Manga

In the recent manga cutbacks, one company has remained conspicuous by their silence -- Del Rey's manga line, mostly licensed from Kodansha, has been quietly downsizing for months, with fewer and fewer titles coming...

US-Japanese publisher Vertical spotlights creator Felipe Smith at the show with his, er, bold series PEEPO CHOO (which is NOT an all-ages book). PEEPO CHOO has been pubished in Japan but is now coming to the US. Here's the schedule:

Literary manga house Fanfare/ Ponent Mon pubishes some of the finest comics in the world. This year they have their first ever special guest, 3 times Eisner nominated Émile Bravo who will be signing as follows:  

The New York Times reports on the new manga eye fad, popularized by Lady Gaga, of giant contacts that make you look like an anime freak. These lenses might be just another beauty fad...

Masters of Manga is a new web project by translator Marc Bernabé with interviews with such giants as Moto Hagio, Urasawa, Tako Saito and more many. First up, Hideshi Hirata (known for thre gekiga samurai yarn Satsuma Gishiden) and Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina, Negima.) BOOKMARK MUST.

There's a new superteam in town, Calvin Reid reports at Publishers Weekly -- brought together to face a mighty foe that threatens our very existence.   Or to put it another way, manga publishers have realized...

Comics, wake up! The call is coming from inside the house!

Rich Johnson's thoughtful post on the Manga Era of comics has drawn some equally thoughtful responses. Brigid Alverson found much to agree with, but also took issue with some of Johnson's conclusions, including the importance of piracy:

The news that DC was shutting down its CMX manga line drew a surprisingly caustic reaction across the web, as summed up by Johanna Draper Carlson. Now, we're well aware that there is a very vocal bunch of online fans who love to bash DC no matter what they do -- if someone at DC used a firehose to put out a fire, these fans would complain DC was wasting precious water. However these complaints were from manga commenters and librarians, a usually less volcanic crowd. But they were near-universal in their disappointment that DC had shut down a line that seemed to be hanging in there despite rarely getting any attention or promotion

As we mentioned a few days ago, Publishers Weekly (where I still edit part time) is moving offices at the end of the month, and it's time for yet ANOTHER office cleaning, and this...

By the time the New York Times gets around to spotting a trend, that usually means it's something your grandma loves. IN this case, the recent manga implosion gives this New York Times spotlight on manga something of a more urgent undertone. The story focuses on budget cuts in the Queens library system, where the kids -- of widely diverse ethnicities -- have embraced the manga:

Ever since the cutbacks at Viz on Monday, the online chatter has been surprisingly quiet. People close to the situation have mainly been in shock, and while the idea that Viz is "too big...