerdahl said.

Surprise!

Venus Rowland, teen-services coordinator for the Finney County Public Library in Garden City, said the library has had an extensive manga collection for more than a year.

“They are extremely popular here,” Rowland said of the books’ appeal in this isolated west Kansas community of about 28,000 residents”

Last week, Pata said,

Ed Chavez will own this year’s manga coverage at San Diego.

And he’s right. Ed is not only blogging from SDCC but also recording the panels and putting them up as podcasts, and he deserves a Yomi of his own for doing this.

Aside from that, manga coverage is spotty. The Tokyopop panel attracted some attention, with articles from Newsarama and PW Comics Week. PWCW also has a wrapup piece that focuses on manga and manwha. Toonzone has filed a number of reports, but none as detailed as Ed’s.

Hey, everyone! David Taylor is in the very first paragraph of this article about Waterstone’s buying Ottokar’s!

David Taylor is worried. A fan of Manga, the Japanese comic books, Taylor believes that this month’s controversial £63m purchase of Ottakar’s, the book chain, by Waterstone’s, its larger rival owned by HMV Group, means that he will no longer be able to buy his Manga books at Ottakar’s.

“This is a huge loss. Ottakar’s have been the Manga bookstore of choice in the UK for quite a while now,” Taylor writes on Love Manga, a weblog dedicated to the medium.

And if David can’t get his manga, he can’t write about it, which would cause the second outbreak of Love-Manga-jones in less than six months. Fortunately, Gerry Johnson, the managing director of Waterstone’s, realizes what a good customer David is:

“From a commercial perspective, we would be nuts to damage that,” he says.

Well, actually he’s talking about all the niche customers, but David probably accounts for a hefty percentage. The article continues with a bunch of business stuff, which is mainly interesting if you’re a book retailer. But the bottom line is that the new regime will continue to offer a lot of choice, and David will still be able to buy his manga. Which will keep the rest of us happy as well.

In the midst of his San Diego manga marathon, Ed Chavez handed out the Yomis, the first-ever manga awards, to the lucky recipients.

And they are (drumroll please):
Best manga series: Fullmetal Alchemist
Best global manga: Dramacon
Best short or one-shot: Sexy Voice and Robo
Best publisher: Viz

Congratulations to the winners! As one of the judges, I have to say that the nominees were so strong that it was difficult to choose a winner. Everyone else must have felt the same, because Ed says the voting was close.

The results are close to a clean sweep for Viz, with Tokyopop bringing in only one title. I think there would be more diversity if there were more categories, however. I really spent a lot of time thinking about whether to vote for Viz or Del Rey for best publisher. Del Rey does a lot of quality work, but they’re still small. When I thought about all the manga I read, and which manga I like the most, it had to be Viz. All four nominees for best manga were Viz titles, because while they do publish their share of mediocre stuff, they also pick up a lot of really good titles.

One more thing: While readers of traditional comics continue to complain about the lack of female creators (there’s some big dust-up on the other side of the blogosphere right now about this Joe Quesada guy), two of the three winning manga series are by female manga-ka. Despite the accusations of sexism in the storylines, it seems that manga really are more egalitarian.

Many thanks to Ed, who put a lot of work into making this happen. I know it wasn’t easy, but I think this is a real milestone for manga in the U.S. What we’re seeing is that the medium here has matured to the point where not only is something like this possible, it’s very, very competitive.

At the AoD Blog, Ed has posted one new title announced yesterday by Seven Seas: Neconoclasm, by Yuzuno Asaki, which is listed as one volume and “alternative.” Sounds intriguing. Here is the Amazon page, so you can see the cover. Ed will doubtless have more later today.