I’m posting late today as I spent the morning battening down the hatches, figuratively speaking, for the anticipated first blizzard of winter. The flakes are just starting to fall, so I figure I’d better post this in case we lose power. I’ll have more later. Probably.
Gloom and doom watch: Tokyopop’s Marco Pavia doesn’t have much new to say in this brief article on the most recent round of layoffs, other than to neatly summarize the problem:
“Publishers and booksellers are describing this as one of the worst retailing environments in memory and I don’t know what to add,” he said.
On the other side of the retail coin, Diamond’s Roger Fletcher says comics stores are staying above water, although sales are down a bit because retailers are cutting back on inventory. Bad news for BL fans, though: Snow Wildsmith spots an item on the DramaQueen forum indicating a problem with the printing of the long-awaited Tyrant in Love, which is now slated for January; things are getting a little testy there as the fans anticipate having the football yanked away from them yet again.
Meanwhile at Rocket Bomber, Matt Blind takes a long look at Borders’ financial situation and some possibilities for a brighter future, and then goes into it a bit more after a comment from Shannon Smith.
The Manga Recon crew have a roundtable discussion about which manga they want to see rescued from licensing limbo.
As for the future of manga on the web, well, Manganovel, which was basically an attempt to institutionalize scanlation, has come to an end. ANN has a little more background. It sounded like a good idea, but I never used it because it was Windows-only.
Jumpland, the Weekly Shonen Jump website, has posted the first chapter of the soccer manga Meister in English. To read it, you must download their browser, for which you must have… Windows. Sigh.
If you want to stave off Armageddon by, you know, buying some manga, the MangaCast team has some suggestions for you from this week’s new releases, as well as news of new shounen titles from CMX, josei from Aurora, and yaoi from Deux.
Also, Alex Hoffman has some manga-oriented gift suggestions at Manga Widget.
Christopher Butcher highlights the April Drawn & Quarterly offerings at Comics212, and one of them is the 840-page autobiography of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, the creator of The Push Man, which looks like a giant cube of depressingness from here (although one hopes that his autobiography will be cheerier than his fiction).
Jason Thompson asks a question; the internet answers, and wins some free manga.
News from Japan: Anime Vice reports that Shueisha is launching a new manga anthology featuring work by, among others, Range Murata (Robot). They also spotted some new variation of moe (bushido moe!) running around on the internets. Manga Life magazine is going to do a 4-koma “real-time” parody of the American TV show 24. Patrick Macias looks back at Akihabara in 2008.
Reviews: I was in a hurry yesterday and left out two of the reviews I wrote for Graphic Novel Reporter: Short-Tempered Melancholic and vol. 1 of Apothecarius Argentum. Huamulan03 reviews Butterfly in your thumb (released in the U.S. as Oyayubihime Infinity) at the Sunny Side Up Anime Blog. The Indonesian version is easier to pronounce but the CMX edition has a nicer cover. Casey Brienza reviews vols. 17 and 18 of Monster at ANN. Lissa Pattillo reviews vol. 4 of Black God, vol. 1 of Kyo Kara Maoh!, and vol. 1 of Red Angel at Kuriousity. New at Comics Village: Justin Colussy-Estes on vol. 1 of S.S. Astro and John Thomas on vol. 3 of Translucent. Lianne Sentar turns a jaded eye on the fifth anniversary issue of Shonen Jump at Sleep Is For the Weak. At Manga Recon, Melinda Beasi checks out vol. 1 of Hitohira, Ken Haley looks at vol. 1 of Gankutsuou, and Michelle Smith and Erin Finnegan check out the latest Shojo Beat offerings. Connie reviews vol. 2 of V.B. Rose, vol. 1 of June and vol. 3 of Suppli at Slightly Biased Manga. Snow Wildsmith reads and re-reads Two of Hearts at Fujoshi Librarian. Kris checks out vol. 1 of Time Stranger Kyoko and presents more short reviews of BL for beginners at Manic About Manga. Kethylia has nice things to say about Ai no Polgtergeist. Tangognat reviews vol. 1 of We Were There. Emily takes a look at Zenbu Chodai at Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page. Billy Aguiar is not impressed withPokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea at Prospero’s Manga.
So you’re preparing for snowfall, too? Say, do you live in Canada by an chance?
Nope, just north of Boston. Not that far away, really!
Oh yeah, it was terrible today. Oh well, better to be at home getting cozy with some hot chocolate and a fine manga. :)
Hate to hear about the weather. It was 67° in Atlanta today; quite uncomfortable, actually. ;)
if you find yourself snowed-in but still with power and internet, and were attempting some blog housekeeping for lack of anything better to do, then maybe you could replace Comicsnob on the ol’ blogroll with my new site? Such a small thing, really, and I hate to even mention it considering you are one of my two guaranteed links each week (for the weeks when I’m updating) (and thank you as always for the links) but Comicsnob is so deep in statis there isn’t even a buy-this-domain placeholder up on the index page anymore.
Bob has shifted from comics blogging to guerrilla improv theater (in Boston, even, you should go see him: http://www.neutrinoboston.com/cast/index.php) while I have moved on to, well, to doing the same thing I’ve always done, but of course making do with the best domain name I could think of that hadn’t already been taken by some cybersquatter.
Done! Thanks for the reminder, Matt—I think my new year’s resolution will be to clean up and revise my blogroll. In the end, the snow wasn’t that bad, and I was even able to get some Christmas shopping done yesterday.
We are snowed in over in Portland, too…something very rare before Christmas here. Got nearly a foot yesterday, which pretty much shuts the city down.