Manga

Otakon, the anime/manga show held each year in Baltimore, drew a record 31,000 fans. Brigid Alverson runs down the announcements from Viz, Bandai, Funimation and Aniplex .

This year's Bronze medalistAbby Denson alerts us to the call for applications for the 5th Annual International Manga Awards, presented by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At San Diego Comic-Con it was announced that Anne Rice's classic vampire novel, Interview With a Vampire, is being adapted into graphic novel format by webcomic creator Ashley Marie Witter for Yen Press, due out in 2012.

Manga publisher Viz has just announced VizManga.com, a digital comics site which immediately went live during the con. Viz's wide variety of manga titles are now available there in an array of digital formats, with first chapters available free, and first volumes available at 40% off for the first month.

In an effort to compete with the huge ad-supported pirated manga aggregator sites, the Japanese Digital Comics Association has announced that this August they will be unveiling Jmanga.com, a new English-language digital manga site with free content.

Can there ever be enough Jiro Taniguchi? Not really -- and a new book is on its way for Comic-Con:

The indestructible beat of NARUTO led the way.

While not generally included in lists of comics book movies, OLDBOY most certainly is one -- the tale of twisted vengeance is based on a manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya (published in the US by Dark Horse.) Turned into an acclaimed film by South Korean director Chan-wook Park in 2003, it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004. Now Spike Lee will take a shot at making an American version to match the first filmed version. he's signed to direct the remake, his first film in three years, from a script by Mark Protosevich. Steven Spielberg and Will Smith were once attached to the film, but no longer. OLDBOY involves a man who wakes up in a room where is confined for 15 years. When he learns of his family's death via the TV in the room, he plans an escape and a grisly vengeance on those who imprisoned him.

There's been a bit of a blog tour about Josei, or manga for grown women of late. A podcast with Johanna Draper Carlson, David Welsh and Melinda Beasi can he heard here and includes lots of links.

A growing body of comics observers have jumped on the bandwagon for Naoki Urasawa as the best genre cartoonist currently working with his layered, dynamic storytelling. But not everyone has gotten the religion! His 21st CENTURY BOYS is currently coming out from Viz, but with 15 volumes in print it could be a bit daunting to jump into. For those who prefer a video introduction, MONSTER, based on the manga of the same name, just began streaming from Netflix. The 74-episode series deals with Dr. Kenzo Tenma and his efforts to stop an insane killer whose life he saved as a boy.

Industry analysis site ICv2 has just released a new industry report card for Q1 '11, and while sales were a bit patchy, it wasn't a disaster. This article contains links to a bunch of category analyses, but perhaps the most interesting is that non-Big Two, non-superhero titles are beginning to take up a bigger part of the market share:

Lots of book news today as the BA, the biggest domestic book show of the year, has kicked off this week. Here's the announcement for part 2 of TWILIGHT: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. Illustrated by Young Kim, the first part of the adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's sensational vampire tale sold 66,000 copies in one week and had a 350,000 first printing. Yen Press has provided us with a sneak peek at the cover to Volume 2, featuring dreamy Edward Cullen, as portrayed by Kim.