Manga

I received this email from John Shableski, the recently hired Vice President of Sales at UDON Entertainment.  In a bit of brilliance, instead of shipping their...

Not only are these tiny Yotsuba&! figures from Kotobukiya adorable as the dickens, they got me thinking about the place of merchandising in a creator's business plan.

Founded in 1997, TokyoPop was one of the most influential publishers of the Aughts, driving the manga boom in the US as the first publisher to print manga in its original right-to-left format, a move that helped cement its authenticity among young readers. Later on their "original English language manga" line developed an entire generation of young creators working in a manga style, including Becky Cloonan and Amy Reeder Hadley. But it all came to an end in 2011 when the company shut down except for the German office. Owner and founder Stuart Levy went on to make a documentary about the Tohoku earthquake, even amidst continuing controversy about the reversion of rights to creators However there have been flickers of life since then, with some new digital publishing, licensing OEL books like King City to Image, and a TokyoPop-branded newsletter that was part of Nerdist's adventures in that area. Since TokyoPop never went bankrupt, it's entirely possible that Levy can bring it back, as promised on the company's about page:

Picture it. 2008. I was a bored twenty-something who hadn't touched a console game in years. Through random internet searching, as these bored young...

The Japan News announced this morning that the long running manga series One Piece is the Guinness World Record winner for having “the most...

Early manga adapter Dallas Middaugh, who has been involved in most of the major moves that changed manga from an obscure niche in US fandom to a permanent part of the pop culture landscape, has left his position as Senior Director of Penguin Random House Publisher Services to join Crunchyroll as Head of Brand and Community. He'll work with the streaming anime service to expand the brand globally.

by Zachary Clemente 24 Hours of International Comics continue and, for me, it's been leading up to this: A Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori. There's nothing I...

The Beat takes a look at Japan with the manga Solanin during their 24 Hours of International Comics.

A seaside town is haunted by a terrible, terrible stench—and soon much more in Junji Ito's classic horror manga GYO. Originally published in Japan...

Manga pioneer Yoshihiro Tatsumi has passed away at age 79, according to a letter received by Paul Gravett. Tatsumi had been battling cancer for several years. Tatsumi is best known as the pioneer of the "gekiga" style of manga (a term be invented), true to life stories of ordinary people. He own work featured haunting adult themes of alienation, dread and obsession. His autobiography A Drifting Life, depicting his struggles as an artist, won the Eisner award for Best Reality Based Work in 2010. He also won the World Outlook Award at Angoulême and the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize.

There's no question but that in American culture the predominant view is one that is rich, white, male, straight and Christian. And while "The male gaze" is pretty well known, we're getting to learn about the "white gaze" as well. Have you ever wondered what it looks like? Now we know. Except it’s from peace loving New Zealand AND America.

A week's worth of reading: § Has Manga Become a Niche Category? Johanna Draper Carlson examines some opinions on this, and quotes comments by Vertical's...