Manga Xanadu

Wondercon, for those who may not know, is a younger sibling to Comic-Con International’s San Diego Comic Con. For many years it was held up north in San Francisco, but starting in 2012 is moved down to Southern California in the LA area. It’s first four years were spent taking over the Anaheim Convention Center, but this year, the con moved up to the Los Angeles Convention Center. Since its move down to SoCal, its major manga publisher presence has been practically non-existent. Other than a Viz Media booth the first year in 2012, there have been no panels or booths on the exhibition floor. Not even vendors selling manga come to the show. So imagine my excitement when I learned that Kodansha Comics would be coming to Wondercon, and have both a booth AND a panel!

Anime Boston/Wondercon Roundups Two comics/manga related cons occurred this last weekend.  On the West Coast was Wondercon, the smaller, younger brother of SDCC, located in San Francisco.  While more comics based, it seems Hollywood is taking every opportunity to jump on the popculture bandwagon.  Manga related, Viz Media had a booth, as did CMX, Last Gasp, and EigoManga.  Deb Aoki of Manga.About.com has an overview of the con as well as links to other coverage.  Over on the East Coast, Anime Boston took place.  While mostly an anime con, many manga bloggers attended and even held panels.  Vertical, Inc. had a panel, and Ed Chavez, marketing director for Vertical as well as creator of Mangacast hosted a panel of manga bloggers.  The big news from the Vertical panel was the license of a title from a mangaka once published by Viz Media.  Calling it “Manga Series R” the clue is that the “R” refers to either the mangaka’s name or manga’s title.  I voting (hoping) its Leiji/Reiji Matsumoto.  Brigid Alverson has a full rundown of the Vertical panel at Robot 6, and you can hear the audio from the Manga Mania panel by scrolling down to the Ninja Consultant’s like…

Reprint-a-thon Tokyopop, after serious reduction in their catalog, has been slowly building it back up.  Part of that build up is a reprinting of older titles that had become scarce, and difficult for fans to get a hold of.    Now, fans no longer have to hunt high and low, go to trading sites or bid up to ungodly prices to get volumes of their favorite series’ as they reappear back in print.  I’m of two minds about manga as a collectible.  While I understand that demand can set the market price, is there really such a demand for titles to justify prices up in the $100s?  Or is that just greed?  As much as I enjoy my manga, it’s not enough to ever justify that kind of pricing, so kudos to Tokyopop for thinking of the fans and making these books available again. Bento Comics To Go A bunch of former Tokyopop creators and employees have gotten together and created a really interesting website.  Bento Comics is a place where you can read comics online from creators like Queenie Chan and Svetlana Chmakova.  Then, if you want to keep the stories, you can choose your favorites and create your own…

An announcement arrived in my inbox today saying that Viz was going to have a booth at Wondercon this weekend (2/27-3/1/09).  They will be pushing their Viz Signature and Vizkids line. Now, I’m glad Viz is putting some time and effort behind these two lines.  They certainly can use them, being the newest and smallest of the Viz books.  Among titles mentioned for the Vizkids line were Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, and their new line of Chapter books for Naruto and Dragonball DEvolution.  I can’t be there, so if some one who reads this is, can you ask them something for me? What happened to all the Pokemon manga?  There are like, only 6 or so volumes you can buy (we have them all).  But back in the early 2000’s, Viz had two floppies of Pokemon; Pokemon Adventure and Pokemon: Magical Journey.  Why haven’t we gotten volume releases of these?  Pokemon is still a hot property, at least if my kids are any indication!  They would both love to read more Pokemon!  My youngest would just devour the Pokemon Magical Journey!  We were able to find two floppies around the cover price, and she loved them.  What is wrong with…