Reviewer chat, more free Black Jack, and manga Karl Marx

God Len lists this week’s new releases at Japanator. (Including the delightful first volume of Yokaiden, at left.)

The Manga Recon reviewers discuss their criteria for ratings and grades, revealing an interesting variety of points of view.

ICv2 has a few more details on Tokyopop’s planned Battlestar Galactica manga.

If you weren’t one of the lucky winners in our Black Jack giveaway, head over to Precocious Curmudgeon, where David Welsh is giving away more sets of softcover and hardcover editions.

Chris Mautner posts an article about Bat-Manga at Panels and Pixels.

For our Canadian readers: Lissa Pattillo keeps a list of manga-friendly Canadian comics shops at Kuriousity, and she even has brief reviews of several.

News from Japan: Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine began a two-part manga about AIDS last week, entitled 15 no Yoru. Ed Chavez posts the weekly manga rankings from Taiyosha and muses a bit about the big picture at MangaCast. And continuing the mangafication of serious scholarly works (cf: the moe guide to statistical analysis) Karl Marx’s Das Kapital is being made into a manga.

Reviews: David Welsh reviews three titles from Deux, Seduce Me After the Show, Spring Fever, and Future Lovers, in his latest Flipped column at The Comics Reporter. Chloe Ferguson’s review of vol. 1 of Speed Grapher, at Manga Recon, is also a witty critique of the entire seinen genre. Jog reviews the art manga Travel at Jog – The Blog. Dave Ferraro is impressed with vol. 1 of Astral Project at Comics-and-More. Tiamat’s Disciple picks up vol. 1 of Ral Ω Grad to fill out an order and discovers that he actually likes it. Lissa Pattillo reviews Stop Bullying Me! at Kuri-ousity. Julie checks out vol. 15 of Kekkaishi at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Dan Polley reads vol. 4 of Fairy Tail at Comics Village. Pauline checks out Haridama Magic Charm School at The Star of Malaysia. Connie reviews vol. 1 of B.O.D.Y. and Gaba Kawa at Slightly Biased Manga. Ed Chavez checks out the adult title Aqua Bless at MangaCast. Deb Aoki embraces the cuteness of vol. 1 of Mao-Chan at About.com. Kris reviews vol. 1 of Sounds of Love at Manic About Manga. Jonathan Switzer reads vols. 1 and 2 of Honey and Clover at Wasau Comics (via The Comics Reporter). Erica Friedman’s review of Ame-Imouto is brief and to the point.