With the year almost over, retrospectives and lists are coming thick and fast. Mely liked so many manga that she’s splitting them across several lists; the first installment is the best unlicensed manga of 2006.
At Tokyopop, ChunHyang72 has a tongue-twister title: the Top Ten Tokyopop Titles of 2006. She also lists a few duds and a couple of series she wants to get into next year.
At Postmodern Barney, Dorian includes several manga events in his wrapup of 2006.
At Comics212.net, Christopher Butcher looks back at 2006 and how it foreshadows 2007. This lengthy post makes for very entertaining reading, but it’s mostly about superhero comics. I’ll pull out one of his relevant paragraphs about manga:
2006: What a great, great year for manga. Seriously. All the Tezuka (so much Tezuka!), all of the Viz Signature books are great. 3 releases from Fanfare/Ponent-Mon, a new Tatsumi from D&Q, Tokyopop is putting out some great books, and Dark Horse’s ‘horror’ line skirts the edge of J-Horror to bring some really solid, off-the-wall stuff. Great year for manga. Omen for 2007: None of it sells, and all you fuckers get the umpteenth variation on LONELY NERD FUCK-UP MUST TAKE CARE OF 40 SEXY LITTLE GIRLS; HIJINKS ENSUE. Serves you right.
I think he summed up 2006 nicely, but let’s hope his 2007 prediction doesn’t come true.
The manga fans at The Star of Malaysia are looking forward to 2007.
Christopher Butcher summed it up pretty well. comics212.net might be my new favorite blog.
I get the feeling that a lot of Viz Signature’s stuff is the equivalent of shows like 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights or (two years ago) The Office. Creatively, there’s a lot of promise, but if the sales aren’t there these shows/titles bring some good prestige to NBC/Viz… prestige that could pay off in the long term, with nurturing.
Viz’ overall personal is cautious and conservative, so the Viz Signature titles give readers who get bored with formulas reason to pay attention to the publisher and notice titles that might pass their radar otherwise.
Of course, that requires foresight, so hopefully someone at Viz will continue to have foresight. I know Phoenix was a tough sell for them, so I hope they keep investing in titles that make Viz a publisher for a wide variety of audiences.