MangaBlog

Eric Wight, the creator of the newly announced Tokyopop title My Dead Girlfriend, is a different sort of TV cartoonist: he draws the comics supposedly done by a character in The O.C., and he also did a mock 1941 comic for another show, Six Feet Under. Wight explains the new book to Wizard Universe:

My Dead Girlfriend is about a boy named Finney who lives in a world of horror–literally. His family members are ghosts, his classmates are monsters and he’s the most normal kid in town, which makes him a complete outcast. Then, along comes Jenny. [She is] smart, beautiful and totally into Finney. Only problem is, she’s kind of dead. So it’s about seeing how far Finney is willing to go to be with the girl of his dreams, despite their corporeal differences.

But it’s all about not fitting in, he says. Speaking of fitting in, he waxes enthusiastic about Tokyopop and adds this:

My drawing style for My Dead Girlfriend is very Western and has an animated look to it, but the pacing and the way many of the individual panels are laid out are very inspired by manga. It’s truly a visual hybrid of East meets West.

Wight also talks about his TV gig, the animated cartoon he does for Verizon, and his work on Justice League of America #0, which shows just how versatile he can be.

Yes, the latest edition of MangaBlogCast is now available at MangaCast for your listening pleasure. This week’s edition includes all the latest news and a commentary on shoujo manga by yours truly.

Here are the links for this edition:

Rurouni Kenshin manga-ka Nobuhiro Watsuki will appear at SDCC

MangaNEXT: A con of our own

ICv2 Retailer’s Guide
Top Ten Manga Properties
Love Manga speculates on the most powerful people in manga
ALA Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee

Plagiarism at RSoM-UK?
Sweatdrop forum discussion
Tokyopop forum discussion
Love Manga summarizes it all

CMX responds to Tenjho Tenge criticism

Japanese publishers reprint vintage manga
Suiho Tagawa manga at The Beat

Looking ahead—new releases
Air Gear
Q-ko-chan
Fools Gold
Dragon Head
Antique Bakery
Berserk
Project X: Cup Noodle

Commentary: Feminism and Shoujo Manga—Gender or Genre?
Rachel Nabors on the lack of women’s comics
Kalinara on the mediocrity of shoujo heroines
Queenie Chan on the question of genre
Robin Brenner’s No Flying, No Tights
Love Manga’s take
David Welsh lists eight non-mediocre shoujo heroines

This is a big year for manga: as sales continue to increase, the manga creep brings in older and younger readers, and Merriam-Webster sees fit to include the word “manga” in the dictionary, we are also seeing manga starting to separate itself a bit from the comics mainstream. After years of manga being a part of smaller cons, MangaNEXT will be the first-ever convention just for manga. And while the Harvey and Eisner awards regularly ignore manga, except for a handful of titles, we now have our own manga awards, the Yomis.

This is due entirely to the hard work of MangaCast’s Ed Chavez, who solicited nominations from his readers, recruited judges (including me), tallied the results, and got the physical awards made up. Ed will be handing them out at SDCC on Friday, and I can’t wait to hear the results.

In the meantime, Jack Tse has done a pre-Yomi podcast to get us in the mood.

The new PW Comics Week is up, with a review of Abandon the Old in Tokyo, the latest from manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi of The Push Man fame; an interview with Bettina Kurkoski, whose global manga Loki will be released soon by Tokyopop; a preview of Re: Play, another Tokyopop global manga; and the news, in the Briefly section, that Yaoi Press has picked up licenses for three graphic novels from Italy. Now that’s what I call global manga!

Thanks to David Welsh for the heads-up that Dirk Deppey interviews Dallas Middaugh in The Comics Journal this month.

Newsarama spends a minute on manga, which is more than they usually do, and they manage to squeeze in quite a few reviews in that time.

At Bento Physics, Jamila starts off their promised series on feminism in shoujo manga by analyzing Ai Yazawa’s Nana.

She defines the problem beautifully:

There are those who choose to interpret the soft-spoken heroine as an exemplifier of what they perceive as an inherent regressiveness in Asian gender roles.

The more forgiving choose to regard this as part of a simple cultural difference that can be overlooked in favor of shounen manga. Then there are those who enjoy shoujo well enough to not write it off as completely counterfeminist, but may not have found a way to articulate why this is so.

For an example of this, look no further than the recent discussion here at MangaBlog about Tohru Honda.

Jamila talks about looking at women who are ordinary, flawed but in the process of change, rather than ass-kicking, masculinized superheroines.

Proper representation should focus on what is truthful and free of delusion just as much as it should focus on the ideal and the empowered. The girl you find on the street is just as important in her mundane ordinariness as any other representation, complete with her flaws and shortcomings. And one thing manga has proven capable of is showing these women, resolutely mundane or extremely symbolic, as possessing genuine desire for change and self-actualization.

Yesss! That’s what makes it so interesting.

Then she applies these principles to Nana, a book that, I have to confess, I found unbearable because I couldn’t stand the boy-craziness of Nana Komatsu. Jamila addresses that, pointing out that the story is one of change and growth.

This is because Yazawa intends Komatsu’s personal journey to be one in which she earns herself a stronger personality. The fact that she ends up taking one step back for every two steps she does forward is a deliberate part of this growth.

This goes back to that old cliche about manga, that the characters change and develop in the course of the series. I’m not sure that’s always true, but Jamila thinks it is in Nana’s case. I certainly think it makes for interesting narrative.

Read the whole thing, because these excerpts don’t really do it justice. Jamila has a sharp eye and a graceful style, and I’m looking forward to reading more of her analyses in the future.

At MangaCast, my partner-in-podcast Jack Tse has a special Maki Side Dish up: Jack’s MangaCast Anniversary Top 10.

And Pata points us to a a set of five videos of Osamu Tezuka himself. They’re YouTube videos, so the quality is terrible, and they are in Japanese, but still, it’s a glimpse of the master at work.

A good followup is Tania del Rio’s latest column for Buzzscope. Tania puts her finger on something I have sort of noticed for a while, that Japanese manga-ka seem more reserved than their American counterparts, who are very vocal and visible on the web. Tania demonstrates her point not only with her columns and commentary (including here) but by telling us right up front that her column is late this month because she just got married. Congratulations, Tania!

Love Manga has this week’s crop of new manga. It looks like a lean week, although Berserk readers will be pleased to have a new volume. The only thing on my wish list is Recipe for Gertrude; we’ve had volume 8 of Fullmetal Alchemist for over a month, and so far I’ve managed to resist Read or Die and Case Closed.

Thinking about San Diego? David Welsh looks at the con through manga-tinted glasses and comes up with a list of events you won’t want to miss.

At Silent Seas, a blogger who teaches in Japan has an interesting conversation with her students about different perceptions of otaku and otaku culture.