Reactions to Christpher Handley’s guilty plea are just starting to come in. Dirk Deppey gets it, and before you click this link, be aware that it contains an image from Lost Girls of three minors engaging in a sexual act that your community may regard as obscene, and therefore that by receiving this image you may be violating federal law. Ready? Here you go. Deppey raises a point that has been bugging me about this all along: Why is it that Lost Girls can be sold in stores while Christopher Handley is facing hard time (plus the loss of his manga collection) for material that can’t be all that different? It seems like there’s an extreme double standard operating here.
Bloggers continue to react to the news that Shojo Beat is folding. At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald notes a common thread in the eulogies: Most of those praising Shojo Beat never subscribed to it. (That includes me, but I bought it religiously on the newsstand.) As always, the comments are worth a click. Simon Jones points out that the purpose of manga magazines is to promote the midlist titles: Come for Naruto, get hooked on Tegami Bachi along the way, and pretty soon Viz is selling two books instead of one. Perhaps Shojo Beat wasn’t doing a good job of selling those middle-of-the-road titles, Simon speculates, or maybe Viz is planning to publish fewer of them, so SB has lost its raison d’etre. Simon also links to a retailer who notes that sales were down and ad prices were up in recent months.
Kodansha’s Morning 2 magazine, home of the much-talked-about Saint Young Men, will be posting the next three issues online at the same time they come out on newsstands. Last year they posted the issues a month after the print version came out, and sales went up, so they hope this will give them an even bigger boost
Mark Medley talks to Adrian Tomine, Christopher Butcher, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi himself about Tatsumi’s work and his latest opus, A Drifting Life.
“‘King City’ is back like a freshly laundered wizard,” Brandon Graham tells Comic Book Resources interviewer Brandon Seifert. He then explains the details of his deal with Tokyopop and Image comics. It turns out that Tokyopop wouldn’t publish volume 2 of King City but wouldn’t give the rights back either, but they were willing to let Image publish it in a different format:
There’s something that sets Image apart from most other contemporary comics companies, according to Graham: they make comics. “They don’t do movies or video games, they just want to publish comics,” Graham said. Image’s “comics first” mentality made them specially-suited to print “King City,” while letting TOKYOPOP hold onto the actual rights to the book.
David Brothers has some interesting thoughts on Pluto at 4thletter!
Welcome datacomp has another longish, interesting article up, this one about Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo.
Cathy lists her picks from this week’s new manga at it can’t all be about manga.
Thank heavens shelf porn is still legal! Jason Thompson, the manga omnivore, provides a guided tour of his collection at Robot 6.
Shaenon Garrity has more details of her trip to Japan.
Japan’s Weekly Famitsu magazine is curious about all those non-Japanese folks who are reading manga and buying anime, so they have teamed up with Otaku USA to put together a survey. The results will be published in an upcoming issue of Weekly Famitsu, and Otaku USA will keep us posted.
Matt Blind posts the top 500 manga in online sales for the weeks ending May 3 and May 10.
Melinda Beasi will be at Anime Boston, and she provides a pic in case anyone wants to meet up.
Gilles Poitras, author of the very useful Librarian’s Guide to Anime and Manga and several other manga and anime sites, will be doing several panels at Fanime Con.
News from Japan: ANN has the latest comics rankings and the news that School Rumble Z is coming to an end.
Reviews: I reviewed two manga from the Udon kids’ line for Graphic Novel Reporter: vol. 1 of Fairy Idol Kanon and vol. 1 of The Big Adventures of Majoko. Also at GNR, Casey Brienza gives her take on Seduce Me After the Show and Lovers and Souls. Over at Good Comics for Kids, Snow Wildsmith looks at two shoujo titles from Aurora, vol. 1 of Queen of Ragtonia and vol. 1 of Tengu-Jin. Other reviews of note:
Julie on vol. 1 of 13th Boy (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Connie on vol. 3 of 20th Century Boys (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 17 of Banana Fish (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 4 of Black Jack (Slightly Biased Manga)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 5 of Black Jack (Kuriousity)
Cathy on Days of Cool Idols (it can’t all be about manga)
Connie on vol. 4 of Full House (Slightly Biased Manga)
Ken Haley on vol. 1 of Jack Frost (Manga Recon)
Danielle Leigh on vols. 1-3 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Comics Should Be Good)
Snow Wildsmith on Object of Desire (Fujoshi Librarian)
Katherine Farmar on vol. 2 of Oh My God! (Comics Village)
Michelle Smith on vol. 8 of One Piece (Soliloquy in Blue)
Connie on vol. 7 of One Thousand and One Nights (Slightly Biased Manga)
Kate Dacey on vols. 1 and 2 of Otomen (The Manga Critic)
Anna on vol 5 of Sand Chronicles (2 Screenshot Limit)
Julie on Tail of the Moon – Prequel: The Other Hanzo(u) (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Anna on vol. 1 of Wolverine: Prodigal Son (2 Screenshot Limit)
Sesho on vol. 5 of xxxHoLiC (Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews)
[...] visual representations of the sexual abuse of children,” and mailing obscene material. Brigid Alverson and Dirk Deppey focus on the potential reach of the [...]
Looks like Viz is moving anthology online — check out IKKI, which will serialize seinen.
After checking this out, I wonder if there’s still a future for Shojo Beat, some way, somehow…
Regarding Shojo Beat folding… other publishers are taking the risk of starting manga mags. Spanish Planeta DeAgostini starts a new one this month. I posted about it the other day on my Spanish language blog. Check it out here,
http://mumumagazine.blogspot.com/2009/05/manga-en-formato-nipon-con-bs-log-en.html
Not sure if the situations are different between Europe and the US. I am really sad that SB is closing down. I have a few issues, but didn’t subscribe, and now I’m feeling all guilty.