The good news is that you won’t need a provisional ballot to vote for your favorite Claymore character at the Otaku USA site. The bad news is that the Claymores all look pretty much alike, so the campaign posters will be monotonous. Vote anyway; no one said democracy would be easy.
ICv2 has dire news from Borders Barnes & Noble: According to an internal memo, sales are down and their graphic novel buys are being cut 30-60% in November and December. If you’re a glutton for this sort of thing, Tom Spurgeon has posted a lengthy meditation on comics and hard economic times at The Comics Reporter and then followed up with more thoughts from other people. It’s more about the general comics marketplace than just manga, but there are some interesting points to be made.
Erin Finnegan missed the chance to pick up urology manga on her last trip to Book-Off, but she digs up some examples on the web instead.
The Powells blog is featuring a preview of that Bat-Manga book that everyone is talking about.
Erica Friedman presents the week in review, yuri-wise, at Okazu.
Reviews: Bad Jew gets into the Election Day spirit with reviews of Eagle and First President of Japan at Sleep Is For the Weak. In case you can’t get enough of these things, Nadia Oxford recommends five horror manga at Mania.com. New reviews at Comics Village: John Thomas on vol. 1 of Afro Samurai, Lissa Pattillo on Ruff Love, Katherine Farmar on vol. 1 of Voice or Noise, Dan Polley on vol. 8 of Kitchen Princess, and Charles Tan on vol. 1 of Old Boy. I’m a little late getting to this, but About Heroes posts some Halloween-themed manga reviews. Connie files a heap of reviews at Slightly Biased Manga: vol. 2 of Category: Freaks, vol. 1 of Suihelibe, vol. 1 of Cat-Eyed Boy, vol. 8 of Monster, vol. 2 of Cipher, vol. 6 of Crayon Shinchan, vol. 1 of Venus in Love, and vol. 2 of I Hate You More Than Anyone. Snow Wildsmith checks out Great Place High School and vols. 1-2 of Don’t Blame Me at Manga Jouhou. Erica Friedman reads vol. 1 of Nemurubaka at Okazu.
That internal memo is from Leonard Riggio, the chairman of Barnes & Noble, not from Borders, and it says that both chains have cut their GN orders by 30-60%.
Thanks for the correction, Adam!