Worlds Within Worlds...

It is wrong on just so many levels... I may have to follow Dave's example and just leave it alone. I could be writing all day (from Dirk).

Yikes... it is noon and still no Journalista update??? I hope he's alright and hasn't been overloaded with work or something more serious. Was something mentioned earlier this week that I missed? Anyway, I hope all is well...

Ok, this is mostly inspired by this great article by Neil Cohn.

I almost didn't read the whole thing because the beginning seemed like it was going to be another dry definition of what are comics. However, his real distinction is about the medium of comics versus the culture of comics. Everyone knows that comics aren't in as good shape as they used to be and could use expanding. But he asks a very important question. When we talk about expanding the readership, are we talking about expanding the medium or the culture? The difference is fairly profound.

He also proposes that for the most part, companies like Marvel and DC are not publishers, not in the normal sense anyway. A publisher would be publishing the works of various creators, but these companies tend to have their own properties and then hire people to work on them. An interetsing distinction that I haven't really heard put in that way before. But I'm more concerned with the expansion stuff:

He argues that most of the strategies have involved have been to bringing new people into the current kinds of titles, or current readers into a particular title and thinks that isn't the best way to go:

The problem with both of these approaches is that they do not create new readers in new markets, but only attempt to bring new readers into an old market (or to draw in buyers from within the existing readership). In terms of the previous partitions, these strategies are attempting to perpetuate the second type . the genres and culture(s) that comics currently represent.

Moreover, these tactics also do no good towards progressing the majority's public opinion of comics beyond the stereotypes inherited from over four decades ago. While this may be liberating for the industry artistically, it pales in the importance that it serves for those who face legal consequences determined by this broad scale ignorance. Perpetuation of stereotypical genres and markets does no use in changing the public's perception of comics.

He mentions that a better way to reach out might be to approach a certain sector of people with their own interests and sell it in a place they already go to. He mentions the silliness companies doing stuff like trying to appeal to football players by taking a star quarterback and giving him superpowers. Instead the example is given of making a regular story about surfers and selling it in a surf shop. A good example of this that has already happened may be the Johen Vasquez stuff selling in places like Hot Topic. The most important point I think is as follows:

An additional point should be made about the example illustrated above. Not only does the creation of a surf comic bring in new readers, it also potentially leads to new creators. Given time and inspiration, perhaps those new readers would either turn into or breed people who would want to create their own surf comics.

This strategy does not bring new readers into existing comic genres, and there are no guarantees that these hypothetical readers would want to buy more comics of different types of genres. This is the key: rather than trying to draw a larger populace into the smaller niche comics culture, it dissolves the boundaries of that enclosed industry into the larger populace. Indeed, as I see it, this is the only true type of integration possible: dissolving the boundaries of comics into the other print cultures. By maintaining segregation of comics from other types of books, all the while espousing their equality, the comics industry and culture merely perpetuates the difficulties that they face.

However, this type of approach does fulfill the first type of expansion: it expands and propagates the readership of visual language. It brings the "comics medium" to a new audience on their level, and even leads to the possibility that there would be the creation of more surf comics from within the community itself. To think that outsiders should for some reason magically become interested in comics without actually branching out to what those other markets might themselves enjoy reading about is simply pretentious and bad business.

I think that point is amazingly important. You don't need to create a fan who "comes into the fold". Who goes to comic shops, who reads superheros, or even who reads any other kind of comic book. The point is that you are selling them a comic book, and if enough different groups read the comics, it doesn't matter if they overlap with each other!

I can find interesting parallels. When anime was just starting to get big on TV, a lot of people claimed that DBZ and Sailor Moon weren't making new anime fans. These kids were just fans of those particular shows. On the one hand, it seems like the fear wasn't totally founded, as a lot of those kids did end up getting more into culture of anime and watching a variety of titles. However, even if they hadn't, it would have been ok. We always like to push everything on people. We want everyone to be into it as we are, but that isn't really the point. Even if there is one show that they like, well that is still a show that they like. They'll probably be more open to other stuff in the future, but even if they don't, they still are enjoying something from that medium.

Also, as a lot of people have been saying lately, a lot of people claiming to be "comic fans" may not even be so. If all you like is superhero titles, there is a good chance you aren't a comic fan. You are a superhero comic fan, or perhaps a general superhero fan. As someone said recently, a person may be into the superhero culture. Buying comics, watching cartoons, buying action figures and busts, etc.

But if we switch to a different medium.. like movies, and the genre of horror. There are plenty of horror movie experts. They might go to conventions like fangoria and read magazines about it. They also may or may not be into horror novels and such. But would you claim they were a movie buff? No, they are a horror movie buff.

But I don't say this thing to be insulting to superhero fans. This isn't a popularity contest where you have to be the biggest fan. There is nothing wrong with not being a "comics fan". But just as some might focus on superheros in comics, we need other people who focus on other genres. I think this is also part of the clashes between american comic fans and manga fans. The Japanese stuff has grown up with its own culture in the US, and a lot of people might be scared off by the people who learn Japanese, eat pocky and sushi, make anime music videos, dress up in cosplay outfits, and call themselves "otaku".

But you don't have to be an otaku to read manga, the same way you don't have to bag and board with big longboxes or go to comic conventions or draw your own fanart to enjoy american comics. We could use more people who are just generally casual readers and might not be involved with any comic cultures, or even create their own cultures that are separate.

As much as it is good to get new people involved with comics, try not to look at it from the standpoint of "conversion". Try to find some comics this person might enjoy based on what they like in other mediums. But don't expect them to suddenly become a big comics fan and get their own drop box at the comic shop. They probably only watch certain shows on TV, too, and may not even have the time to do a lot of reading. Besides, depending on what they actually like, there may not be tons of stuff out there that they'd enjoy.

Say you get a girl hooked on Elfquest. How many other comics are really like Elfquest? Trying to somehow morph that interest into loving Spider-Man is probably an effort in futility and rightfully so if she just isn't into that sort of thing, IMO. A lot of the manga out right now has certain categories represented with multiple things in it. If someone is into standard high-school romance, there is plenty for them to buy without worrying about any other manga. But if there is a cook who only loves Iron Wok Jan, they still might not like most manga, and that is perfectly ok too. But the availibility and strengths in particular genres that haven't traditionally been well-represented (romance again) have opened up the comics medium to new readers, and that's a good thing. And if new cultures come up (like a group who read Elfquest, talk about it, draw fanart, and maybe some day make their own comics inspired by it), so much the better...

As Neil says, a lot of people want to bring people into the fold of our own little cultures, but if we really want the medium to be successful and ubiquitous, it should be more about dissolving those barriers and letting comics appeal to different people in different forms and contexts, in their own ways...

I also discuss some aspects of culture here, about how local preconceptions can skew what people read, and again fans of a medium/culture versus casual readers.

Ok, so I was reading the comments for this entry on John's blog, and Jason made an innocent enough comment that I've heard many times before:

So while, yes, there are options, they aren't nearly as prevelant nor as steadily-available as those for, say, horror junkies, and often they sneak in by disguising themselves as something else: Buffy's certainly a super-hero show, but covered in horror / teen dramedy trappings; likewise Smallville made its mark by playing as Dawson's Creek with powers.

To this my response was:

Also, I kind of find funny the comment about Buffy just being a superhero story with teen and horror trappings. Sure Wheden personally may have comic influences, but that isn't really the point. The point is that description is just so western-superhero centric.

Would you describe the stories of Hercules as just a superhero story with some Greek trappings? I hate to say it but those greeks were writing about superpowered people a long time before Marvel and DC existed.

Just because we have defined a particular set of characteristics (spandex, codename, particular powers, secret identity) as being what a "superhero" is all about, doesn't mean that every other person in the world secretly wants to emulate it, and that differing takes is an effort to cover up the fact that it is a superhero story. They could very well just want to make a story that happens to have a superpowered hero, as a bazillion fantasy novels have done over the years.

I constantly see people talking about how Buffy and Matrix and even James Bond are superhero stories covered in the trappings of other genres, but I think that description is very narrow, despite what influences the creator may actually be taking from. It can be important to take a step back. I'm sure someone who mostly read romance novels could describe every other movie as a "romance with xxxx trappings", but that is just their perspective...

Ok... I got too tired and so will write that up tomorrow. I couldn't help put in those last two entries, though, so ignore my "next post" comment.. ;)

Well, there has been talks back and forth for a while now, but this seems a lot more serious than usual (courtesy Jeff Williams) :

"After ten months of trying to strike a deal with Disney, we're moving on," Pixar CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "We've had a great run together -- one of the most successful in Hollywood history -- and it's a shame that Disney won't be participating in Pixar's future successes."

However, it seems like Disney will still distribute the next two films from Pixar and technically own the rights to all of them. Aparantly they can produce sequels to any of the Pixar stuff out there now if Pixar refuses to make them. I fear Toy Story 7....

Geeze, this stuff is not easy to find. I'm trying a lot of stuff, but not getting all that far. This thread and some previous ones are prompting me to try, though.

That thread does link here, a French page listing sales from publishers in France, the US, and Japan. For hahas, I did some division and Kodansha is 24 times bigger than Marvel in terms of sales. Considering manga is a lot cheaper in Japan than the US (those digests tend to be $3-4US), that is quite the feat. Shogakukan and Shueisha are barely any smaller either.

The only thing I could find on my own was this PDF. It gives a breakdown of how larger the industry was in 2002 in both dollar and volume sales, and what percentage of the publishing industry it accounted for in each. It also gives a chart from 1983-97, showing how sales of manga for kids has stayed relatively the same, while manga for adults has grown to be about half of the industry now. There is also some history of the industry and information on editors. Pretty good stuff..

It seems like a lot of the publishing info. tends to be from the The Research Institute
for Publications (Shuppan Geppou). It was both in Dreamland Japan and that PDF, so it might be a good source of information if anyone can manage to contact them directly. I may try to e-mail that guy in the PDF to see if he has more information...

So, Tim wrote up an interesting entry the other day, and also got some responses.

A couple of comments from me. First, obviously Japan isn't a big wonderland that some people think it is. I happen to think it is still really cool, but it has various issues of its own. As for the infamous article from Japan, here is something to keep in mind. Mainichi may be a good newspaper, but the WaiWai section is pretty much a mini-tabloid. Look at the articles on the left, with titles like "Bare-it-all babes boogie woogie back to the stage", "Schoolgirl streaker caught in jaws of rabid stepfather", and "Confessed cannibal wins heart of little angel". Certainly manga has issues of acceptance, but WaiWai is going to focus on any bad aspects.

I tend to think the situation in Japan is a bit like daytime (or even primetime to a degree) television in the US. Everyone is always talking about how horrible TV is, but at the same time a lot of people watch the shows. That combined with Japan tending to be very prim and proper in a lot of ways causes friction. This is the country where some ladies will flush the toilet constantly to cover up any improper sounds. But as the article says, people have grown up with comics now, so things are changing.

Anime still has a pretty big stigma of being for kids (mostly Miyazaki movies are like an exception where everyone goes to watch it), but many more adults read manga. But some that read it probably wouldn't feel as comfortable doing it on a train. One funny thing about the article is how America is brought up and the tone is almost like them being embarassed about what Americans might think of them...

I'd say there's quite a bit of self-deprecation going on even from fans, but that happens in a lot of hobbies. Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga has the first volume translated to english and skewers the industry. The anime Excel Saga involves a secret organization trying to improve the world, and their first thing is to kill a manga author, not just because he created the manga the anime is based on, but also because manga authors are the scum of the earth..heh. Actually, I just saw a hilarious episode of Excel Saga where two characters end up in America. Excel misuses english street slang and as they're about to get attacked by people, a kid comes to the rescue throwing anime cells to the crowd. Eventually they find out he's doing animation for a shady character in the hopes of making it over to Japan as a real anime animator. Lots of fun poked at how America has a skewed view of things, as well as fun little details (like them commenting to themselves about how the kid is doing cells but most animation companies use computers now).

There's also an aspect of removing preconceptions. A lot of talk happens sometimes about how manga is attractive because it is exotic and from another culture. I think that plays into it to a degree, but more so the lack of your own culture. For instance, a lot of people might read manga that was aimed at little girls originally like Cardcaptor Sakura or Marmalade Boy. In the US, we are once-removed. I'm sure that a guy reading it in Japan would suffer from a stigma and the overall growing up of "this is for you, this is for them". For instance, something like Dawson's Creek has a specific target audience and probably most adults aren't going to watch it even if it is a good show (I haven't seen it so I'm not sure). On the other hand, someone in another country might feel less direct pressures.

Something to keep in mind is that there are manga fans and anime fans in Japan. There are fans in America. There are probably more fans in Japan due to the size of the industry. Both of these usually like a lot of the output and view it as an artform. However, it is more than that in Japan. There a lot of casual readers also, and likely way outnumber the fans. It is probably fair to say that most of the people reading manga don't usually view it as art, any more than most people usually view ER as part of the artform of television, even if they enjoy it. They're also more likely to have a couple of specific shows they enjoy rather than a love of the whole medium. More on this in my next entry...

In one of my comments section, John Smith linked to this old article by Colleen Doran in which she and others like Dave Sim went to Japan and had some illusions shattered. It was interesting to see how both the americans and japanese had misconceptions of how the other did their work, causing them to either critisize or idolize more than they should have based on those beliefs.

Speaking of Colleen, I think I can see where people would get the idea it is manga-influenced, but also why Tim doesn't see it right away. I'm not sure how much shoujo manga he has read, but I think the similarities stem more from things that may not be immediately obvious. Now, I have the first volume, but haven't read it yet, so if I make mistakes, feel free to correct me. I'm going by what I've read of it and what I've seen flipping through it.

Her art style is a standard older american style with no big eyes to be found. However, there are a lot of beautful men and characters that are a bit androgynous, as well as detailed clothing. There is a normal female protagonist (who is attractive but not a sex kitten) who gets sucked into an epic sci-fi/fantasy situation. There are people with different sexualities and angst and love triangles (quadrangles?) involved. It may not look like manga but the artwork favors some similar attributes (aka what actually appeals to a lot of ladies) and some of the story elements are also similar to what is in a lot of manga. I was in a chatroom last night and I said A Distant Soil could be good as digests for readers of girl's manga. He commented that he didn't think it'd work because of the various sexuality in ADS, and I commented that he obivously hadn't read much shoujo..heh

Another interesting connection is that Colleen had Tomoko Taniguchi do some fanart in one volume which got her noticed by CPM and then published. There is a bit more info. here, and Colleen had a long introduction to the original Call Me Princess volume. I "think" Call Me Princess was the first published shoujo in the US, because of Colleen's involvement. Now shoujo is a massive force in bookstores...

As for the ooold US manga monthlies, it may not have had massive amounts of impact, but I'm sure it did some. I'd think that especially the colorized Akira probably impacted a lot of people. But in the long run, it was probably the anime that did the most. I watched Robotech and Voltron as a kid, as well as Warriors of the Wind and Unico. Tons of people saw Speed Racer or Astro Boy before that. As a kid, the anime style was just another cartoon style and that carried into adulthood.

As far as fans in the US having a backlash, I have definitely seen it happen. Manga was always something that could easily be ignored if you weren't into it. Now that everyone is talking about it, there's been a lot of "Why is everyone talking about that manga crap. I wish they'd just shup up that fad already". And even besides manga, there is a bit of chaffing against expanding the market in general. Every time diversity gets brought up, there is always someone to claim that people are out to destroy superheros. There's also those that go on about how superheros are something unique to comics and what make it special.

I think that is all flawed. Comics are what makes comics special! It is cool that there are these long-standing shared worlds with a lot of culture built in, but that isn't the end-all-be-all of comics. People talk about how there are plenty mysteries and romance in novels, so why should someone bother... But then why are so many girls reading romance manga, when there is plenty of romance for YAs or for adults, and usually cheaper to boot? Why should they bother? Well, they must just like comics, huh?

And it is a powerful cultural force in general.. the culture of comics. So many people have come to read comics partly because they love superheros so much. Imagine if 90% TV shows were sci-fi stuff set in space, pretty much driven by the Star Trek franchise, but with various knockoffs. How cool would it be if you were a die-hard Trekkie that any time there was a big story about TV programs it was about Trek, or that if someone brought up TV you instantly knew you had interests in common? I think when a lot of people talk about people out to lessen superheroes, they might be thinking about sales, but sub-conciously I think it is really about importance. Other genres can appear without hurting sales of superheros too much, but it can't happen without lessening the importance of the superheros. I saw someone on a page that said something like "2003 was the first year you could mention comics and not be assumed to be talking about superheros". I don't know if that is true, but I think it is a powerful statement.

