License rescue, Viz blitz, and more

cirque_1Over at Publishers Weekly Comics Week, I talk to Kurt Hassler about Cirque du Freak, the American edition of the Japanese manga adaptation of an Irish novel.

The latest news around here is that I’m one of the judges for the Lulu Awards. We judges will come up with the nominations, and then the general public can vote on the awards themselves. As someone who is used to critiquing these things from the peanut gallery, I’m both honored and intimidated, and I welcome your suggestions for nominations.

The denizens of Comics Village pick the best of this week’s new releases, and Lori Henderson has the kid-friendly new comics and manga list at Good Comics for Kids. And David Welsh cheerfully points to some great books that are coming out this fall.

Viz is in the news lately: ICv2 interviews vp of sales and marketing Gonzalo Ferreyra about the accelerated release schedules for Naruto and One Piece, and Jeff Yang of the San Francisco Chronicle talks to Viz chairman Seiji Horibuchi on the eve of the opening of Viz’s Japanese culture/retail center in San Francisco.

parosnoken2David Welsh Twitter-sourced this week’s new license request, and he came up with Paros no Ken plus a long list of other suggestions.

Digital Manga has acquired Makoto Taten’s Yokan, which was originally licensed by DramaQueen and slated to be published under the title Omen. DMP is listing it with the title Premonition. This was first spotted by Lissa Pattillo at Kuriousity, who also spotted more new and reformatted titles at Amazon.

Also, I wasn’t able to make it to Tokyopop’s webinar, but Lissa summarizes it for us, including the news that DN Angel is back on the schedule, a list of upcoming releases, and some good chat about what’s going on behind the scenes.

DemonDiary1Reviews: Sequential Tart’s Wolfen Moondaughter has a new series, Hunting for Yaoi, in which she reviews yaoi and BL manga that aren’t necessarily labeled as such. Interesting concept. Joe Iglesias has some thoughts on why Eyeshield 21 works better than Bleach at The Eastern Standard. Other reviews of note:

Lissa Pattillo on vol. 4 of 20th Century Boys (Kuriousity)
Bill Sherman on vol. 1 of The Battle of Genryu: Origin (Blogcritics)
Shojo Flash on vol. 1 of Black Bird (Shojo Flash)
Patti Martinson on vol. 11 of Crimson Hero (Sequential Tart)
Julie on vol. 1 of The Dark Hunters (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of Dogs: Bullets & Carnage (Comics Should Be Good)
asamisgirl on vol. 2 of Future Lovers (The Yaoi Review)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 8 of Gimmick! (The Comic Book Bin)
Erica Friedman on chapters 10-13 of Gunjo (Okazu)
Sandra Scholes on vol. 1 of Jyu-Oh-Sei (Active Anime)
Gerrit Coetzee on The Manga Guide to Electricity (Hack a Day)
Johanna Draper Carlson on The Manga Guide to Physics (Comics Worth Reading)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 2 of Mars (i heart manga)
Ed Sizemore on vols. 1 and 2 of Me and the Devil Blues (Comics Worth Reading)
James Fleenor on Oishinbo A La Carte: Fish, Sashimi & Sushi (Anime Sentinel)
Sheena McNeil on vol. 2 of Stray Little Devil (Sequential Tart)
Melinda Beasi on vol. 5 of We Were There (There it is, Plain as Daylight)
Holly Ellingwood on vol. 1 of X-Men Misfits (Active Anime)
Kinukitty on vols. 1-3 of Yakuza in Love (The Hooded Utilitarian)

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Comments

  1. Congratulations on being selected as a Lulu judge, Brigid! That’s a real honor!

  2. What I find infinitely moronic about the Viz One Piece manga infestation is that even Viz sound very unconfident about how readers will react to having to buy so many books. And as cited in the interview, what’s even dumber is that Viz thinks that releasing more volumes at a faster rate will make the audience “grow”? How does that make sense? By crowding the shelves? So this company worth millions is just throwing out all these One Piece books just to see what happens? I guess I have to admire them, though, for experimenting with the market. I really think the Shonen Sunday and Ikki and sci-fi novel lines are awesome. I think they should have just put One Piece online and put out the actual books at a slower pace. And they need to figure out a way to get the Naruto manga online as well. If they can handle translating the anime, I’m sure the manga wouldn’t be much more to do.

  3. Yea, the One Piece thing sounds a bit worrisome. 5 volumes a month is a lot to ask for a series that isn’t Naruto. But then again, if anyone can afford to do this, it’s Viz. As for putting the Naruto manga online, I’m not sure that would be a good idea. Having close-to-current chapters of Naruto is a big draw for the magazine, so to put current chapters online would stop it from being an exclusive feature of the magazine, and would thus be removing one of the magazine’s biggest advantages.

  4. I totally agree with Sesho. Beyond blogging, I also manage a comic book shop, and see the issues, such as Naruto, that were excellerated linger on the shelves for months. They of course do sell at some point, but then people are left complaining that they must wait MONTHS for another new release. Why not put out on a month, or at most, one at the beginning of the month, and one in the middle?