Manga Publishers Go APE! Even though APE, the Alternate Press Expo, is mostly for comics and graphic novels, a couple of manga publishers showed up to pawn some of their less mainstream wares. Vertical, Inc. had a table there, with Ed Chavez hocking their books, and selling out titles left and right. By the end of Sunday, the last report from him was Guin Saga manga and Black Jack v2-7 were all that was left. Not bad! Viz was th...
Recently over at Anime News Network, artist Bettina Kurkoski was featured in their The Gallery column. I read this, as I like Bettina’s work. I really enjoyed her OEL manga, My Cat Loki, buying the volumes after reading the first volume on line. Yes, I like it that much. In the article was of course links to Bettina’s home page and Deviant Art page. Of course I had to check those out. In the updates of the Devian...
I found this link while searching for an item for my This Week in Manga column. I was looking for manga subscription services, when I came upon a link for an extension to Firefox that watches OneManga for new updates of manga. Now, I’m not endorsing either this extension or OneManga. Instead, I want to suggest that manga publishers, such as Viz and Tokyopop, who put up online manga chapters, maybe look at doing something sim...
If you’ve been following Tokyopop’s Boys of Summer online releases, you’ll notice there hasn’t been an update for a couple of weeks. No, I don’t know why. All Tokyopop has said is that it “won’t be back up for several weeks.” What I want to bring attention to though is the title they’ve moved up to fill in. Earthlight. This wasn’t supposed to be going up until January 2...
Inside Scanlation ComiPress, one of the first manga new reporting sites is hanging up it’s news hat and has moved over to a more timely topic: Scanlations. There has been a lot of talk about scanlations, especially since the economy took a dive, but do you really understand what scanlations are or how they came to be? Inside Scanlation seeks to answers these questions and more. The site looks at the history of scanlations,...
I was listening to the Doctor Who podcast Podshock, and the hosts were talking with a con organizer about some informal one night get-togethers he organized to build up interest in the con. They featured a guest of some sort and were held in a pub-like setting, allowing the guest and fans close and informal interactions. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if manga publishers did something like this? I’m not going to sugg...
A quick glance through the manga solicitations for this month revealed a title I’ve been waiting quite a while for. I first learned about this series when I heard about the anime. The first series ran in 2008 in Japan, and went 13 episodes. The premise and the picture of a fat, rolly-polly cat on the series’ promotional art got me interested....
I have three more eBay auctions up, for some older manga. Those Who Hunt Elves v 1-7 Lupin III v 1-7 Lupin III v 8-14 Please take a look, and happy bidding! I also still have Inuyasha v6-10 and 11-15, and Buso Renkin v5-8 available for sale or trade. Contact me if interested....
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy manga trading. It’s a great way to try out a series or find volumes of older titles. I’ve been fairly active on Mangatude and usually check for new trades every week or so. While doing my usual check this week, there was a trade offer titled “Manga series on cd many rare ones.” Yeah, scanlations. This didn’t really feel right. When I go looking to...
One Piece in BIG Bites? Found via Twitter. @swanjun found these entries for One Piece at Simon and Schuster. At 600 pgs each, and combining three volumes a piece, they sure do sound like VizBIG editions, even if the solicitations don’t actually say so. With the speed up of One Piece coming in January, this is the perfect time for Viz to put out BIG editions of the series. Catching up is a lot easier with the BIG editions t...
I have mixed feelings about this. Dragon Ball is being reviewed for it’s content in a Maryland school district because a 9-year-old checked it out of a elementary and middle school library. I think people are oversensitive in general and especially towards manga. I’ll agree that Dragon Ball doesn’t really belong in the hands of a fourth grader, but I think it’s fine for a middle school student. The first Dragon...
The History of the West Wing Written by: Sun Jiayu; Illustrated by Guo Guo Age Rating: Teen Genre: Romance Price: $12.99 Rating: Lavishly illustrated in full color and based on the classic Chinese play Xixiang Ji by Wang Shifu, The History of the West Wings tells of the illicit romance between the daughter of a Chinese Government Official and the roaming scholar who seeks to win her hand. But before he can turn his attentions to his l...