But for all the bad reactions from some sectors against manga, there has also been a lot of good stuff going on. A lot of bloggers and people like Johanna are taking manga more seriously, and even people like Legomancer who had strong opinions against manga in the past are willing to concede there is some stuff out there that they might enjoy. And in general people that were pushing for variety all along now have more of a leg to stand on.

Lastly, about selling american comics in Japan, I know that generally Marvel/DC stuff has had a hard time selling, but I don't know much about other stuff. However, here is something to keep in mind. No way pamphlets are going to work. There just isn't a distrubtion set up for it. Would either have to be anthology or trades. I think the biggest issues would be to have stories that appeal to them and also price. I mean manga in the US tends to be twice as expensive as manga in Japan. I mean, if most of the digests in Japan are in the $3-4US range (that's new, even cheaper in used manga stores), how can US companies match that? A color comic for $15 would probably seem way overpriced, especially for something that doesn't have the various local buzz associated with it. And will they even care so much about super-detailed artwork and color, being so used to many manga using a sparser style and emphasis on moving the story forward? I'm sure they'd appreciate it, but enough to pay a lot more? Even for me, being used to American titles, I find it difficult at times. A comic might be flashy with great color artwork and larger page size, but I have to stop and think "I'll probalby enjoy it, but will I really enjoy it TWICE as much as this manga that costs half as much?".

So, that makes it harder for a lot of the superhero stuff, and combined with the fact that they haven't been exposed to these icons as much over the years, and have less access to back-issues, so probably won't be into old continuities. But something like Hellboy does seem to make sense as it has a distinctive style and different sort of story.. Maybe stuff like A Distant Soil, but it might actually seem kind of cliched to some fans depending on how it is done exactly (I swear I'll read it soon..heh). Maybe stuff like Andi Watson? In any case, I do think it is probably a hard nut to crack. It was easy for manga to take off here because of the shape the industry was in. There is plenty of stuff for most people coming out weekly in Japan. There has to be a real incentive for them to try something else..

Next will be a look at comic and manga culture...

In the middle of a rant on the huge number of Bowie stuff coming out of late, he also mentions a delux re-issue of Labyrinth on DVD.

I love that movie, and will think seriously about buying it again...

Thanks to Jim Crocker for mentioning some upcoming cons in the area. The UMASS OurCon is close by but I'm not as much into gaming right now. The others seem a bit far away. However, Conbust looks like something I'll have to attend. It will be April 2-4 at Smith College in Northampton, MA. Only $8 for preregistering for all three days, and I could probably take the friday off from work. Sci-fi, comics, anime, and a focus on female creators? Sounds like something right up my alley.

Seems like a lot of the schedule and line-up isn't set yet, so it'll be interesting to see what eventually gets hammered out...

By the way.. blogging is kind of short again since I'm a bit worn out. Seems like the last couple of weeks has had several projects come up suddenly with short deadlines. Plus, found out from someone today that some sort of heat converter might be messed up in the heating system possibly sending carbon (dioxide? monoxide?) into the building. That can't be good..

Been trying to chill out, reading some blogs, watching anime music videos, watching some TV, etc. I might even get a second (third?) wind and stay up too late (like now), but just don't feel up to writing anything insightful..

There's stuff I really want to write about too. The infamous Jump thing (can't live up to the hype by now..heh), responding to a great article Dirk linked to about dissolving comic boundaries, maybe some thoughts on decompression, and other stuff I'm forgetting about. Maybe I can get caught up later on this week.....

You ever see a site and feel like you're on a similar wavelength? Making a gallery of people's book collections? An entry about a favorite book cover artist? Eating some Japanese food? A semi-new Sony DSC camera? Zork? Walks in the wilderness? Good stuff... :)

So, I suppose I'll have to send in pics of the books here. 3 full-size cases of fiction, mostly fantasy with some sci-fi. A case of computer books, a case of misc. stuff, a case of cookbooks, a smaller dvd-ish case for manga and comic tpbs, a couple of wall shelves with some paperback novels, some stacks of books on the floor, and various stuff in rubbermaid containers in the cellar. No shortage of books here!

He even is linking to this blog... some day when I update my sidelinks... :)

Yikes, did I just miss the news on this, or has there just not been much mention of it in the news? Abandoned is maybe the wrong word as scientists will continue to use it, but all servicing has been canceled, meaning that enough parts will probably wear out by 2007 for it to stop functioning. Seems a shame after all the effort to get it up there, and they'll have to spend millions on a rocket to take it down safely anyway...

I don't really have anything to add to this thread right now, but it is interesting reading and makes you think. Obviously there are no easy answers to what a "superhero" really is, as people have their own definitions... I need to think on it some more, but what is a superhero to you?

Kind of surprised no one has commented on this ICV2 article yet. We've had some sporadic bookscan numbers in the past, but this is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it looks at the first three weeks of 2004, a fairly clean slate. It also gives a lot of specific information, and covers the recent change to include comic strip collections in the graphic novel list.

Piecing together the information:
#1 Get Fuzzy: Blueprint for Disaster (7,600)
Kenshin 2 (5,600)
Kenshin 1 (5,000)
#5 Alice the Nineteenth 2
#6 Demon Diary 5
#7 Book of Bunny Suicides
#8 Hellsing 1
#9 .hack//SIGN 2
#10 Ai Yori Aoshi
#11 Fake 5 (3,300)
#14 Trigun 1
FLCL 1 (2400)
#16 Boondocks: A Right to be Hostile
#20 LoEG 2
#22 Trigun 2
#24 Batman: Hush
#49 JLA L&J
#56 Sandman: Endless Nights
#86 Watchmen (800)

7 Inuyasha volumes in there somewhere..
Love Hina and Chobits in there somewhere (totalling 1700 and 2000 respectively)

books in Top 25
21 Manga
2 Comic Strips
2 DC

# of books in Top 100
40 Tokyopop
25 Viz
8 DC
7 Andrews McMeel
2+? Dark Horse

I'm not sure how correct some of the stuff is. I mean how can the Kenshin vols be the top two manga and .Hack be third, if Hellsing is above .Hack?? Anyway, the volumes in my main list that just have numbers sold are in a guessed position by me.

Interesting that the first non-strip american collection is at 20th place. Seems like including the strips is pushing stuff down, and LoEG itself has fallen a bit. Dark Horse seems to be doing quite well with Trigun and Hellsing. Seems like Endless Nights may be down a lot (then again maybe a ton of people ordered at Christmas). Interesting that both volumes of Kenshin seem to be selling around the same amount....

I wonder about the Bookscan stats for Elfquest: Wolfrider that Dirk mentioned (846 copies sold). Was it sales or just that past month, or total sales? If it was for that past month, then it might be doing better than Watchmen..heh (but of course Watchmen is really really old by now). If total, then it seems to be struggling even more.. It'll be sad if it doesn't make it. Let's hope it manages to have some legs and pick up steam...

I wish we had real access to the top 100 for GNs instead of trying to peice together stuff like this all of the time. Maybe I'll pull a Rich and say if anyone wants to forward me info. I'll be sure to keep the identity secret.. ;)

Edit: Dark Horse was in the wrong spot...

From the comments section of this post, John Smith writes:

Here's something to think about, manga will generally use 3-5 panels per page but american comics will use 6-9. So maybe the reason manga can be sold so cheaply is that they're selling 200 half-sized pages.

Well, it did get me thinking, but I think I'll have to dispute that assertion. I'm too tired tonight to do a full-scale analysis right now (though I think that'd be fun to do at some point), but the results of flipping through stuff was pretty interesting. At first I wasn't sure if I should doubt John, because manga does generally feel more "open", but I think it actually has to do more with sparser artwork and less text in general, not the actual number of panels. Looking at volume 1 of Rurouni Kenshin, it seemed like it was averaging around 6 panels per page. I thought maybe Mars would have less as shoujo, but it actually had more. Quite a lot of 7-page panels, and sometimes 9 or 10. While Kenshin tended to be more standard in layout (a square cut into various shapes, sometimes diagonal), Mars was much more like a layered collage, with lots of little panels overlapping other ones.

An interesting case seems to be Cyborg 009, which is way old (started the same year as the original X-Men) and was very interesting with the panel layouts. It pretty much ranges from two-page spreads to at least one 13-panel page. Ishinomori really seemed to have a good grasp of using panels for pacing and effect.

As far as the most dense, I think it has to be Nausicaa. Nearly every page was 8 or 9 panels, sometimes up to 11-13 and sometimes as low as 4-5. The only full-page panels I could see were like at the very beginning and end of the volume. But even with that density and the detail in his artwork, I still think it works fine in digest form. Sure, it'd be really cool in a big size like Akira, but it was still really engrossing even at the tiny size. I'd venture to say that Lone Wolf and Cub is a bit too small, especially for the detail, but even then, most people seem able to enjoy the story and recommend it.

I think at this point, availibility and convenience and price outweigh deluxe editions for stuff that want to reach the biggest audience and aren't mainly done as an art comix item. And while a big tome like Palomar is very nice (I finally saw the thing in person and wow!) and should sell well to a lot of fans, I still think a smaller budget release is in order for wider exposure...

But anyway, my main point was just to point out that if you really stop and look closely, most manga do seem to have decent numbers of panels. The only one I saw that seemed to fit the 4-5 panel distinction was Angel from Sakurazawa...

Maybe if I have time I'll take a random chapter from a couple of different manga and give some more concrete stats. Anyone out there have any info. on recent american titles? Most of the stuff in my collection is a bit older and/or not typical. What seems to be the averages on some of the popular superhero stuff lately or anything else?

OK, the title is partly in jest and partly true. ;) Jim showed up to the party at a bit after 6:30 (when it officially started), and so there was already a lot of people in the room. He came in with a bunch of crates on a dolly, and immediately had a bunch of people swarming in, enough that he had trouble getting the dolly back out again!

After that he disappeared for a bit and then came back with a table and cash register (can't say he's not prepared). A table people were sitting at was moved out of the way and then he started to set up. Between putting up the two tables and arranging the crates (he literally did bring his entire manga collection), it probably took 15 minutes at least to get totally set up.

Here's a picture of the scene while he was still getting organized. Jim is in the foreground with his back to the camera and ponytail. Click to enlarge:




So there was this big crowd of people and they literally were waiting there the whole time he was setting up. And I am not making this up, but at one point the lady organizing the party had to stand inbetween the people and the tables saying (paraphrasing from memory) "Please everyone, you have to pull back and give him some room! He is still setting up."

Here is the scene a little while after he got finished setting up. Jim doesn't seem to be in the shot:




He seemed to do pretty steady sales all through the night. Here is the scene at 8:30, around almost two hours after setup. Jim's in center of the pic in the back:




So, it seems like it was a big success, and hopefully it carries over to sales at the store. He didn't have business cards that I could see, but the cash register's recipts had the name and contact info. He also provided prizes for the cosplay contest. The MC forgot to mention that, but thankfully Jim spoke up..

So, it was a fun night in general, and part of that fun was seeing Jim being slightly overwhelmed by hordes of manga fans. ;) Also, notice the girls present in all of the pics, along with a range of tiny people to a guy with grey hair...

Hopefully Jim will have some comments of his own in his blog eventually...

Next up, I'll need to get a gallery set up on one of my websites of the various other sights and people of the party (along with all the other pictures I've taken in the last couple of months). :)

Everyone should check out this comic strip by Tak Toyoshima which has its original run put online in its entirety, originally published in the Weekly Dig. It is an autobio comic about his life from a little kid up until the present. The artwork is really nice and the story manages to convey both the happiness and sadness of his life without dwelling in one place too long. This is defintely an autobio comic I'd snatch up if it was collected as a GN.

It also seems to have continued on past the original ending point, in more of an episodic commentary form. Actually, this page seems to have every SAM strip on it, from the Origins of SAM (what was on Komikwerks) to present. Good stuff!

Well, after John's entry alerted me to the fact that Blogger now has a free feed option using the Atom format, I added it to my site. Link is right under the archives on the right. :)

As an aside, I still haven't updated the links to other blogs in my template. One of these days I'll try to go through all my links and get everyone else added. So, please don't feel slighted if your site isn't on there! Once I finally update it, then you can feel slighted.. ;)

Woo, today was a fun day. Got up around noonish, ate, then we drove up to Northampton first for the yo-yo club and then to the anime after-party that was in conjunction with the anime film festival. I decided to skip the movies themselves as I had two of them on DVD and I've been running a bit tired lately. Doing anime stuff from 10am to 9pm might be pushing it. ;)

So anyway, the party was a lot of fun. We got there around 15 minutes early, and were some of the first people there. Things were still being set up... and there was maybe 15 people there. A decent-sized room with some tables, some white plastic on the wall with a projector hooked up to a computer, and some free popcorn and water near the door. At the moment, music was playing and random images were being projected on the screen in a slide-show type thing. At this point we were still a little nervous as there weren't many people and nothing was really going on. Mostly I looked at the images to see if I could figure out what series they were from as they flashed on the

Then you could tell when the last movie was done playing at the theater across the street, because a ton of people streamed in all at once. By then they were starting to get the other food set up. They had a bunch of (non-meat) sushi for $1 each. That was kind of expensive, so we just got two california rolls with some wasabi and ginger. A nice way to start things off. They also had a bunch of pocky (chocolate, vanilla mousse, strawberry, and chocolate mousse), and later on pizza.

So, for a lot of that time, I was wandering around, asking the cosplayers if I could take their picture (which of course they agreed to). There was some pretty nice costumes in there. Two really fun .Hack ones, Alucard from Hellsing, Wolfwood from Trigun, Luffy from One Piece, Inuyasha and Sesshomaru, Lupin and Jigen, Edward from Cowboy Bebop (holding an Ein plushy). Actually, I took a pic for Edward with her disposable, but never got a picture of her. Is a shame since she really fit as the part (and sounded like the dub voice as well), but I think she left early.. But I got picture of just about everyone else I wanted to get. I'll have to put them up eventually. Was fun to finally see some cosplayers in person.

They had a cosplay contest, and the winner was impressive, but I'm still not sure what anime/game she was from. Also a very good singer. Edward sang as well. Lupin and Jigen did a funny bit at the end as if they saw Pops in the audience and ran off. One guy with no costume claimed to be Wolverine.. he did sort of look like Logan..heh. The male .Hack guy went "boing!", which I think must be from some episode of the show, and the female .Hack character really seemed to fit as she was a bouncy sort. Alucard basically got to walk around everywhere with an evil grin..heh. Wolfwood was cool, but lugging around that giant cross everwhere has to be a pain.

Later there was three ladies doing some karaoke and they were actually good, so that was fun. Still later, they had a couple of anime music videos. My favorite was Evangelion to Bohemian Rhapsody (I think it was a cover). I kind of question the wisdom of having a Perfect Blue video in there, but whatever... There was also some anime-inspired artwork taped on the walls done by local people.

So, it was a lot of fun, especially if you're a people-watching kind of person. Lots of enery and a variety of ages, mostly in the teens to 20s, but also older and younger.

Now, I'm sure all the comic people are going, what about Jim Crocker and his appearance with manga? I'm making a whole entry just about that, with pictures!

Well, Osaka has the list. Usually it always gets posted each month, but I was bored this time and figured I'd write about it. It looks like 111 volumes total coming from 12 different companies. Obviously the most are from Tokyopop (40) and Viz (29) but many of the others are getting decent numbers.

BTW, DH Publishing is of no relation to Dark Horse. They seem to generally publish Japan-related books, and seem to be focusing on the horror books of Hideshi Hino as far as the manga goes. Actually, if you are looking for manga that isn't in a normal "manga style", these might be something to check out. Some of it looks like something out of Johen Vasquez. According to the bio, he's done like 400 books, so they have plenty of material to work with. They actually have a page where you can vote on what title to do next out of a selection of three. BTW, is it just me or does this guy remind you of Mr. Punch?

I may have to pick up DHP's Anime Poster Art book at some point.

Getting back to Diamond, also check out all the 2nd editions that Viz is doing. Ceres, Nausicaa (no excuse not to get it now!), Eva, Ranma, and Video Girl Ai. I'm not sure how much they have left, but they must be getting close to being entirely coverted over to the $10 digests at this point. It is nice to see stuff that I originally passed on or just never got around to coming out at cheaper prices...

In other manga news, akcoll99 gets some confirmation on something I think I remember reading a while back. After Raijin Magazine moved from weekly to monthly (and didn't increase very much in size), people worried that the long series they had would take forever to come out as GNs. Well, it seems like they are pushing ahead with the digests at regular speed. This means that unless the magazine is modified, the digests will get ahead of it. Will be interesting to see if that works out, as it is an odd kind of situation...

If you know a bit about Neon Genesis Evangelion, you probably know that there's like a bazillion versions of the TV series and movies. This post from Asagiri2040 does a nice job of summing it up.

So, to limit it to what's out in the US, the original ADV release of the series is the normal version with the ending credits having the song variations (Fly Me To the Moon by different people), but not the color variations. Not too big a deal.

The Director's Cut versions of the last two DVDs that just came out have the new versions of episodes 22-24 with lots of changes and new footage. There is also episodes 25+26, but they have only very minor changes (as the real changes were for End of Evangelion, with Air being 25 and Yours Sincerely being 26).

So, manga's release of Death & Rebirth does seem to have Death(true)^2, which is the third version of Death. Aparantly it actually has less footage than the original Death, but that had all been scenes originally made for the Director's Cut TV episodes that were thrown into the movie at the last minute, so this is probably the best version (and you won't be missing anything if you have the DC episodes).

The Rebirth stuff is a bit stranger. Instead of the original Rebirth (which was still a little rough), this is basically the first half of End of Evangelion (Air from the Revival version), but with the original Rebirth end credits/song tacked on the end. So it is actually pretty similar to the original and you aren't missing much (but it is still sort of redundant as is identical to Air on Manga's EoE disc, but I suppose it is nice to have the ending)...

Manga's End of Evangelion disc seems to be the regular Revival of Evangelion version (Air and Yours Sincerely).

So, what's left out in Japan at this point? Well, pretty much all of the above has been re-mastered (video cleaned up and 5.1 audio made) with the new Renewal box set. It sounds like it makes a huge different for the TV series, where a lot of the frame jitter when switching scenes has been cleaned up and the TV series in general is the oldest stuff. People seem to be saying the Renewal version of the TV series looks much nicer than the ADV set. The two movies are also aparantly now anamorphicly encoded widescreen.

There is also an extra DVD called Test-Type which contain creditless OP and ED animations with the full-length songs. The ending is just a new floating Rei animation, but aparantly the opening has a bunch of scenes shown that are not anywhere in the TV series or movies.

So, it seems like the full box set in Japan has re-mastered TV 1-26 (along with DC versions of 22-24) and remastered Revival (Death(true)^2/Air/Yours Sincerely), along with one of the discs having a 22-track OST with 5.1 audio. I "think" the Test-Type DVD comes with the set as well.

So, it'll be interesting to see if anything from Renewal eventually comes out. A lot of people have already bought Eva multiple times over the years in various formats, so it'll be interesting to see if it'd sell. There's also the weirdness of ADV having the series while Manga Ent. has the movies. Would I buy any of it? I'm not sure... At this point, I still need to get the End of Evangelion disc (reports of disc issues when it first came out made me a bit skittish a the time) and I'll probably end up getting the two DC discs eventually. Still, I seem to be one of those few people that likes the original ending, so we'll see. Maybe seeing the end of EoE will change my mind.. And for the record, for all that Death is just a recap movie, I found it really enjoyable. A good refresher and I like how it was cut to the cello music...

If you don't care so much about the remastering and just want the semi-definative latest version of the story, it seems like you should do this: Watch episodes 1-21 from ADV's original release (discs 1-6 I think). Watch episodes 22-24 from the two Director's Cut DVDs from ADV. Now, take a breather for a while... Then watch Death from Manga Ent.'s Death and Rebirth DVD (really, this is optional as it is a recap movie, but you may as well, as it'll remind you of everything that happened). Then watch everything on the End of Evangelion disc from Manga Ent. That should pretty much do it! Of course you could also just get the box set and watch the original version of the story, maybe with Death (what I've done so far)...

As people have mentioned, maybe there will be more Eva activity when the live-action movie comes to fruition. For now, I'll be pretty happy with my TV set (which I got for a really good price!). =)

I have to say that this is a pretty interesting entry from Jim Henley. He points out that just as a bazillion foods came out claiming to be "low-fat" even if they weren't healthy for you and still cause weight gain (through stuff like sugar), products are starting to coming out with "low-carb" labels, even if they are still a candy bar.

It is good to be reminded just how far these commercial interests seep into everything and try to manipulate you. One thing that struck me lately is the commercial for a new razor called the Quattro, with *4* blades! I've never used a bladed razor before, but seriously, I doubt 4 blades is much better than 3 or 2. But in order to try to keep money coming in, companies have to keep finding new stuff to keep prices high as costs go down. I did get a new electric razor lately and it seems to be less harsh than my old one (foil instead of lift-and-cut) and you can clean it under water, both of which are nice. But does anyone really need those huge self-cleaning things? Where you have to buy special packs of cleaning fluid every once in a while? As always, go for just what you need, not for the hype...

For those that don't now, ADV and WETA seem to be doing an american live-action version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I heard one poster say somewhere that they still need major funding to be raised, but I'm not sure if that is true or not.

In any case, the designs are here. I think most of it looks pretty nice. The main issue seems to be that all the characters seem anglican and that the names are (maybe?) changed to stuff like Kate Rose. I guess if that is true, I won't be TOO put off. I'm more concerned about how the plot is somehow going to be condensed into one movie. It seems like it is hard enough to understand as it is.. ;)

This is a pretty interesting press release. It seems like there is a traveling exhibit going to 70 children's museums around the country, called Jump to Japan: Discovering Culture Through Popular Art. It seems like Viz will be providing a variety of stuff, mostly from kiddy series like Hamtaro and stuff from Jump. Pretty interesting how the companies are managing to pop up in seemingly different areas all the time...

So, hopefully everyone in Western Massachusetts is already aware that Modern Myths is a great store. But thankfully the smarts aren't limited to selection. With all the talk lately on promotion of stores and the growing popularity of manga, behold:

The Northampton Academy of Music Theater will be having another Anime Film Festival on Saturday, January 24th. 4 films will be shown, starting at 10:00 AM, and there will be an anime-themed multimedia party at the Northampton Center for the Arts afterwards, starting at 6:30 PM. The party will have sushi, J-Pop, karaoke, a fan art show, and we'll be there with a SPECIAL SALE on MANGA, as we move out some of the older versions of Viz and Tokyopop stuff to make room for the 2nd editions.

See, now this is just a great move on many levels. First of all, the store is already in a good area with a parking lot and is well-lit and family friendly. He also has quite a large manga selection, generally more than the bookstores (which is saying something these days). And also a bunch of Japanese art books and some magazines. So, it is already a good environment to attract a varied clientel. The hard part then is to get people to come, especially when bookstores are prevalant and sometimes have good discount sales.

So, the local cultural city of Northampton has an anime festival at one of the theaters. I went to the first one and enjoyed it a lot. One thing I noticed was sushi being sold by a local Japanese resteraunt. I thought that was a good idea. The theater got food, and the shop got lots of good publicity and also sold a lot of food.

So, now in the third iteration of the festival, they have more stuff planed and now Jim is in a great position. Not only will he likely sell a decent amount since the stuff will be on sale, as well as clearing out older inventory, the big thing is promotion. Lots of anime fans will be coming to this from all over the place. I know the first festival was packed with at least like 200 people. Not everyone will go to the party, but I'm sure quite a lot will. I doubt that many of the people will be familiar with Modern Myths, so this could give a huge amount of exposure. Also, since so much of the store is comprised of TPBs, sorted by general categories (family, superheros, etc.), I'm sure that Jim will be able to point the people to a couple of interesting american books as well that they might enjoy.

For other retailers out there, especially those with a selection of manga, do some research. Are there any anime conventions in the area? Maybe it'd be worth your while to at least show up. You may barely make back the cost of a table or lose a bit of money, but you could get some exposure to people used to shopping in bookstores. If there are any clubs at local colleges and such, maybe you should show up and offer a little club discount to them. Be creative people! Having a good selection does nothing if people don't know you exist, especially for people with other options availible. Also, if you are a shop that carries CCGs, a lot of those are based on manga. For all the kiddies coming in just to buy cards, maybe try a discounted package with some packs of YuYu Hakusho along with the first volume of the manga (which is only $8 to begin with). Same goes for Yu-Gi-Oh or DBZ or whatever. Jim definitely has the right idea.. hopefully more people can follow it up...

Check out the apps that come on the new TI-89 graphing calculator. Sure, there is the various math apps, but check out the planner, task manager, contact list, finance program, a spreadsheet, studycards, etc.

It is interesting, because when I first started to look at PDAs, I couldn't help but think about how it reminded me of my old graphing calculator. I'd downloaded a bunch of aps for it, mostly games. I'm sure there are various freeware planners and stuff now, even for the older models. Never thought to look for that stuff at the time.

It makes me wonder how much PDA sales are cutting into the calcuator market. The calculator is obviously made for calculating, but there is all kinds of stuff you can download for a PDA. If you're mostly going for organizing and games and want some calculating that is about as powerful but just a bit slower, why pay to have both unless a class really requires it? But obviously it also works the opposite way. If a class does need the calc, then now they can hook them in to do more with it and make it a bit more indispensible. The sizing isn't so convenient as a real PDA, and the screen isn't so good, but anything to extend the usability and life of the product is smart...

Interesting to see how the landscape of technology in schools has changed so much in a relatively short time...

You know, I haven't watched Serial Experiments: Lain for a while, but it was one of the series that I heard about for long time. One of the first that I downloaded fansubs for online. One of the first that I bought all the DVDs for. I just really like this series. The combination of geeky subject matter and totally atmospheric and abstract feel (in both artwork and music) really clicked with me.

It is on my brain again, because I saw a link for the Relationship between Lain and Apple. I saw this page a long time ago, but forgot all about it. It turns out that a lot of the creators of the show were Mac fans, and so there are tons of various references. Everything from the designs of various computers in the show, to names of things (an OS called Copland), to the voice which says the title of each episode being the "whisper" voice of Apple's text-to-speach engine. There are also a couple of references to NeXT and BeOS thrown in for good measure... :)

That page also links to LainOS, which appears to be an effort to make a real OS incorporating some of the more fantastical parts of Copland as shown in Lain. Seems like it has expanded to try to be a general platform for interfact experimentatin, which is pretty neat. There is stuff to compile, but no gallery yet. I suppose I'll fuss with the stuff after I get Linux going at some point. They also get extra points for getting Pioneer (now Geneon)'s permission to use Lain images on the site!

Somone on AoD pointed this out the other day: a comic teaching Go rules. Pretty cute with the King playing piece from chess learning the rules from two Go pieces. Always nice to see comics being used for teaching, where I think it can be very effective.

Of course the other connection is the manga Hikaru no Go (now running in Shonen Jump) which first got me going into learning Go in the first place... ;)

Caught two pretty interesting movies last night. Ulee's Gold and L.I.E. I liked both of them, but of course for pretty different reasons. I've been hearing about Ulee for a while now and how good Peter Fonda's performance was. While there was others in the movie and they acted good as well, he really did have to carry it, as the movie was mainly about him and his evolving life. Ulee is a beekeeper who has retreated into a life of work after his wife died six years ago, but gets pulled back into things after his son gets put into jail and daughter-in-law's chemical dependancies show up. So he ends up watching his two grandaughters for a while, as well as getting help from a neighbor (who is a nurse) and getting involved in his kids troubles. He is an old-fasioned, quiet, worn-out guy who is having trouble adapting to the changes in life. A well-done movie, and I can identify with the life of a beekeeper, which is sort of geeky in its own way.

As far as L.I.E. goes, it is a fairly controversial story about a young boy (15 almost 16) named Howie, who has troubles at home (his wife died and dad has replaced her with a lady that he seems to just have sex with), and who just feels isolated and confused about his sexuality. Eventually he ends up involved with a pedophile who refers to himself as Big John. The actors for both of these characters do a really good job, and despite other parts in the movie that might not be realistic, both of these characters seemed very real to me. Howie is very vunerable, but also has some idea of what's going on and maybe of what he wants. I can identify with some of it from when I was younger. As for Big John, that's probably the part that a lot of people look at, in that he's portrayed as not 100% evil. I don't want to give away too much, but I have to say that the way it was done impressed me. It wasn't an effort to suger-coat a monster, but it also didn't take the easy way out of making John a one-dimensional person with absolutely no redeeming qualities. In the real world, things are rarely that simple. A thought-provoking movie, and really not deserving of the NC-17 IMHO, as there really is a lack of explicit and/or pandering content. Most summer action movies have more skin and swearing than this movie does, and I think the content is even-handed enough to not warrent that kind of rating. It seems the sort of thing some kids could do with watching, as it addresses confusing emotions without being too judgemental..

Ok, I've done my fair share of bashing on Bill and his company, but I have to admit my respect for him just went up a notch or so. I was going through various sites on Go (more on that later), and one page had a list of celebrities that have played the go. One of which was Bill, which linked to this interview, which went into the whole man vs. machine chess stuff:

Q. Kindly share your thoughts on recent victory of a computer over chess champion Gary Kasparov. Raj Bansal (rbansal@sprynet.com)

A. I answered a similar question early in 1996, when Kasparov beat the chess-playing computer "Deep Blue." I said it was just a matter of time before a computer won a match against the world's best chess player, and that it wouldn't mean much when it happened.

Now a computer called "Deep Thought" has won and, as I said, the victory has little significance. It just proves that a bunch of chess experts with a computer can outplay a lone genius.

The computer that was used to beat Kasparov didn't figure out how to play chess; it was told by people to do some mechanical, numeric comparisons. The machine didn't recognize any patterns; it didn't gain any knowledge by playing those chess games in any way, shape or form. It just performed rote calculations blindingly fast.

Humans gave Deep Thought algorithms that let it evaluate different chess positions, a knowledge of book openings and the ability to try out billions of possible chess moves each minute. The machine is highly specialized. It does one thing: it plays chess. It can't even play checkers or balance a checkbook, let alone appreciate humor or reason with a child.

Human intelligence involves generality. A human being can be put into a general situation, understand that situation, learn new things and apply that knowledge to other situations. Playing chess can help teach a person how to apply strategy in other games or situations and possibly even succeed in business, but playing chess can't teach a computer anything. The chess-playing computer doesn't have one iota of generality.

It's impressive that a big, breathtakingly expensive computer can perform billions of calculations amazingly fast. It will be even more impressive when inexpensive personal computers run at similar speeds. You may carry one on your belt or wrist someday, and no one will be in awe of it any more than they are in awe of a wristwatch today.

What is awesome now, and will remain so then, is the human brain.

What kind of incredible pattern-recognition algorithm does the brain use that makes it so effective that it takes a supercomputer to beat it in a game of chess? It's a complete mystery how the brain, which sends signals relatively slowly, can recognize and react to patterns incredibly quickly.

We will solve this puzzle, either by inventing similar architecture or decoding the architecture of the brain. We may not be able to replicate the brain's approach in practical ways, but within my lifetime we'll at least get a basic clue as to how the brain achieves the magnificent things it does.

Gary Kasparov's brain can play checkers, translate Russian to English, and rapidly cope with new circumstances. It can also beat Deep Thought in chess some of the time. That's awesome.

What a great answer! And in a related theme, Go itself is much harder for computers to play than Chess, due to the emphasis on pattern matching and other factors. As far as I know, the most powerful Go computers are still at an "advanced player, but below pro" type level. Yes, there hasn't been as much money thrown at it as there has been for Chess, but lots of evidence shows there are very significant hurdles to overcome. This article from the NY Times goes over a lot of the issues.

Sure computers have made an advance by beating people at chess, but if they can't even beat people at other kinds of games, there is still a long way to go before proclaiming the superiority of machines...

This article gives me some hope that the spamers won't win the arms race. I think I'm going to get a bayesian filter pretty soon. So much stuff slips through my normal filters that it makes it a pain reading e-mail at all... Thanks Augie for mentioning the article...

After my link a while back, Pam has more reviews up (if you thought you got traffic before, now Dirk linked to you!). One reviews titles she'll be continuing, and the other one reviews titles she'll likely stop getting. Some spoilers in there, but nothing too serious.

I haven't read a lot of these, but I need to second the recommendation of Petshop of Horrors. I've only read the first volume so far (and watched the anime), but it is very nice and different from the norm.

The latest Lying in the Gutters takes another look at CrossGen (scroll down to Betrayed Generation). People still aren't payed, a company still isn't payed, and CG trying to get those same people to do even more for them. It is a shame to see just how bad stuff has gotten. I don't think I could justify buying a CG book at this point. It seems like it has gone far past the "buy some of the comics and everyone will get payed". It is just depressing considering how much promise the company had at first and how devoted to its creators it seemed to be...

Last night was the first episode of a new show on TechTV called Nerd Nation. This first episode was called Kid Nerd and worked well as an introduction. It was mostly serious, profiling around ten, and looking into their lives as kids. Lots of different people and experiences. Everyone from magician Penn Jillette, to a Simpsons producer, to an action movie scriptwriter, to a striper, to a guy from comic coloring shop Digital Chameleon.

According to the site, it'll be on again tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, so check it out if you get TechTV. A mix of heartbreak and humor, I thought this episode was really well done. I was relatively lucky growing up, but even I can recognize a lot of stuff in here.

It seems like the next episode will focus on aliens and various fandom and conspiracy people, which I have to say isn't so appealing to me, but some of the other upcoming episodes seem interesting. Like a look at Indian call-center people who have to impersonate being from other countries, a whole episode on Todd McFarlane, and the rise of political activists online.

Also, quite the catchy theme song...

Just to let everyone know, things have been a bit crazy lately. Some stuff at work is finally coming to a head, and I've had to take some work home the last couple of nights. Also working on something freelance for a friend. There's a big post that I want to do involving Shonen Jump, but I never seem to have the time. Maybe it'll finally happen tonight or tomorrow...

Until all this gets resolved, the entries will be a bit sporadic..

Geeze, it just keeps on happening doesn't it? Is manga far behind?

You know, I really would have loved these as a kid (and maybe even now). I've mentioned before that I used have a kind of trading-card mentality toward the Marvel and DC characters anyway. I remember one of my favorite things was the two Marvel D&D roleplaying games I had. I never did get a chance to play a game against anyone (except maybe once or twice), but one of them had these really cool cards you could cut out with a picture of the character on one side and stats on the other. If I had had a CCG where you can more easily play one on one against someone else, I probably could have had lots of fun. Maybe I'll pick some of these up on ebay or something some day. ;)

This article I find kind of interesting actually. It lists two new titles coming down the road from CPM: Comic Party and Treasure Hunter. Why is it significant? Just because of the two titles themselves.

Comic Party deals with doujinshi, which is the term for amateur comics in Japan, generally sold through conventions or the internet. Some of it is original, but a large amount is stories using characters from popular manga, aka fanfiction. The article implies that all of it is sexual and that definitely isn't true. However, quite a lot of it is. But the companies in Japan allow it since it because many good creators come out of the doujinshi scene and a lot of commercial creators feel like it is a form of flattery. CLAMP is an example of creators who started as a doujinshi circle and later went commercial.

Anyway, Comic Party is about some kids who end up attempting to make their own comic. When you think about it, this would be like a comic about some people making a minicomic. Except the irony is that this comic is commercial and even was animated! It is pretty cool that the US industry is starting to get diverse enough to support the odder entries, like this one.

The other is Treasure Hunter, and is a comic I have never heard of before. Is it good? Who knows... the reason I bring it up is more to illustrate the point of name-power for creators. Alien Nine was an off-beat but popular title for CPM, and now they're bringing out another comic he did. Notice how big his name is on the cover. There is no anime or video games or CCGs for this title out there, it is just going on the name. There's also the fact that almost every comic CLAMP has produced is currently out or licensed, and many other examples. Some people have tried to argue that there might not be so much fan loyalty in the bookstore market, but I'd argue the opposite is true. With novels, people are used to focusing on the writer and seeing if there's other stuff they've written that they might enjoy. Seems like manga is following the same path for the most part...

I had posted a link earlier to this thread, but now Osaka has written up a large manga year in review post. This is a very comprehensive look at what the various companies have been up to, and is good to see...

Comicbookresources has up an article calculating the top 100 comics and graphic novels for 2003. Some pretty interesting stuff in there.

The publisher breakdowns I find interesting in that things have changed even from the average of the year. With A. D. Vision at the bottom, they moved up quite a bit, along with Tokyopop going up two places. I'm pretty sure Oni Press has risen at the end of the year as well.

The top 100 comics is scary as ever. 98 of them are superhero stuff, and the only two that aren't are nostalgia properties (one transformers and one transformers/g.i. joe). Marvel sure has done well with the Ultimate line! A full 39 of the hundred were Ultimate titles. Also, New X-Men manages to appear 15 times on its own. For all the critisism that these new titles had when they first launched, they seem to be raking in tons of money for Marvel.

A much healthier split of titles in the GNs, IMO. Sandman is still king, however. Besides Endless Nights at third place, Death: At Death's Door comes in a 5th (the little volume that could!), and the first four Sandman volumes also manage to appear on the list, despite being quite old now. Taken as a whole, 15 volumes of Ultimate titles on there. The highest manga seems to be Lone Wolf and club (vol 28!) at 13th place, and Trigun making a strong showing at 22nd. Interestingly, besides Trigun and Hellsing from DH, all the other manga is in the middle of the respective series. Hellboy manages two TPBs, but it seems stronger lately as opposed to the average, probably because of the movie's hype.

Wow, I really like the images in this gallery. The making of information is very interesting as well (link courtesy czelticgirl).

As long as you aren't too easily offended, these are very funny:

First up is the bible done as an IRC chat. If you've never used IRC, some of it may not make sense, but for those of us longstanding chatters, it is great:

The IRC Bible (from czelticgirl)

Next up is various old and new testament stuff done in Legos. This had to have taken a whole lot of work to put together:

The Brick Testament

Johhny B likes Puffy AmiYumi's US release Nice, linking the musicians back to other bands. I still haven't bought any of the growing j-pop releases, but it is something I really need to do.

I think the interesting thing is that pop music is so big in Japan, with so much competition going on, that they have it down to a science. A lot of the stuff is very catchy and they don't pretend that it is something more than fluffy pop music. I've heard that a lot of fans in Japan tend to follow producers instead of artists when in that particular realm.

That's one thing that I wish I could see here is more emphasis on actually who does what in music. Some people think that if someone doesn't write their own music, it automatically makes them bad. I don't think that at all. A good way to think about it might be in classical music. You have various composers, who if they have enough skill can even compose for an instrument they can't play themselves. You then have the various perform using the instruments. If you're someone that is used to listening to classical, then two performers doing the same composition can bring different things to the work. A singer might just be providing their voice, but their style and own emotions obviously change the work in subtle (or not so subtle ways).

But in so many cases, we want to raise up the singer to a huge level, and the writer in small writing inside the album notes, as if a dirty little secret. I guess I just wish there could be more balance involved. In bands with multiple people, frequently one or more write. The one doing the lyrics isn't always the singer, and in any case all the band members need to get involved in this song that they probably contribute to in various ways but still might be about someone else's experiences. That is seen as ok, but even a longstanding of a singer with a songwriter usually seems to be swept under the rug...

Oh well, I guess I'm going off on a tangent. Nice is definitely one of the albums I want to pick up one of these days...

Comicbookrecourses has a very good thread talking about where superheros are and if the concept is dead or what. It manages to not devolve into a mess, with lots of insightful comments from various pepole. Also, I learned something new, that before Watchmen and DKR was another comic called Superfolks, without which those may not have been possible. It seems like it was one of the first to take superheros into a darker reality, yet I've never heard of anyone bringing it up before. I'll definitely have to look into finding a copy of it.

For those that are interested, I yet again summed up a lot of my comic book thoughts on various subjects. If you've read my blog for long, you've seen it all before, but my opinions are constantly evolving, so I figure it is good to try to keep track of it:

This is a really interesting thread. I've seriously never heard of Superfolks before. Sounds like a really important part of comics history that a lot of people don't know about.

A couple of thoughts.. I think three issues which cause troubles for superheros is the surface details/conventions and indicision of continuity vs. episodic lack of continuity in Marvel/DC, and the shared worlds themselves.

I think surface details can go either way. On the one hand, it does give a historical culture and iconography to the genre. At the same time, it is also troublesome for a lot of people due to the restrictions it causes.

Someone brought up manga, and while I do agree GTO might be stretching it (thought maybe not as much as many would think), I think it is instructive to look at the titles in Shonen Jump. These are stories aimed at young boys and many contain superpowered heros who fight evil. However, the similarities tend to be more about story structure than any surface conventions.

YuYu Hakusho involves a punk kid who surprises everyone (including the spirit world) by pushing a kid out of the way of a speeding car and getting killed in the process. Due to his heroism, he gets a chance to get back to life by going through trials and eventually ends up getting enlisted by the spirit world (as well as getting powers by means of various situations and training) to track down and fight demons causing problems, as well as linking up with some other characters to form a team of sorts.

No spandex to be found. It is not connected to any other comics (and seemingly below the surface of the real world). Characters evolve to some degree and some people die and don't come back. Eventually it all comes to an end. Same author throughout the run.

Naruto involves a kid who has grown up with the spirit of a destructive fox spirit imprisoned within his body. While he is never told of that as a kid, he is ostracised and becomes a troublemaker to try to get everyone's attention. This is a world where ninjas are everywhere and this town has a history of training them. Naruto decides he wants to become a great ninja (and leader of the town) eventually and starts his training. He ends up with a boy and girl about the same age and so the adventure starts. I've only started to read it, but can already see the characters growing a bit...

One Piece has Luffy who is a kid who is ultra enthusiastic and single-minded. The kind who just won't take no for an answer. After having an inspiring experiance as a kid, he is determined to become the greatest pirate ever. He ends up ingesting a magical fruit which allows him to stretch (but now he can't swim), and eventually links up with a swordsman and female thief and battles all kinds of strange villian and visits imaginative areas.

DBZ is a story that is very superhero-ish with Goku being like Superman but a bit more happy-go-lucky. But even though the story went on way too long due to fan and editorial pressures ending up with characters who can blow up planets and such, even it had a lot of evolution. I mean the first half (called just Dragon Ball in the US), Goku is a kid and the series is much more comedic. Later on he is grown up and has a kid!

This is the kinds of stuff that kids are reading right now. I think a lot of them enjoy the fact that each story has a different setting and characters. They may wish that a story would continue past where it ended, but there is always some new story on the horizon that they can read.

One interesting thing about all this also. Quite a few manga especially for kids deal with the main character wanting to be the best at something. In order to do that, they put in a lot of hard work, have rivals, etc. In One Piece and Naruto it becomes a superhero story due to superpowers and fighting bad guys. But that same sort of plot also applies to Iron Wok Jan, with two kids (with very different outlooks) trying to be the best chefs around. You have sports titles where someone is trying to be a great basketball player. The list goes on...

I think that is a fundamental difference with a lot of manga versus a lot of superhero stories. In the US, a lot of people are taking the specific superhero genre and trying to tell different stories with it. In Japan, they are more likely to take a kind of story and then pick the setting and trappings that go on top of it, and whether it is superpowered or not is just a decision of the particular author.

Now, about the conflict of continuity. First, I do think that stories mostly lacking in continuity can be fun. They tend to be lacking in reality but can be very stylized and interesting if you accept the main conceit. The problem is that there is always a temptation to add in realism, which just changes everything. Especially in the corporate atmosphere where authors change on a frequent basis, it is even worse.

As soon as you make a major lasting change in a story lacking continuity, you suddenly create a before and after. Depending on how it is done, it may not be a big deal, but often it is. If you go the opposite direction and try to make things as real as you can, by definition things have to change and as time goes on, any kind of repeating element (like a fight each episode) will conflict more and more with the realistic elements. To retain the realism, the story either has to throw away the repeating element or the story just has to end.

But they want to have it both ways. So they have these continuity driven arcs, but then as soon as things get too different they do a reboot or bring people back from the dead. For me, that just doesn't work, and creates a big mess, as well as causing a lot of fans to feel like nothing that happens is important since it'll all go back to status quo eventually.

Some manga take a tact of starting mostly episodic and then switching to continuity later on. This works well from a marketing standpoint as it gets more people able to join in in the beginning, and then keeps the people interested at the end. But most of those stories then either keep on changing or come to an end. If they try to go back to episodic, a lot of people will feel cheated.

One interesting way to kind of get away with it is a character that moves from place to place. A pretty good example is the manga and anime Eat-Man, or something like Samurai Jack (in a less detailed way). Eat-Man is has a bounty hunter named Bolt Crank who can ingest metal and use it instantly form weapons from out of his body. Some episodes go in pretty large and detailed arcs, but the key is that all the progression happens to the people in the particular town he is visiting. Bolt acts as a mostly unchanging force of nature Deus Ex Machina factor that resolves the particular plot, but then he just moves on somewhere else. This allows meaningful things to happen while still being independant of continuity.

And for shared worlds in general, I do agree that it is a cool meta-universe thing, but it also contributes a lot to keeping things the status quo and the fact that creative teams on a title constantly change can be taken as a positive by some but very negative by others that want their reading more like regular novels.

Also, what defines superhero really? Does a superhero have to wear spandex? Do they really need superpowers (as opposed to just being very skilled)? Do they have to be heroic? The interesting thing is that it seems like the answer to all of these may be no on a case by case basis, yet if you answer no for all of them at the same time, then it certainly isn't a superhero story!

It is interesting to see how stuff really fits. Looking at the GTO comparison, he is a guy that is doing everything in his power to help kids and fight against the bad ones (while still trying to turn them around) and doing aparantly superhuman feats at times. Even though he's a flawed character, if he has amazing skills and fights evil, is it really not a superhero story?

How about the original Gundam anime series. In it, you have Amuro, who is a very reluctant (and somewhat unstable) kid who gets thrown into a war he never wanted to be a part of. He pilots a giant robot and is revealed later to be a Newtype, a sort of evolutionary step that allows him extraordinary control of his Gundam machine. But in this story, the two forces are the Federation versus the Zeon. The Zeon is portrayed as a bit more bad, and is sort of the royalty versus the Federations democracy. Yet neither side is really evil. There are good people in the Zeon who really believe what they are doing is right. There are people in the Federation who due to bueracracy or fear or stupidity or whatever cause people to die. Is it really a superhero story even if the main character has extraordinary powers and is constantly in battles if he doesn't want to be a hero and the people he is fighting aren't really evil? Perhaps...

There is plenty of room for classic fun superhero stories, retro wink-wink stories, serious deconstructions, and genre mergers. But I agree with the person that said we need more stuff outside of this. I think we need more stories that might have heros or might have superpowers but aren't trying to be an extension of or a response against classic superhero stories.

Also, I agree about the need for more endings. As much as there has been lots of fun Spiderman stories out there, I can't help wondering how it would have been if it had come to and end. It seems to me like the original story was about growing up, but it was never allowed to take its course.

What if he eventually settled down? What if he found that he just wasn't happy with the crime-fighting anymore (maybe other heros come out of the woodwork and he doesn't feel so responsible to that city anymore) and cares more about his relation-ship. The constant danger and stress on the relationship or even danger to his wife being hurt just causes him to stop being a superhero. He comes to terms with the death of his Aunt and Uncle (most of my knowledge is from Ultimate Spidey, so don't kill me on details!) and realizes they would want him to be happy, etc...

It gives the potential for Peter doing all kinds of battles and having various adventures while being able to grow up. There'd be room for revamps or various kinds of sequels (past catches up with him, or he has a son that has the same powers or whatever), but you'd still have that original story as classic cannon that could be told to kids over the various generations.

Something like Cyborg 009 was a classic super-heroish story (which actually started the same year as the X-Men) but evolved and was told by the same author the whole time. I think the author died right when he was about to finish it up entirely. Over time it has been animated like 3 times to make it flashy for new generations of kids, but they always follow the classic story and the original volumes of manga are still in print. I think it is no accident that when stuff like Spider-Man or Batman are animated or made into movies, they tend to use the original classic stories and villians. That is the stuff that tends to resonate most, versus the vast continuing monthly stories with the conflicting histories and various reboots. Sure there is variations on origins and stuff to work with, but you could just as easly do a straight updating or re-imagining of stories every decade like Ultimate Spider-Man without trying to continue the cannon stories indefinitely until they almost become meaningless... I think it is more powerful when you have a definite creator driven story that comes to an end, which can then be a definite established classic.

