Manga

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.

Toyko prefecture's law restricting sales of material deemed "harmful" to minors under the age of 18 has selected its first list of titles to be considered for the ban, Anime News Network reports. The law, which has been revised a few times and goes into effect July 1, has been met with an outcry from publishers and creators.

A few years ago Dark Horse made a splash by announcing an all-new project with CLAMP, the insanely popular supergroup of manga-ka behind such hits as CHOBITS, CARDCAPTOR SAKURA, and CLOVER. Since then, little has been heard as CLAMP was busy with other projects and scheduling was not possible. However, DH has just announced that GATE 7 is finally coming out in October and released the cover image.

Tokyopop is closing down its manga line. Not long ago, this company and others like it were sometimes pointed to as the future of comics publishing. I suppose they still might be.

Via The Comics Journal

The comics publishing culling of 2011 claimed its most prominent victim as it was announced today that Tokyopop is shutting down its US operations, as of May 31. The German office will stay open to handle publishing rights and the film division will continue. Founded in 1997, Tokyopop and its founder Stu Levy were at the forefront of the manga revolution in the US, introducing such hits as SAILOR MOON, CHOBITS, and LOVE HINA to the US market in the "unflipped" format for the first time. Sales surged as the manga bookstore revolution took over in the early part of the last decade. An ambitious program of publishing original manga by creators from around the world -- many of them barely out of the teenaged readership years themselves -- proved controversial and ultimately saw only a handful of successful franchises but introduced a new generation of creators to the comics scene.

It's the title that broke manga in the US -- no comic has had a bigger influence than SAILOR MOON, the manga/anime that kicked off the shojo manga boom, made it safe for girls...

With the ongoing tragedy in eastern Japan unfolding before our eyes, it's inevitable that there will be cancellations to many planned Anime/Manga events. Although Tokyo is not affected directly by the quake, given the difficult conditions -- potential blackouts and crisis management-- the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2011, which was to be held March 24-27 has been canceled, according to the website of the venue, the Big Site in Tokyo. According to posts on the Anime convention mailing list, the Big Site venue was damaged in the quake; in addition, air travel to Japan is being limited. The Anime Contents Expo is also expected to be canceled.

To mark their 100th manga for their iPad app, leading manga publisher Viz Media is launching several promotions, including the release of BAKUMAN #4 in digital form on March 28th, more than a week ahead of its April 5th print debut. In addition, they are making all #1 manga volumes just 99 cents for the rest of March. Finally, BAKUMAN #1 is available for free for 24 hours, starting today at noon PDT. Created by the popular DEATH NOTE team of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, BAKUMAN is a humorous look behind the manga business, following two students who are trying to break into the manga industry,

Word is going around that LA manga publisherToykopop has laid off several more people -- including editors Lillian Diaz-Przybyl and Troy Lewter. The staff is now reduced to a mere handful of people -- including owner Stu Levy and publisher Mike Kiley. EDIT: Editor Asako Suzuki has also been laid off.

Oji Suzuki is the latest in D&Q's gekiga projects, and Tom Devlin explains why: