Manga

Well here we are, the final month of the year. Most publishers have already launched their big titles last month, so that titles would be on shelves for the pillaging hordes of Black Friday.  This...

Viz has just released info on some of its spring manga license, including at least one pick-up from the now defnuct CMX line, TENJO TENGE, the very controversial manga by Oh! Great, which will...

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Naoki Urasawa is almost surely the most important genre-related cartoonist working today. The recently concluded Pluto and still-coming out 21st Century Boys have more suspense, action and mystery in one volume than entire months of most other publishers comics. But he remains a bit of an acquired taste here in the US -- cartoonists love him, but sales remain modest. So maybe it's good news that Illumination Entertainment is developing a live action/CGI PLUTO movie .

While comics fans were celebrating comics and other delights at New York Comic Con, publishers and fans in Europe were congregating in Frankfurt, Germany, for the annual Frankfurter Buchmesse.  Held almost annually since Gutenberg...

Following yesterday's announcement that the Del Rey Manga imprint was folding into a distribution arm for Kodansha Comics, a US branch of the Japanese publisher, American manga watchers were NOT jumping for joy. Chris Butcher came right out and said it:

As rumored for months, Kodansha, the Japanese publishing giant, is shifting its relationship with Random House. Del Rey Manga is shutting down, but Kodansha Comics will remain, to be distributed by Random House. Del Rey Manga's associate publisher, Dallas Middaugh, will move over to Random House Publisher Services to act as the liaison for Kodansha.

Attention, continuity-obsessed readers of 70 year-old franchises -- THIS is how you handle growth and change. Click on the image for the full spoiler of the new, two years older cast of ONE PIECE -- the best selling comic in the world -- and check out Topless Robot for a character-by-character analysis.

Harem manga -- the genre in which a helpless young man is surrounded by hot, hot girls who keeps getting naked and climbing in bed with him, despite his strong wishes that they not do so -- is totally passé, according to manga-ka Ken Akamatsu who created two of the most popular examples, Love Hina and Negima. Over at Robot 6, Brigid Alverson examines this Akamatsu blog post translation, which gives the reasons for the declines of harem manga and moe:

A story in The Hollywood Reporter suggests that China is looking to get bigger in the international animation/comics field: Leading the charge is the city of Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province in southwest China. Since...

DC Peter David will be writing episodes of the upcoming cartoon Young Justice, which is based on the comic of the same name that he wrote for an almost five year run.

Drawn & Quarterly expands its gekiga offerings with the announcement of two new books from manga-ka Shigeru Mizuki, one of the most famed cartoonists in Japanese history. (Above image from Drawn, not from...