I also agree that part of the reason why this stuff is always brought up is the dominance of the genre to the industry. It wouldn't be as big of a deal if superheros was just another genre. There is plenty of manga and anime categories with their share of overworked themes and modern takes and retro versions. But it is always just one of a variety of stuff, so it doesn't stick out so much. But there's also a lot of fans which like this dominance. If you are mostly into superheros, it is cool for you that when someone thinks comics they instantly think of what you're into. It is also cool that stuff like this is a big issue instead of a side-issue. I think that's one reason why there has been a lot of resistance to change in the industry. And stuff like how it has generally been a boys club, but now more than half of the readership of bookstore comics seems to be girls is a huuge shift in things.

Anyway, I'm starting to get offtrack. I'm not amazingly concerned about superheros having to be realistic or unrealistic or challenging Watchmen or being totally original. I'd like to see more creator-driven stuff, more series that end, and more stories that can decide if they want to be episodic or continuity driven and stick with it. And while you can perhaps do any topic in superheros, I want people to realize it is a self-imposed restriction and niche. You can do a horror superhero title, but why not do a horror title without superheros? And if you want fantastial elements, why not set the horror in a fantasy or sci-fi world? It isn't that a horror superhero hybrid is bad, but you have to question why are you doing it? Is it because it is really the best thing for the story, or because stuff sells better in the direct market if it has superheros in it? Or because you're used to it?

As an example, Books of Magic. I read the first volume of this, involving a kid who ends up getting involved with magic. Several times superheros were brought up, and it just totally threw me out of the story every time! It reminded me that this story of magic underlying the real world wasn't in MY world. It was in the DCU, which already has all kinds of weird stuff going on. I mean why was the kid even skeptical of magic considering all the stuff that happens on a daily basis in that world? I'm sure there was lots of cool references for fans of obscure DCU stuff, but I'd never seen a lot of the bazillion characters introduced in that first volume before and so a lot of the mythology was lost on me. But that wasn't as bad as when someone like Superman was mentioned. I can't help thinking it would have been better with no connections to DCU at all, helping a kid to believe that this sort of thing could really happen. One less suspension of disbelief to have to go through...

When you consider that a lot of kids these days are reading Harry Potter and stories like it, I can see why a lot of superhero stuff doesn't seem so appealing. It also reminds me of all the fantasy young-adult books I read as a kid. Stuff like Dark is Rising, Support Your Local Wizard, Pit Dragon Trilogy, Lioness Quartet, Last Herald-Mage, Pern, etc. A lot of this stuff was great and even involved heros with extraordinary powers, but were quite different from what we normally call "superheros" and really a lot more similar to a lot of the manga coming out.

Pit Dragon with a kid that ends up connected to a dragon by accident and fighting in tournaments and growing as a result is sooo much like a manga plot. Last Herald-Mage of a fantasy series with magic and a gay angsty main character would fit right in as a manga for girls. So in the end I think a lot of the manga is popular because it is more like the YA stories that kids have already been reading for years, except in graphical form, with art styles that they are used to from anime and games. Yes, muscular heros in colorful costumes fighting bad guys can also be popular with kids, but in some ways it also seems a little out of touch with the original audience of kids..

Anyway, I better quit before this gets any longer. If you've read through all of this, you are to be commended! ;)

Shawn

So, there you go. Also, keep in mind the title is from the name of the thread, not that I personally think superheros are dead, but you'd know that if you read the whole message. ;)

If you have any interest in anime and what has been happening in the last couple of years, be sure to check out this page. AnimeOnDVD.com has been around for seven years now, so they have quite the perspective on things.

Check out the chart on that page. Things have gone from 6 releases in 1997, to 172 in 2000, to *750* in 2003! For all that people talk about sudden explosions, the chart shows that it has really been a steady expansion (of almost doubling each year). If you add all the years up, it is close to 2,000 anime DVD releases total now. While it is fair to argue that it won't keep doubling every year for ever, I certainly don't see it going away any time soon. Anime seems to have been there from the very beginning of DVDs and been following similar cycles (like price reductions on older titles as well as newer special editions sometimes).

Besides the general overview, there is going to be information on each individual studio (currently there is a page up for ADV, who put out almost 200 DVDs this year, as well as the new manga division and other stuff), as well as pages from individual AoD contributers (currenly one from the retail forum moderator on how retail stuff has evolved, and one from one of the disc reviewers on how he got into it). I'm guessing a manga mod will do one at some point, so I'll probably point that out when it happens for the more comic-minded people in the audience.

Many thanks to Chris Beveridge for keeping the site alive through all these years! I haven't been there the whole time, but it has been an amazing resource for all the time that I've visited it. I think it is fair to say that I wouldn't be writing this blog if it wasn't for that site getting me anime DVD reviews and news and eventually manga and then causing me to branch back out to American comics... :)

So, I just saw Gosford Park on cable. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I'd heard the name thrown around a lot at the time of Oscars, but never really knew what it was about. But the description on the TV sounded interesting, and so I went for it, and am glad that I did.

The basic plot is that of a murder-mystery during a gathering at an English estate. Except that doesn't really describe it at all, since if gives you the wrong impression. While mystery and murder are involved, that really isn't the focus. The focus is the characters, both the lords and ladies and the servants.

You get a sense that things really were like that in the past, in the way the personalities interact and how the various maids and cooks and butlers and everyone keep everything working smoothly, as well as the personal attendants to the various people that come.

There is quite a few characters in this movie, and one of the things that impressed me was that it was able to introduce all these people and have them all involved with each other in various ways, without being a confusing mess. I'm sure there's things that'd be clearer on a second viewing, but it really worked fine the very first time.

I do have to admit that while I know there have been a bazillion movies made in the category of muder at an estate, I've barely seen any of them. Really the closest thing that comes to mind was Clue. As a kid, I watched that movie over and over again, and I still really enjoy it. One of those movies that has an amazing amount of quotable lines in it and IMO very funny in general.

So for me, Gosford Park was kind of the realistic drama version of Clue, both good for entirely different reasons. And both highly recommended! :)

Steven Grant relays this account (link from Dirk):

A woman I know who used to work in Marvel editorial just got a job teaching, and when she announced to one of her classes – eighth graders – that she used to work at Marvel, one student said, to general consensus, "Their comics suck."

The good news is that there doesn't seem to be any stigma anymore to being a kid and publicly admitting you read comics. The bad news should be self-evident.

I think that sort of sums up part of the issue that Marvel/DC have to deal with in regards to kids. Manga has managed to partly break the stigma of reading comics, but a lot of American comics retain the stigma. I have some hope that Sentinal and Runaways can do OK in digest form, but they will still have to fight that kneejerk reaction of people used to ignoring the company.

Grant goes on to discuss how Marvel seems to be unfocused, with having so many of the same characters going on at once in various lines. Personally, I have to agree with this. Ultimate Spider-Man may be a great place to start, but how many people can realize this when greeted with all the various Spidey stuff on the shelves? I can't help thinking this puts a lot of them at a disadvantage for people, for instance that just watched the movie. I have some idea of Spider-Man, but I wouldn't have any idea which of those Hulk books to pick up back when they had a bunch of them on display in bookstores. And that's with the limited number of titles actually showing up in the bookstores.

He then discusses the print-to-order policy, which I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details of how it works, but it sounds like it is hurting retailers, something we really don't need at this stage of the game!

Wow, I haven't seen anyone mention this yet:

Paul Levitz, President and Publisher of DC Comics ... and Fabrice Giger, founder of the Humanoids Group ... , announced today an agreement that calls for the publication of 36 books per year from Les Humanoïdes Associés, and Humanoids Publishing, as part of the DC Comics catalog. DC retains worldwide English language publishing rights on these titles.

The venture marks the first time that the full array of avant-garde and high-end European graphic novels have been available in the American marketplace. European stars of the Les Humanoïdes Associés library (such as Moebius, Bilal, Jodorowsky), and the big American stars of the Humanoids Publishing Catalog (Charest, Busiek, Cassaday) will now be published under the Humanoids brand name. The steady supply of graphic novels will support DC Comics' continued efforts to aggressively expand into trade bookstores, while building on its impressive presence in the comic book specialty market.

Pretty interesting, eh? It seems like the first titles are slated to start coming out in July. It also sounds sort of like they'll be released as Humanoids books with DC just doing marketing and distribution, but I guess we'll see how prominant the various logos are. It'll also be interesting to see if they decide to go with a digest format or regular larger format TPBs.

I can't help thinking that with the combination of Vertigo, Elfquest, and now Humanoids, (and I think it was DC looking to start releasing some real manga?), DC is making some real effort to diversify their lineup. Not just by their own content, but by distributing previously published works....

So, this morning Dirk mentioned that there was a subscription webcomic service called Wirepop that is mostly manga-influenced. I flipped through it quickly this morning and a couple of the stories seem interesting. Luckily the service currently provides quite a few free pages and even free chapters to look at.

I just had to mention one of these, though: Fantasy Realms. That link starts at the beginning and all 14 pages availible are currently free. I haven't even had a chance to read any of the dialogue and see if Clay Gardnery's story is any good, but the artwork is WOW! I mean, seriously, this is in an animated style and looks like the same calibur as a Dreamwave comic book. It is done by Niko Geyer and is really nice. He has some cool stuff in his personal gallery also, like this, this, this, this, and this.

I've read my share of online comics that have great stories and art that works just well enough to show what's going on, and that is fine, but it can also be nice to stumble on something really flashy...

Of course you're wondering what I'm talking about as NHS was one of the earliest examples of an American comic drawn in a manga style. This time I'm talking about format. Antarctic Press is the latest company to join the move toward cheap digest-sized GNs.

And check out that cover. Aparantly Marvel isn't the only one inspired by Tokyopop's cover design.

So, at $9.99 and 152 B&W pages, this falls right into the new standard that seems to have developed in bookstores. The Mars Import description even refers to it as "Pocket Manga".

I have to say this is really smart of Antarctic Press. The drawing on the cover is really nice and should fit in well with the other stuff that's out there. I'm guessing more manga fans will be willing to flip through this and Runaways than Spider-Man due to the cover styles.

So, I'm really happy to see more and more companies experimenting with this format. I've never actually read Ninja Highschool before, but this will certainly encourage me to take a look...

Shannon has an interesting entry wondering why people are always going after furries. I have to agree that I never really got this either. It isn't generally my thing, but with all the horrible stuff in the world, you could do a whole lot worse than some drawings or costumes of anthromorophic foxes.

Plus, Maus and Usagi Yojimbo have always been good, and now the French BD Blacksad looks amazing and has just started coming out in English. I mean how can you not love this cover?

Rich also points out this happening with the magazine "The Resident":

The editor of the magazine, it seems, attended a convention at the Expo Center at the Garden last year and saw artwork for an upcoming Paul Pope book ("100%"). Depicting what looked like a futuristic New York, he asked about reprinting the artwork on the cover of an upcoming Resident, with full acknowledgement, publicity and plugs for the comic and DC Comics.

One DC employee handed him details of who he'd need to contact. When he did make contact, however, no one returned his calls.

Stuff like this makes me mad because it just seems so unnecessary and unprofessional. I can't help thinking if it was Tokyopop or Viz involved, they would have sent out some sort of big press kit the next day...

In regards to the new Vivid comic line of pornography, Rich Johnston can't help be point this out:

Got to say, despite the criticism this kind of project often attracts, the women do look a lot more realistic than you'll find in many a comic book…

You know your industry has issues when porn stars look more realistic...

OK, the numbers for December are now up. Well, maybe "numbers" isn't the right word as this is the raw Diamond data instead of estimated actual numbers, but you know what I mean. ;)

I saw a bit of movement on the manga front, so I figured it might be worth looking at how things stand at the end of 2003:

First the publishers. Manga has been traditionally weak in the DM, but seems to be making inroads. Combined with the hits that Crossgen has taken lately, that makes even more room.

Tokyopop is at 5th place now, still half of Image's dollar share, but just above Dreamwave and a bit above Crossgen.

Viz comes in right after that at 8th place. This puts it above all the art publishers like Fantagraphics and Slave Labor.

Most interesting is ADV, which is barely out of the gate but already at 15th place, right above Archie. If they keep up the growth, it seems like they could rise up at least five places fairly easily..

Comicsone is near the bottom at 18th place.

Probably also good to point out that with the recent hits of Trigun and Hellsing for Dark Horse (in third place), they're probably getting a bit of a boost in sales from usual..

OK, so that is publishers, but what about graphic novels? Superheros and Conan take the top five spots with Hush Vol2 in the lead, but I see quite a lot of manga mixed into the rest. Out of the top 50, I count 16 manga titles (one of which is actually from HK).

Unfortunately, it also seems like most of the shoujo (girl's) manga has dropped off the list. I've seen stuff like Mars and Gravitation on there before, but Kodocha Vol10 seems to be the only thing left at the moment and that is at 43rd place. Inuyasha does appeal to both sexes, but still is technically shounen (boy's).

One interesting thing is Yu-Gi-Oh Vol3 is all the way up in 30th place. Hopefully this means more kids are visiting comic shops for their manga... I kind of like the manga myself, but I can't see most of the usual demographic touching it with a 10-foot pole. ;)

Trigun Vol1 seems to be hanging on pretty well at 46th place considering how many months it has been on the stands now.

Also, I just have to mention Hellboy, as Dark Horse manages to have three volumes simuntaneously on the top 50! No wonder they are third place above Image, with such strong titles lately.

As far as the monthlies go, is it me or is it odd to see 2 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, 3 issues of Uncanny X-Men, *4* issues of X-Treme X-Men (all in a row and 3 of which are $3.50), and 4 of Superman/Batman up on there? Out of the top 25, 10 seem to be X-Men related...

This article profiles ADV, which has mostly done anime but has branched out into manga lately (courtesy Dirk Deppy). There is some hard numbers in here which makes it a bit more informative than normal:

For 2003, A.D. Vision will show revenue of between $70 million and $150 million, says Kevin Corcoran, chief operating officer.

In addition to 187 employees in the United States, A.D. Vision provides a livelihood for 200 to 250 actresses, actors, directors and private contractors who work on the company's ongoing projects.

Besides the anime and NewType USA magazine (with a monthly circulation of 100,000) and now manga (with there reports lately of them having licensed 1,000 volumes), there's also the channel. Seems like most people with On Demand cable now have access to anime through them, and as for the 24-hour channel:

The company is in discussions with several cable companies to make a linear launch either in the first or second quarter of 2004 according to Corcoran.

"We're told it's just a matter of time," he says.

Not only that, but there's the live-aciton Neon Genesis Evangelion movie in the works with WETA.

I know I've mentioned some of this stuff before, but I just am really impressed with how much they've managed to grow in these last years. And while Tokyopop seems to be doing a lot of stuff to annoy fans as of late, ADV seems to be doing pretty well on that front overall...

They're also now in 15th place on the Diamond list of publishers for December, right above Archie, and under MVCreations. But more on Diamond figures in the next entry...

I stumbled on this today, probably the best article on "boys love" manga that I've seen. It is pretty long and lists a whole bunch of sources at the end, but also avoids going into too much over-analyzing of the subject. A good read even if you aren't really into that kind of thing (like moi).

Well, I have to say that I'm still enjoying Jump. This latest issue (Feb 2004) has a lot of the series in climactic areas, so I can't wait for the next issue... Anyway, I was thinking of the ads and how the various companies are linked together, so I thought it might be good to list what's in there for people that don't buy it.

In total, there were 13 and a half pages of ads. 12 of these were for stuff from other companies (often a combination), and 1 and a half were ads for the trade versions Jump stories. All ad pages were in color, BTW. There are also little blurbs running along the edges of many story pages encouraging people to get the trades. Here is how it all breaks down.

Inside front cover has Yu-Gi-oh Trading Card Game: Dark Crisis with logos for Upper Deck and Konami.

Next is Yu-Gi-Oh trading pins from Upper Deck.

Inuyasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale game. Logos for Bandai and Playstation, as well as mentioning in text that the anime runs on Cartoon Network.

Next was the contents page, and on the other side of that was a half-page of publishing information. On the other half was an ad for the rainbow foil cover versions of Yu-Gi-Oh and Naruto. This listed the Viz store website, as well as the logos for Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million.

Then Super Defender Gundam Trading Card Game. Logo for Bandai.

Two pages of Shaman King stuff (review of a game and a contest to name two characters in a game). Then an ad for new DVDs of YuYu Hakusho from Funimation (also quotes from AnimeNewsNetwork and AnimeonDVD praising the show).

Cut to the middle of Jump, where there is an ad for new Yu-Gi-Oh DVDs with logs from Funimation and 4Kids.

Next, a two-page ad for the 4th .Hack game: Quarantine. This one had logos for Bandai, Playstation, and an "As seen on Cartoon Network" logo.

Next was an ad for Jump Digests (Kenshin, Dragon Ball, and YuYu Hakusho). This mentions the jump website and Suncoast in some text, but also has a logo for the Comic Shop Locator Service! I thought that was pretty interesting to see. It isn't huge, but you can still make out the phone number fine.

Cut to the end of Jump, with an ad for forthcoming DVDs of Super Defender Gundam. This has logos for Bandai and Cartoon Network (and Toonami), and logos for Best Buy, amazon.com, Suncoast, and Target as places to buy it.

Next was two game reviews and then the Gundam: Encounters in Space video game. This had logos for Bandai and Playstation, as well as the "As seen on Cartoon Network" logo.

Next was the game Lupin The 3rd: Treasure of the Sorcerer King. This one is pretty interesting actually. The game itself has logos for Bandai and Playstation. But then in a circle, they mention the DVDs of the show, with logos for Pioneer and Cartoon Network (and Adult Swim).

Then there was a couple of pages on the forthcoming issue of Jump (along with the exact date it comes out) and on the inside back cover was the Dragon Ball GT Trading Card Game: Baby Saga. This has logos for Funimation and Score.

Also, the various game reviews and contests all seemed to be for Konami games. Who knows if there is some deal worked out in that respect.

So, all in all, it is interesting to see the variety of companies involved in the ads, how the various properties link up, and that these ads probably are quite effective considering the readership really is mostly of kids that'd actually buy this kind of stuff. They are also very un-annoying being pretty much entirely in three places in the anthology, never within the pages of an actual story. Even the Jump blurbs and images of Digests superimposed over some title pages seems lessened in this issue compared to previous ones.

Amusingly, aparantly this issue edits a picture of superdeformed DBZ characters giving Cell the finger. All their hands have been edited to just show fists. Considering the violence in many of the series (and I'm pretty sure there is light swearing at times), it seems a bit odd to edit out tiny middle fingers on a humorous picture (courtesy this thread).

Sean comments on Marvel Age and seems as impressed with it as I am, but as he points out, it all seems a bit late, and where are the rest of the people stepping up to do stuff like this?

He asks where Love & Rockets digests are or regular Vertigo titles or Sandman itself? To add to that, I have to say I think A Distant Soil would do really well, along with stuff like Finder.

Then again, we have Oni Press stuff out there. We have Vogelein, Rumble Girls, Death: At Death's Door, and Elfquest. Elfquest was definitely one of those titles I used to think "that should be a digest" and now it is. If this stuff currently out proves to be popular along with the Marvel Age stuff, then hopefully we'll see more done in this area. As always, there are no garuntees (Crossgen's digests didn't seem to hit it off as much as they could have), so we'll just have to see how it pans out. I'm generally optimistic at this point, though...

Hmm.. this sounds interesting. While Chobits' robots versus humanity angle seems fairly superficial so far, Doll sounds a bit more like a serious take on the subject:

These haunting tales of human-like androids, called Dolls, range from romantic to tragic, from comic to ironic, and everything in between. In these stories, dolls have an uncanny way of working themselves into the lives of their masters: A woman develops an unusual closeness to doll that will affect her human family from beyond the grave...A man wants to make his doll into the perfect human lover, but discovers that humans are not perfect...A father buys his son a doll to help him get over the death of his mother. Doll provides a firsthand glimpse into the psychology of the human-doll relationship and examines the question of what it means to be truly human.

Of course there is no telling how good it actually is just from a little description like that, but it does sound promising to me. Sometimes I really like these kinds of stories where mostly unrelated daily-life scenes are taken out of a fictional world, if it is done well anyway. Seems like the first volume is out in July, so still a ways to wait...

John Jakala has a good entry up on the Power Company, which was used as an example on Byrne's board of a monthly that was killed by people waiting for the trade.

I think John has a really good response to this, citing not only that there were a lot of issues involved with this particular title (erratic beginning, price rise, a revamp, etc.), but that for a lot of people that got on the bandwagon late, they had trouble finding the title at all:

I decided to try out the book's new direction. I liked it enough to seek out the back issues I'd missed. I think I had to go to five or six shops before I'd found the six issues I was missing. Other posters complained about similar experiences in their areas, so many hoped a trade could fill that gap.

I think a lot of people forget that just because people say they want a trade or are waiting on it, doesn't mean they would have bought the monthlies in the past either. I'd argue there has always been a number of people who haven't wanted to go through the trouble of tracking down backissues of lesser-known series. And with so many shops having closed in recent years, a lot of people only have one or two shops a realistic distance away, and they may be of varying quality.

I'd also argue that there are new or returning readers (like myself) that just don't want to deal with the weekly grind and wouldn't have gotten back into comics at all without the TPBs...

In the comments section, Brian Grindrod also points out that his friend has a comic shop, and now TPBs & HDCs generate about 45% of the revenue of the store. I've seen quite a rise at local shops here as well, and one newer shop which has always had most of the store taken up by trades. When you stop and think about it, for the floor space of one long-box, you can have a tall bookcase with 5 shelves of trades, all easily accessable for browsing by customers. The fact that each one collects a lot of story also makes it less likely someone will be able to read the whole story just by standing around for five minutes, making for a less police-state atmosphere. I think at this point a lot of shops are starting to move away from longboxes and becoming more like specialized bookstores with a newstand component...

I do sympathise that creators feel like publishers won't take trades into account enough and their series will get canceled before they even get collected. I fear the only answer may be for the publishers to estimate future demand, something that may take them a while to get a feel for.

I'd also hate for any kind of monthly serialization to disappear. I'm really really hoping that somehow more cheap anthologies in the shadow of Shonen Jump can take off. They don't have the best history in the US and even other manga anthologies haven't done as well, but if someone can pull it off, it'd be a big step forward I think.. The format really just opens it up to newstand and bookstore distribution in a way that the smaller monthlies have trouble with...

Anyway, I just think there's only so much you can blame on the trades. For all that they might cannibalize some sales, they also create sales for people that wouldn't have bought the monthlies for a variety of reasons. Also while especially mid-list superhero stories may suffer, they seem to be giving a bit more of a level playing field to other kinds of stories and smaller publishers without the overhead of Marvel/DC.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out. I think 2004 is going to be a really interesting year as far the industry itself goes...

I posted a little while back about Steven Grant's column on manga. FigNewton posted about it here, which started off an interesting discussion on the American industry and other stuff.

Let us commence the quoting!

Frankly, I don't understand why the American comics producers are acting like jealous older sisters instead of welcoming the manga and then piggy-backing in the doors that it opens that comics could never get opened themselves.

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The stories and plot devices in many American comics are cliched and overused. (Of couse I'm speaking of the so-called big hitters, Superman, Batman, X-men and so on.) A story that never ends leaves little room for fresh ideas. You can only kill a character so many times before bringing him or her back. The same enemy can only try to conquer and enslave earth so many times before readers stop caring.

With manga, not only is there a much wider variety of reading, but the story can and will end. Plot devices are no longer a forgotten art. Building up to a climax in a story occurs. The components of a good story are in place and leave manga with the potential to capture a reader.

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I await the day that the american comic book industry grows a clue. You would think that with the widespreed and massive success of manga in Japan they would just happen to pick up on a couple of the core ideas and apply them to the US market.. But nope. The clue branch has yet to manifest on the tree.

Ever wondered why manga REALLY sells well?
Price.

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The disheartening thing about the whole "fad" argument is it's even being presented by smaller publishers that don't have 60 years worth of a character being published and focus on small releases that do indeed have planned stories with beginning, middle, and end - publishers who don't do superheroes. There really is a diverse domestic comics industry outside of Marvel and DC that's never been able to breach the mainstream awareness that publish excellent comics.

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But as the article you linked points out, Tokyopop (and Viz and the other manga companies) are actually doing a very good job of creating fans--which are the people who will keep buying when the collector's bubble (though there is no collector's bubble to burst for manga) bursts and the 'cool' factor wears off. In particular with the variety of titles they offer, American manga companies are following the Japanese model in creating a generational linkage. That is, there are titles I buy just for myself. And there are also titles I buy to share with my daughters and other titles I buy just for them. That means that it is at least possible that those daughters will grow up, graduating to their own older titles and at the same time sharing downwards to their own next generation in turn. That's how it works in Japan and how genre fiction has worked in the US. American comics has not--because 'mainstream' comics so clearly target a single demographic and once someone passes out of it, they are not passing it on to the group coming up into it. And I'd argue non-mainstream comics have largely done the same thing even if the demographic is somewhat different from that of mainstream comics, its still aimed a single demographic and doesn't allow transition in of the next generation.

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I feel that manga's appeal to female readers is the driving force behind the popularity of manga. I've been reading and collecting comics for almost 20 years. I remember going to comic conventions and being about the only female there. This has changed drastically. My nieces wouldn't be caught dead reading X-Men or Batman, but they race to the bookstore every week to see if there's a new Peachgirl or Naruto on the shelves.

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Just as a side note, I think that the fact that manga has a definite end has equal importance in another way: it has a definite beginning. The longest running comics can't possibly fit all their backstory in while still telling a satisfactory story, so new readers have no incentive to pick up a new title when they're going to be completly confused by what's going on. With manga, you have a definitive starting point.

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[In response to the last quote] This quote I think is extremely true. Not to mention that there are at least two-five titles on the market at the same time, all with different story threads, all using the same characters. With manga, there is one linear story that is published in one publication from the beginning of its run to the end. It's not as confusing.

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What I found most interesting is his claim that all the "good" manga has already been licensed, and soon only "bad" titles are going to be licensed. While I do think we're going to be getting more bad with the good, there are thousands of titles out there that I imagine manga companies haven't even considered, and there has to be more than a few "good" ones in there that won't be brought over here for years, if ever.

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I'd simply like to add that not only is there a "beginning" that usually gets resolved to some "ending"--there is more consistency in that the creator/author/artist is usually the same individual throughout the manga. In many (most?) mainstream American comics, writers and artists tend to be with a single title for a short amount of time. And with these changes, often the quality and consistency of the title suffers.

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It's a good thing I can think of a couple examples that are not in that trap at least. Oni Press, for instance, which has resized many of its titles in the smaller format. I've seen their Courtney Crumrin advertised right next to manga in Waldenbooks, in fact. And Dark Horse is chock-full of creator owned titles in those veins which they can piggy-back onto their manga, right into bookstores. The other side of the coin, though, is even if those domestic non-superhero publishers take advantage, will enough of today's manga fans care about them?
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I'm wary when manga, like anime before it, is championed for reasons like style and content at the expense of the credibility of non-manga (especially domestic) material. And I don't think it's inappropriate to acknowledge that some people buying manga right now are doing so because it's different and new and foreign, (like so many other cultural/media importations over the years, fads or otherwise,) not necessarily because of its content. Manga to me has no greater variety or quality of content than some American stuff I've been reading for years. But it's marketed so much better, and that's great. So it's not that manga is the fad, it's that some of its demographic and credibility may be. Which makes sense; while many new readers who enjoined out of the reasons above will stay, enough may not that will create a plateau of sorts in the industry, especially if it gets too crowded with publishers trying to make a quick buck and flooding the market with "bad manga". It's booming that fast right now. But I don't see it crashing; fortunately manga shares some of its fanbase with another booming cultural fanbase, long suited to sustaining a similar market, and one that is always generating younger fans: anime.

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I read that line and broke out laughing just thinking of the stuff I have on my hard drive that isn't licensed yet, and yet must be "bad" since all the good titles have been swept up and are being published now. :D The rest of his article is really well written though, and makes a lot of good points.

Personally I used to collect X-Men, but after it merged out to about 10 series/mini-series, as a younger child I could no longer afford it, and began to lose interest in the titles I could afford. There's only so many times you can mutate/kill off the characters you love to read about before you throw the book on the ground and curse the writers for what they've done in the name of innovation and fresh ideas. The changing of some really good artists irked the hell out of me too... :(

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This is the reason I haven't got into US comics. I'd love to read X-Men and Spider-Man - I'm really curious to know more about the basis for the movies. But the only way I can get up to speed is to acquire and read hundreds of comics that have never been reprinted in graphic novel format. Sure, the best/most important parts are available as graphic novels, but there are dozens of them, and it's not clear what the best order to read them in is, if indeed it's possible to figure one out.

I'm not interested in just picking up a series from wherever it is at the moment. If I can't read the whole thing, or at least get a relatively good idea of the whole thing based on reading a lot of it, I'm just not interested. New fans just aren't in a position to become knowledgeable fans, which is very frustrating.

The only US comic I've read is Daredevil, because Daredevil's history is manageable, and there are lots of graphic novels. I'm gradually working my way through said graphic novels.

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In looking at manga vs. American comics, I think a big difference would be the variance in style and the audience it's intended for. Very few of the super hero comics appealed to girls. But now, more than half of the available manga titles there are, are shoujo. I know many people, who probably never looked at a comic book before in their life, are now reading Peach Girl or Mars, exclaiming how good it is. Is it marketed much better? Maybe. Now stores seems to have big signs and special designated sections full of manga. I never noticed that before with Marvel or DC comics. Most of the time, you had to go and search specifically for a comic book store to find the titles you wanted. Now, manga is available in the biggest, well-known bookstores and online stores around.

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While I can't say that the plot of Peach Girl will change my life, it was nice to be able to identify with some of the characters. Can I identify with Superman? I think I can feel empathy for him occasionally, but not really.....especially since he never gets older, never seems to learn from his past mistakes, and can't seem to stop from hurting the women he dates. The mainstay of the American comics market is the superhero titles. There are lots of indy titles too but enough of these are such crap or so not my cup of tea (are there any female comic artists that WEREN'T abused as children?) that it's hard to dive into that bucket very often. And let's face it, American comics are largely aimed at men so it would have to be a great story to even lug me in there in the first place. I can even get over shonen panty shots more easily than some of the stupidity I've seen in, say, Gen X :P. But that's just me ;). I like a good story, I like great art, and I want characters that I can relate to and don't start to feel contempt for after 20 issues. To me, this is more of why manga sells. Manga sell WELL because of the price ;)

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I think cheaper gets people to buy manga at all.

I mean $15 for a shitty thin book with like 100 pages is just insane (even if they are in colour), and that's what some US comic collections were (are?) like...

Same applies for the manga. I mean you don't need to be a rocket scientist to look at an ordinary paperback that costs $7 and has 400 pages, then you look at an old manga book which is $15 and has 200. It's just stupid. Now that manga costs $10, oh look, somehow it's not quite so insane any more.

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Marvel's Essential volumes are a good idea executed poorly. First of all, releasing a comic designed to be read in colour in black and white makes it kind of difficult to read. I know the size/price would have to be quite different for them to be released in colour, but I'd much rather buy them in colour.

More importantly, there just aren't enough of them for them to be worthwhile. They should plan to release all of a series (up to the point that they started collecting every issue into TPBs), and they should sort out a regular and reasonable release schedule to do it in.

Case in point: There is one Daredevil: Essentials book. ONE. It was released several years ago, and ends at issue 25, leaving all sorts of threads hanging. It's useful as a way to see what the comic was like when it first started, but as a way of getting up to speed on the story, it's bordering on useless.

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Personally I'd just like to tell all those people of the "I only read manga cause comics are superhero-crap"-faction to just have a look at the other parts of the U.S. market to at least have something to build an opinion on instead of just keeping a preconception (a hint: not even all superhero-type comics are really evil, even if I don't like them myself). And I'd like to tell all those people of the "I only read U.S. comics because mangas are just kiddy stuff or porn"-faction to just get a couple of the good story-driven mangas to at least have something to build an opinion on instead of just keeping a preconception.

Oh, and then I'd like to tell both factions (and all of the rest as well) that they should maybe take a look at the french market. NBM is putting out translations of some interesting bandes dessinees, and that's just the tip of the iceberg... =P

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It's not so much that superheroes are stupid, it's just that (at least in public perception, which is what's important here, we're not talking about people who read comics we're talking about people who DON'T) they take over the entire world of US comics. I mean there are plenty of manga series about magical girls, say, or about martial arts; but whatever category you pick, there are hugely more series that *aren't* in that category.

As for the franchises - yeah sure there are stories with endings within those, but it's still the same old same old franchise. If these artists and writers are talented then why can't they be allowed to start new series? Cyber said she was tired of Fushigi Yuugi - that's fine because, you know, it's *over*, and if you happened to like it then hey, the same author has written a number of different series after that. I think relying on a tired old brand name with 'Man' at the end is a shitty way to work - like I said, better to emphasise the *writers* and artists, not one story. (And better to give them a proper deal, too, so they own their work - is it still that work-for-hire shit?)

Errr.. I was only going to quote a couple of people, but it turns out there was a lot that was quotable in that thread. ;) Hopefully I didn't misrepresent anyone in the way that they are quoted. You're probably better off just reading the whole thread, but I know a lot of people go in for the cliff notes version (I am guilty of that in many cases..heh). Most of the stuff I didn't quote was discussions on whether price or content is the most important factor of popularity, some discussion on particular series, some arguing on how much thought most manga creators put into when the series is going to end, and thoughts on why people might watch a cartoon and not the comic.

A pretty civil and insightful thread I have to say. There has been some other threads lately in various anime/manga communities, but most of them have either had too much US bashing or are just the same old stuff, IMO. The fact that AoD has a lot of older and female posters probably helps a bit... ;)

Courtesy of isaacada1, SakuraCon has a good list of links. It covers not just manga but anime, comics, 3d, models, Go, etc. Pretty much most of my hobbies are covered in the list. ;)

Also, he pointed out Manga Bonbons, which is mostly devoted to shonen ai / yaoi (male/male love for ladies) manga, but also a yuri section (female/female love...). The nice thing is that most of the stuff is listed by creator, and they generally list all the works of that creator even if it isn't yaoi/yuri. With a lot of paragraph blurbs and cover images, there's quite a lot of stuff in there.

While rummaging around, I came to the page for Yuuho Ashibe, which shows a series called Crystal Dragon. It looks like a fantasy series that ran from 1982 to at least 2002, and looks really interesting. Information online seems sparse, but it seems to start with a lot of Celtic legends and then has various Greek and other influences in it, and gets to be quite complicated as time goes on. We need more fantasy manga to be licensed!

Just a quick note that one of the newer manga companies around has a blog. Most of their titles don't interest me, but it is still nice that they have a blog. Also, the latest thing coming out (Juvenile Orion) is based on a card game (Aquarian Age) that sounds like it has an interesting concept. Courtesy Gersen:

To make it short, Aquarian Age is a popular japanese card game (think Magic the Gathering) with the cards, mostly reprensenting cute girls, drawned by various well know Artist (CLAMP, Keiji Goto ,etc...)

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The basic story (short version)is :

Three groups of girls have fought each other for thousands of years, Arayashiki (Preistress), WIZ-DOM (Wizard and Sorceress) and Darklore (Semi-human beast, Vampire, etc...) on present day begin a new age, the Aquarian Age, where two new female group appear : E.G.O. (Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, etc...) and Eraser (Hostiles Aliens) but also apear a male group : Mind Breakers having ability to control and use the powers of the members of the other groups. (In the game the two player are mind breakers)

Like I said in JO it's the opposite the groups are male and the mind breakers are female. JO was made for female fans of the game.

So, I dunno about the manga, but the game itself sounds kind of interesting to me. Maybe they'll bring it over one of these days...

You know, I still haven't picked any anime soundtracks up, or any of the Japanese artist releases for that matter (like Fiction). But now that the CD for the Utena Movie is coming out, I think I'll have to break down and get it. I seriously love the music from Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the movie is no exception. Very cool stuff. Actually, the Arjuna soundtrack would likely be a good buy also. A lot of people dislike Arjuna for being a bit heavyhanded at times in its ecological theme, but just about everyone loves the soundtrack. Lots of good stuff coming out lately....

A really cool thing happened the other day. The trunk on the car froze up, so Mom took it in to the shop where we bought it from (mainly a repair place, but the owner also revamps cars and re-sells them). They opened the trunk, but at the same time, the owner remembered something he had totally forgotten about. It turns out that he had installed a remote control for the previous owner but had misplaced the remote after getting the car back to resell, and then totally forgot about it.

So now, out of the blue, we have the ability to remotely start up the car and lock/unlock the doors! With it being so cold out lately, it has been amazingly helpful to be able to warm up the car without actually going outside. Talk about a cool holiday gift. :)

Well, went up to the yo-yo club today and had a really cool experience. As soon as I walked in the door, a kid I had never seen before in my life said "Hey, I saw you on the internet!" He'd been to my site and watched my videos, enough that he recognized me on sight. Can't ask for much more than that.. :)

Turns out he was also a very good yo-yoer (especially since he's been at it seriously for only two months) and we got to teach each other some tricks. And as always Brett and Nick were cool and Andre was way busy. I missed out on Dog Bite yesterday (that bout with the flu messed up our sense of timing), but I'd say today made up for it. I mean there was even a one-sided kung fu battle.. ;)

Ok ok, so bazillions of year in review things have been posted lately, but I just have to link to the iComics one. With 191 reviews in 2003, Greg has covered a huge amount of ground, and the fact that he covers comics from any country or subject matter helps even more. I haven't read too too many of his picks, but have heard good things about all of them, and he conveniently links to his reviews of all his picks, giving you a good resource to get more information on the titles.

But for what I have read, I do recomment Planetes and One Piece, and I also highly recommend his runner-up of Kindaichi Case Files: The Opera House Murders (of which I'll post a review pretty soon). Naruto is pretty fun as well, even though it doesn't hit me quite as well as the other three.

As far as the rest goes, I really have to get cracking as I really want to read most of this stuff, like Giant THB, Lost at Sea, Same Differences and Other Stories, Persepolis, and Iron Wok Jan...

So, nice list Greg and thanks for all the reviews you've done. It has to take a lot of work and discipline to keep cranking out the reviews almost every weekday...

While doing a search for something, I cam across the official site for Young Jump in English. It turns out this is an anthology for young men, and it is interesting in that they list all the series currently running, along with information on the authors and small galleries.

It is pretty interesting to see the variety of titles. Everything from Real (involving wheelchair basketball, by the same author as Vagabond and Slam Dunk), to a mystery, to a story involving curry (along with recipes!), to gag strips, to comedy, to motorbikes, to boxing, to romance, mixed with news and photo spreads of girls in swimsuits. Also aparantly codes to download ringtones..

Pretty interesting stuff. A couple of links on the series page go to the wrong page, so you'll have to type the name into the url or go by the author page instead for those cases. But it is pretty cool that the official site is also in english, even if some of the wording is pretty rough.. ;)

You know, I have this strange bad urge to see the movie Torque. All I've seen is some trailers and it looks like it'll be a horrible movie. Yet at the same time, it seems like it is soooo over the top it could be "so bad it's good". Not that I'll actually act on this impulse and pay for a movie ticket, but maybe I'll try renting it at some point just for kicks.. ;)

Aparantly I'm not the only one who has been watching this movie lately! Very cool stuff...

So, according to this page, Viz has four new series that are officially licensed. Two interesting things are that the RahXephone manga will be exclusive to Barnes & Noble for 6 months, from April until September. I'm lucky enough to have several B&N around, but this increase in exclusives lately is kind of a worrying trend....

Also, it is mentioned that Trina Robbins is doing the adaptation of B.B. Explosion, along with a one-page commentary. I have to say that I get kind of nervous whenever companies make a big deal of someone doing an "adaptation". Especially with Giffen changing plot points and some dialog in Battle Royale, it is kind of worrying when someone other than the original manga creator is hyped up. No disrespect to Trina, but does she have real experience working with translations? Why was she picked instead of one of the regular professional translators? Was it just because she is known for doing American comics for girls? Hopefully it is just a case of her being best for the job and Viz taking advantage of her name, and not some sort of publicity stunt as the Giffen thing seemed to be...

In yet another example of older titles getting reduced prices, Bandai is slashing the MSRP on a bunch of titles while switching to self-distribution. While a pain for anyone dealing with UPC codes (as these will have new codes), it is great for fans. Escaflowne discs are now $15 each?! Fancy Lala only $10?? Considering that online stores tend to discount on top of MSRP, there are some amazing deals happening lately. I got the chance to watch all of Escaflowne thanks to Paul, but I really do want to buy the rest of the DVDs, and Fancy Lala seems like a fun series to at least grab a volume or two.

Escaflowne is a really interesting fantasy series involving a high-school girl who gets transported into another world. Lots of interesting characters and twists and turns, as well as one of the more interesting villains around in the form of Dilandu. It is also a series that can appeal to both genders...

Also, I already own all four DVDs, but Crest of the Stars now will have an MSRP of $20 each. This is a really good sci-fi series based on novels. It is also running on TechTV, but unfortunately the dub isn't very good. A series that works better subbed for sure. After the Earth is put under the jurisdiction of an alien race (the Abh), the president surrenders without a fight in exchange for becoming royalty. His son is sent to space for training and ends up with an Abh princess about his own age. Adventure ensues, while having some quiet moments and realistic conversations. There is also a couple of series after this one that I haven't gotten a chance to watch yet which continue the story. Very good stuff...

Fancy Lala looks to be a fun series aimed at little girls involving a girl who ends up getting a magic pen which allows her to draw clothes that become real, as well as changing her from 9 to 15 years old. At which point she ends up getting seen by people and becoming a model. Of course trying to juggle duel lives is not easy, and from what I've read it doesn't take the easy way out on that. Anyway, mostly just fun fluff to be antidote against the stresses of the world.. ;)

This article on ICv2 is pretty interesting. Aparantly ADV has licensed more than 1000 volumes of manga and manhwa in total. Considering they don't have all THAT much out yet, there must be quite a bit waiting in the wings. Of course a couple of long series could eat up a bit of that total, but still... It just shows that ADV has some pretty deep pockets these days. Tokyopop and Viz may have a big head start, but it seems like ADV has the potential to move to third place really quickly if they decide to push things. Their current releases have also been interesting in that they tend to release the manga in the same size as the original Japanese release, which is why something like Azumanga Daioh is slightly bigger than other releases.

So, it'll be pretty interesting to see what they come up with in 2004...

So, I came across this thread today, which asks if you've ever met someone in person that you first talked to online. It turns out I have extensive experience in this area. Here's what I had to say on the subject (in case the thread dies out some day):

You know, the more I thought about this, the more I realized I've met A LOT of people offline that I first talked to online. Probably 40 people or more from a variety of different circumstances and hobbies.

First was the BBS days back when I was 16 or so. Went to a couple of parties, had some parties at our house, talked to some people on the phone (including someone from Texas that was on a sister board that came in through telnet), and met some people individually. Both chat and game people (one of the gamers ended up being a comic artist who's done stuff for TMNT in the past). Got into a couple of relationships that ended up not working out. However, I know of at least two sets of people from back then that got married one of which first met at a party at my house.

Then there's the fact that I've been big into yo-yos. First I met someone locally and we became friends. Eventually I met more people as I went to some semi-local contests. Also ended up doing some work for an Australian company at one point so met the guy from there. Also, at one point a bunch of people online pooled money together to buy me a ticket to California (I live in Mass!) to go to the Nationals, and I met a lot of people there. There was also someone who stopped at my house while in the area and people who've come to local club meetings that I first talked to online.

For poi, after talking to people on a board for a while, there was a getogether at someone's house in Vermont, with someone coming from locally. I hitched a ride from her (someone from Austrailia that was in the area came with us also) and I spent the weekend up there, and it was wonderful.

For anime, I met Paul Vasquez (who is a priest and hasn't been posting so much lately unfortunately) while he was in the area. Was great fun exchanging DVDs and watching stuff together. Eventually I plan on going to a convention or AoDVD party and will meet more people.

For a local juggling club, first I e-mailed someone there before actually going to the meeting. Dunno if that counts..

For Esperanto, a lady stayed at my house for a couple of days while in the middle of a speaking tour, which was really cool. There's also local people which I want to meet up with eventually...

The latest thing is a comic blogger who I e-mailed (after he mentioned a local comic shop) and it ends up he lives down the street from me! Due to holidays and sickness we haven't met up yet, but it'll likely happen very soon now.

So, I guess when you get right down to it, I've met a ton of people over the last 10 years or so. I haven't been quite so directly involved with people online for a while now, but I'm still making new aquaintences all the time. Overall I've met a lot of great people... I guess I'd be more cautious if I was female, but generally you can get at least some idea of how people are if you talk to them enough, take things slow, and use some common sense. And when you start to get into mini-communities like AoDVD, you can probably talk to other people if you want some more information on someone before meeting them in person yourself.

An interesting topic...
Shawn

For someone as shy and socially akward as myself, it is funny just how many people I've actually met offline. What have been the experiences of any of you that are reading my blog? Hopefully I'll meet some of you some day, too.. :)

Check out this thread, which shows the covers of the new Marvel Age digests (courtesy Fanboy Rampage). This includes Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, Sentinel, and Runaways. They are all coming in March and will be $8 each.

I have to say that this is looking really good. As someone in the thread points out, they probably should have just re-packaged Ultimate Spider-Man in a smaller size, but oh well. Runaways and Sentinal I think have a chance of doing well and I guess Spider-Girl has a good reputation. As far as the covers go, some people mention the similarity to Tokyopop, with the veritcal bar on the side. While I'm sure that is on purpose, it doesn't really bother me all that much. It isn't like Tokyopop has a lock on that style of cover, and I don't think there'll be any confusion, though it'll probably make the Marvel stuff a bit more attractive to the manga fans out there. I generally like all the covers (though Spider-Man is too busy), but I think that Runaways one will work out really well. It really looks like just another manga volume...

Forget about the monthlies for the newstand, this is where the action is. While there are no garuntees, I really am pretty hopeful about some of these, and I'll probably end up buying Runaways at least. There is also a mention that Sentinel could come out direct to GN if it proves popular! That'd be quite an interesting development if it works out...

Lastly, this page is linked to, which shows that DC has digests coming out for Justice League Adventures, for only $7 each! With the show running on Cartoon Network, this seems really smart. Even the cover is in the same art style as the cartoon is...

Both of these seem like really good developments. Let's hope it actually works out for once and doesn't prove to be a failure. Marvel and DC actually seem to have the right idea for once...

Second is the article Tweenage Kicks written by Alex Dueben. I think this is a really good article, which points out some of the real missed opportunities going on.

The main gist is that tweens are a big demographic which it seems like everyone is trying to market to. Also that Harry Potter is not the only reading material out for this group, with quite a lot of young adult novels currently being released to the market. He also points out that manga does seem to be succeeding at attracting them, but that focusing on artwork misses the point:

And the phenomenon isn't restricted to book publishers. In comics it presents itself in the form of "manga-like" artwork. (Or is "manga-inspired" the right phrase? They're both meaningless, but the phrase should at least sound good.) It presents itself in the form of more collections and an emphasis on bookstore distribution. The idea that this is the key to the success of real manga is absurd, of course, as it ignores the most blatantly obvious difference between manga and American comics; Manga is not about superhero stories.

Right now there are millions of kids who are obsessed with Harry Potter and books of its kind. They're not going to be satisfied by bodybuilders in spandex beating each other up. They're a tough audience, but the truth is that if the comics industry really took a step back from the tunnel vision that dominates the business, and took a good, hard look at what kids are really interested in, then they might be able to produce something that'll fit better with what this audience is after. And I'm not talking here about just one book every few months, but a true, concerted effort to produce comics aimed at that audience.

He then points out that while there are some comics in the US industry currently that can fit the bill (cartoon adaptations, Measles, Jingle Belle, Meridian, Scion, Leave it to Chance, and various creators like Jill Thompson and Jeff Smith), but that there just isn't enough of it.

