Kids these days

The MangaCast crew look over this week’s new manga and pick the titles most likely to please. David Welsh lists his picks as well at Precocious Curmudgeon. Danielle Leigh selects the best upcoming titles from the June previews in her latest Manga Before Flowers column.

Two more former Tokyopop employees, trade sales manager Trond Knutsen and production artist Keila N. Ramos, give brief interviews to David Welsh.

Alex Woolfson concludes his two-part interview with Simon Jones at Yaoi 911. Simon discusses licensing, marketing, and the most important thing a small publisher can do: Get enough capital! Well worth a read.

Anne Ishii takes a look at medical manga in this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week.

As voting comes to a close on the Eisner Awards, About.com’s Deb Aoki takes a brief look at the manga nominees, and provides samples in a preview gallery (Warning! Interstitial ads!).

Ryan Cody bemoans the fact that the kids he teaches in his art classes want to draw in the manga style, not in traditional American style:

There is good manga and good manga art out there, but the problem is I don’t see any kids out there right now, at least in my neck of the woods, learning how to draw like Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Ron Garney, Ryan Ottley or Eric Canete. They all want to draw gigantic eyes, tear drops on the forehead and spiky hair.

I suspect that the age group has a lot to do with it, because American-style comic art is not that accessible, especially to teenagers. It’s complex and difficult to read, so it looks like it would be hard to draw as well. It’s aimed at mature audiences, so the kids probably aren’t reading it, whereas the manga is written just for them. Perhaps the new DC and Marvel lines aimed at younger kids will change that.

Matt Blind looks at last week’s online manga sales at Comicsnob.

Lissa Pattillo checks out the Canadian online store BigPfeiffer.com and is pleased with the results.

News from Japan: Manga Sutra manga-ka Kastsu-Aki will launch a new manga serial, DokuxKoi (PoisonxLove) in Shueisha’s Super Jump magazine.

Reviews: Connie reads vol. 22 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure at Slightly Biased Manga. Chloe Ferguson tries some manhua (Chinese comics), vol. 1 of White Night Melody, at Manga Recon; unfortunately, she doesn’t think too highly of it. Emily takes a look at Puri x Puri at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page. Lissa Pattillo checks out CLAMP’s Angelic Layer at Kuri-ousity. Down at the Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie’s meal is getting cold while she reads vol. 1 of Fairy Cube. Briana Lawrence reviews vol. 1 of In the End and Danielle Van Gorder checks out vol. 20 of Berserk at Anime on DVD.