Kickstarter Watch: Osamu Tezuka’s THE CRATER
For fans of the ever prolific "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka, we can thank our lucky stars for publishers like Vertical/Viz/Dark Horse for providing...
Here be Monsters: new Guillermo Del Toro manga TV adaptation in the works
Some seriously appetite whetting news via Deadline: HBO have teamed up with none other than scare master extraordinaire, Guillermo Del Toro, to adapt Naoki Urasawa's 18...
Convention Watch: Doj-Con at Dundee
In non-Saga related news, the number of conventions in the UK continues to rise with smaller events around the country becoming even bigger and...
Nice art alert: PEPITA: Takehiko Inoue meets Gaudí
Okay here is a thing which is cool: PEPITA: TAKEHIKO INOUE MEETS GAUDÍ a hardcover travel diary comprised of prose, sketches, and artwork by Takehiko Inoue, creator of SLAM DUNK, REAL, and VAGABOND. Inoue, whose sensitive pen and ink drawings are gorgeous by any standard, went to Barcelona and became entranced, as so many do, by the imagination and beauty of the architecture of Antoni Gaudí which lies over the landscape of Barcelona like a surreal lace scarf. culminating in the still unfinished Sagrada Familia, the famed twisty, turny cathedral that unites the gothic and the modern in one stunning building.
Must read shocker: There is still a US Manga industry
Brigid Alverson shows us how it's done in this comprehensive report on the state of the US manga market. The big shock is that despite sales shrinkage since the boom years, it's still a relatively stable market:
New craze: real life Dragon Ball Z photos of Japanese schoolgirls
It's called Makankosappo, and it involves real life Japanese youngsters reenacting scenes from Dragon Ball Z and posting the results on Twitter.
March Mayhem at Stately Beat Manor!
Once again, it’s that time of year again! Sports geeks speculate who will make the Big Dance, who got snubbed, and who will be...
Manga pioneer Toren Smith as remembered by Lea Hernandez
by Lea Hernandez - My long-time friend Toren Smith has passed away after a protracted bout of ill health, and I'm heartbroken. I worked for him over the course of seventeen years as part of his elite Studio Proteus team; doing retouch on adult comics, and rewriting titles like 3x3 Eyes, What's Michael? And Oh! My Goddess!. If Toren had lived another year, I would've known him for exactly half my life.
JManga shuts down, taking all the manga you bought with it
It came in the night like an earthquake or a car crash: JManga, the digital manga portal set up by 39 of Japan's migegst publishers, is shutting down. As of last night you could not make any more point purchases, as of the 26th you will no longer be able to purchase manga and as of May 30th the entire site goes away -- taking all of the manga you bought with it.
Cartoonists Doing Things: Shigeru Mizuki eats a hamburger
The 90-year-old creator of NonNonBa, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, and such yokai masterpieces as GeGeGe no chows down with relish. As recounted in...
Akamatsu starting a new manga, fretting about career
As if creating the manga blockbusters Love, Hina and Negima weren't enough, manga-kaKen Akamatsu is launching a new manga this summer according to Japanese news reports. No details on the contents -- his previous hits were harem manga but in 2010 he declared that genre passé, so maybe we'll see something more genre busting from him. Akamatsu is notable for (in translation at least) being a little more focused on the business aspects of manga:
Man sentenced in cartoon obscenity case
In a troubling case, a Missouri man bas been sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to possession of obscene images of children.




