I have to agree with this article in the most part. For all that superheros can appeal to kids and have done well as movies, it all really seems a bit out of touch with the kinds of stuff they are actually reading. And when you consider that kids who read comics are a lot more likely to stick with it, I can't help thinking it is a big deal. When I think about myself as a kid, while I did enjoy reading comics, my main reading material was really fantasy novels and YA stuff in general. Things like The Dark Is Rising, Pern, Lioness Quartet, Pitdragon Trilogy, Wanderings of Wuntavor, Spellsinger, Support Your Local Wizard, Last Herald-Mage, etc. I think we could really use more comics that appeal to that same sort of sensibility out there...

For me as a kid, the comics were much more of a Pokemon "gotta catch em all" thing of looking at the various kinds of costumes and powers in a sort of collecting mentality. Perhaps part of that is due to my early reading being more of fractured runs, but still... Most of the material where I finally felt like there was a creator vision and continuing novelistic story was some of the Image stuff like Spawn and Maxx. But of course with that came also the big emphasis on cool artwork and perhaps studying panel layouts more than the story, and a lot of those also branched out into big worlds with crossovers and multiple creaive teams. I think at some point I just realized how superficial everything was compared to the books I was reading and it was part of why I dropped out of things. I can't help thinking that things would have turned out differently if I had had more variety and more stuff which was plot/character driven fantasy in unique worlds like the various novels I was into. or even some of the cartoons of the time like Robotech.

So.. I don't know. There is certainly more stuff out there than there used to be, but I know that it was easy for me to get caught up in the wrong things as a kid to lead straight into burnout. If I was that age today, I can't help thinking I'd get more out of reading Shonen Jump and visiting the bookstores than keeping up with Wizard and the stuff it promotes...

Two stories courtesy of Dirk:

First up is this article on the sweepstakes marketing initiative that DC, KidsWB, Cartoon Network, and Hostess are combining to do. It seems like a combination of TV spots, a website, and some print ads. It involves competing to create a superhero and have it appear in a comic book. It might just be another way to get a free idea for a new character, but at least they are making an effort at a combined marketing push that involves both cartoons and comics...

Well, I saw today on Pulse that Devil's Due is making a Voltron comic. I have to admit to being a somewhat nostalgic person, so sometimes I fall for stuff like this. I have to say that the artwork looks nice and the plot elements that Dan Jolley mention sound good. Pretty much it sounds like they are going to run with the world aspects of the series and explore things in more depth. It seems like some personalities will be changed and some aspects jettisened (sounds like the space mice are going), but not a wholesale change of tone or anything...

From what I know, Voltron was actually changed around quite a bit from the original anime, as well as combining two totally unrelated series together (GoLion and Dairugger IV as the lion and vehicle forces, even though a movie was animated just for US audiences to show the two Voltrons fighting together), so it isn't like this is the first time things have been changed.

This may actually interest me more than some of the Transformers stuff, which I've also heard is good but never got around to actually reading. Next time I'm at a comic shop I'll have to check some of this stuff out...

You know, something I've been doing lately has been to make a list of movies that I've watched. I've been doing it for a while now, ever since we got digital cable. I've also been trying to do the same thing with graphic novels from the library. I'll have to type up the lists at some point.. for now, how about the last two movies I watched?

Last night I caught Monsters Inc... I'd seen this one at the theaters a while back and hadn't seen it since. I forgot just how nice of a movie it is. Everything from the imaginative monsters to the main characters to the nice plot to the bloopers at the end. I think this is a real example of a family film. Something that youngsters and older folks can both enjoy, with the movie talking down to neither. I'll have to grab it on DVD one of these days... I also need to see Finding Nemo one of these days.

As for tonight? Tonight I watched one of the Three Colors trilogy from Krzysztof Kieslowski, this one: Blue. This is the "freedom" movie, and involves a woman who loses her husband and daughter in a car crash and has trouble dealing with the situation. She is played by Juliette Binoche, who IMO does a really good job of portraying quiet grief. For anyone who has dealt with grief and self-destructive feelings, there is a lot of little things in the movie that ring true.

So, a pretty interesting movie that also has a focus on music and of course the color blue. They played the other two movies (white and red) right after, but I was feeling kind of tired and the synopses of the others didn't sound as immediately interesting to me. But it is nice to have this stuff playing on TV (IFC), and I'll probably catch the others at some point...

I really like this entry from Colleen Coover (courtesy Dirk). A big thing she points out (which I haven't heard anyone else bring up) is a practical reason why guys shouldn't be so quick to dismiss or get mad at the popularity of manga. If ladies are a big portion of the people reading the stuff, then this means they are going to be into comics instead of thinking comics are stupid. For all the guys that are in a relationship where their SO is down on comics or want to find a lady with the same interest, this is a pretty big deal.

Instead of thinking of it as an intrusion into the boys' club, think of the positive that gals are getting into your favorite hobby in record numbers... :)

Update: Another interesting thing is that the entry already has 15 responses, more than some recent posts about gay marriage. Can anyone say nerve hit?

In the latest issue of the Beat is the following quote:

PERSON OF THE YEAR: THE GIRL She was stuffing HELLSING into her book bag, and buying the latest PEACH GIRL down at Borders…she was reading comics, buying comics, talking about comics with her friends, watching Cartoon Network, and renting DVDs. American manga publishers discovered the little known secret that has fueled every retail boom in history: girls like to shop, and if they spend money, you will make money. An armored division of teenaged girls moved into the once sacrosanct world of comics, and their invasion was not always understood. "A fad" many said…maybe, but this fad has lasted a long time in Europe, where it's seriously crimped sales of traditional European comics. The Girl is here to stay, although due to her native habitat being a different time zone from Homo comicus actual sightings will remain uncommon.

This interview with the Pinis has most of the regular things in it. Mentions of how happy they are to be at DC, about the various upcoming books, about re-coloring old volumes, and even about the manga influence. I found this quote expecially interesting, though:

At the San Diego Comic Con 2002, where we coincidentally had our first meeting with DC's higher-ups, Warp Graphics' Waldenbooks sales rep informed us that they could no longer sell our black and white ElfQuest Readers' Collection volumes at their current size. Richard and I were strongly urged to hop on the manga bandwagon and repackage our books in that smaller format. Because we were nowhere near closing a deal with DC, Warp was already planning, if it became necessary, to take advantage of the manga craze sweeping the nation, filling shelf after shelf in the big chain book stores. We think it's a brilliant move, on DC's part, to incorporate this commercial awareness into their publishing plan and to launch it with ElfQuest, which is and always was manga influenced.

It isn't just a matter of the Pinis or DC deciding to go with this format. The rep for Waldenbooks point blank told them the stuff wasn't selling in the big size and they should really go with the digest format. While I'm happy DC decided to stick with the decision, it is also kind of disappointing that DC didn't come up with this on their own, though not all that surprising. Still, if this is successful, that combined with the already good numbers of Dead: At Death's Door will hopefully encourage them to do more stuff in this vein. I think it's also a good example of the places like bookstores already knowning what is working and what they want. IMO, they shouldn't even be having to bring this stuff up themselves...

I forgot to do it for the last issue, but here's what's going on in the latest NewType USA magazine that might be of interest.

The DVD has an episode of Happy Lesson, which doesn't sound so appealing to me, but I guess I'll give it a shot. The last one had Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, which I really enjoyed. It is a Gainax show and so has a lot of interesting stuff going on, but is a bit less crazy than FLCL. I really like the two main characters and how they interact. Was only one episode, but seemed to have a lot of promise. I'll have to get the first DVD at least at some point. Errr.. but that was last issue.. on to this one!

Lots of stuff regarding the new Eva game which I'll have to read through. If nothing else, interesting to see the various new Eva artwork.

A big thing on the Tokyo International Film festival which looks fairly interesting.

A multipage description of several of Dreamwave's properties, including Devil May Cry, Mega Man, Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, and Maximo.

There is a one-page article on a new (OVA?) from Production I.G. called Dead Leaves whose visual style looks amazing! It looks like a cross between FLCL and graffitti artwork crossed with a comic book. It is also mentioned that while there is mecha in it, there is no 3D animation at all, so it is all hand-drawn on computer. The home page on the official site has a different style, but looking around the site, you can see various images in the style of the actual show. Seems pretty interesting and proof that the styles in anime are still evolving all the time... There's also an article later on interviewing the char. designer and director of the show...

There's a review of an anime that sounds really cool called Futatsu No Spica. It seems to be a kids show with a girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut and is working to get into a vocational school that trains astronaunts, while having as her friend the spirit of a rocket pilot who died during a launch accident some years in the past. Described as a "gem of a sci-fi youth fantasy packed with warmth and kindness" it is seriously the kind of I'd like to see licensed and translated and in fact the kind of show I'd love to see actually made in the US to begin with. We could do with a few more shows that aren't so cynical...

Also a mention of BPS, which seems to center around a bunch of hackers and computer people sounds interesting, especially since the brief plot description seems to imply this is a set in the regular world without sci-fi elements. I'm always up for more shows with geeky main characters and computer stuff going on!

There's a nice article on the earliest days of the Japanese animation industry, as well as another which is an effort to figure out what anime was around in the US in the days before VCRs, including TV shows and rental 16mm reels.

There's also a profile of manga creator Minetaro Mochizuki, of special interest to me, as I saw the film adaptation of one of his manga: Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, which I enjoyed. It sounds like he has quite a range of work, ranging from that (a short yakuza adventure with a normal lady that gets involved) to two kids trapped underground after a disaster, to a story of a guy joining a swim team to impress his gf. Seems like good stuff, and hopefully one of the companies will license some of his work eventually! Contrary to what some people think, there is still quite a bit of interesting material that hasn't come over yet...

Hmm.. another chapter of the Angel/Dust manga, none of which I've read yet. It seems interesting, so I'll have to sit down one of these days and read through it all.

There's an article on Saint Seiya (aka Knights of the Zodiac). I seriously need to buy some of the DVDs after seeing a preview in one of the NewTypes. Definitely falls under the category of guilty pleasure. It is total cheeseball fighting fun. "You must explode the universe within yourself to give your fists the power of shooting stars!" This is classic stuff! :)

There's an interesting article on an American design company called Draxhall Jump Entertainment (DHJ), which was aparantly started by comic artist Ken Lashley and has worked with companies such as Image and Hasbro (for Transformers). It seems like there's also a comic called Legends which will be collected to TPB eventually. I'd never heard of this company before, so it was pretty interesting reading.

A quick quip involving the Planetes anime, which I'm hoping is as good as what I've read of the manga so far. Could make for quite a nice show...

Remember I mentioned the NewType ad being on G4? It is funny in that they published a letter where someone mentioned seeing it. Not only that, but there is an ad for G4 in the magazine, meaning it is a cross-advertising thing, always a good sign. It is also interesting that almost every time an anime or manga ad appears, it gives a list of locations it can be bought at. Sometimes the ad seems to be for the store itself, as is one of the cases of a Suncoast manga ad... There's also one with both Waldenbooks and Borders very prominant. Are these two owned by the same umbrella company? It is also funny to see an ADV manga ad which says "availible everywhere".

There's a list of manga/manhwa for January. Let's see... about 79 titles listed (althought a couple I know have been out for a while, so perhaps are newer editions?). Some interesting stuff for me is Planetes #2, Tuxedo Gin #4, and Girl Got Game. Also a bunch of stuff on series I need to start or get caught up on, like Basara #4, Petshop of Horrors #4, GTO #16, Gundam: The Origin #9, and a bunch of other stuff. I need more $$$!

Random thought.. what's up with Shinji Ikari being the 9th most popular male character according to Japanese readers of NewType, right under Spike Spiegel? I myself can identify him as I have some similarities of personality (but quite so extreme), but do THAT many people identify with him in Japan? Scary thought...

One interesting thing is out of the top 10 of current popular manga titles in Japan, 6 of them are licensed and either currently being released or will soon (Naruto, Tsubasa, Paradise Kiss, Bleach, XXXHolic, and Hana Yori Dango). Seems like the American market is really starting to catch up...

An interesting variety of movies reviewed, including Millenium Actress, Onmyoji, Biozombie, Pistol Opera (I must see this!), and the Kikaida TV series. Kikaida is something I'd really like to see at some point as we get so few of this kind of classic cheesy power-rangerish show brought over in its original form.

Some reviews for the Fiction album from Yuki Kajiura and Haibane Renmei. I've heard so much good stuff about Fiction that I'll have to try to pick it up at some point. As for Haibane, it has one of the prettiest covers ever! It'd be somewhat silly to get it just for that, but it also has a good reputation, so the combo may win me over....

One interesting feature that is starting up is called Bringing It West and is focusing on the industry and how it works. The first one interviews a couple of people at various anime companies to ask how they select which shows to bring over. It is fairly superficial, but still interesting to see, and having a pic. of Shawne Kleckner of Right Stuf was pretty neat after seeing him post so often online..

Now, as far as the actual book section goes, there is a really nice two-page article on Foo Swee Chin, who aparantly has done some work for Slave Labor Graphics including Nightmares & Fairy Tales and Chimney 25. Her style looks really interesting, so I'll have to check out some of her comic works...

Regular reviews are for Baby Birth, Ai Yori Aoshi, Trigun, Anime Poster Art, Amano, Gunslinger Girl, Brigadoon, Nadesico, Alien Nine, and Dukylon: CLAMP School Defenders.

For Bagged & Boarded, there is a year-end awards thing with three different people running down their favorites in various categories. I dunno if I should type in the whole thing. An example would be Top 5 Ongoing Series. Corey says Alias, Catwoman, Captain Marvel, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Fables. Troy says 100 Bullet: JSA, Y: The Last Man, Fables, and Ult. Spidey. Jen says Ult. Spidey, Legion, Batman, Avengers, and Nightwing. For Best Original GN, Corey says Sandman: Endless Knights. Troy goes for Blankets (Sandman: EK close second), and Jen goes for Barnum. Other categories include Top 3 Writers, Top 3 Artists, Best Hero, Top 3 New Titles, Best Villain, Best Reason to be an indy Comics Snob, Best Colorist, Best Inker, Best Mini-series, Best Comic-related Merchandise, Best Editor, and Best Quote.

Add in the usual nice assortment of model kits in the gallery, video game reviews, a poster and a centerfold, VA interviews, and various other articles and reviews I didn't mention, and you have quite the multi-faceted magazine. Of course this is mainly a feel-good promotional type magazine without huge amounts of depth in most areas, but I still really enjoy it, and it takes like 15 minutes just to flip through it before getting around to reading anything.. ;)

Saw a couple of interesting things tonight. First up was an interview with the two guys that run the site Homestar Runner on Pulse on G4. Was pretty cool to see the voice of Strong Bad and see that it is still just a little tiny operation. :)

There was also a brief interview with Stan Lee about the Hulk. I can never remember who actually invented what, so I'm not sure if Stan was taking more credit than he deserved for the origins of the Hulk?

I caught the tail end of an episode of the Chapelle Show, and it was a pretty funny bit about this racist Klan author. The twist is that he's blind and grew up in an isolated environment. It turns out he's black, but the people raising him thought it'd be easier if they just told the kids that were black that they were white since no one would know the difference anyway. It ends up that his writings are important to the movement, so they make sure he is masked for any physical appearances. It is all done in the form of a news expose and was pretty biting.. I need to catch some more of this show..

That was followed by the Daily Show which I've managed to miss for quite a few months now. This episode was spot on and Jon Stewart seemed more comfortable and in control than I remember. Some funny bits on mad cow and the mars landing (including a correspondant claiming to be covering the story directly from mars but obviously is faking it all, even forgetting the time lag half-way through and trying to cover). Also a quick interview with Elijah Wood (my main reason for watching since Mom wanted me to tape the interview). I really need to start watching the Daily Show again....

Last but not least, some South Park. Since when is Kenny back? In any case, a pretty funny episode about fads, with everyone being influenced by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and becoming "metrosexual" (is that a real term?). Not the best SP episode by far, but still some good stuff in there. Especially Kyle being beat up and ostracised, not for being Jewish, but instead for not acting gay enough. And Mr. Garrison having to go to Chef to get advice on what to do when people take your culture.. ;)

Thanks to Dirk for linking to this edition of Master of the Obvious. He makes a good point that one reason why a lot of iconic superhero characters are still around is that they were put on life-support during times of trouble and eventually ressurected in popularity. It goes far beyond just providing what people want...

The main difference between "icons" like Superman and Batman, and "new" ideas like THE AUTHORITY (which, not too long ago, was outselling both those characters) is support. Left to their own devices, a lot of "familiar" titles would've been dead years, even decades ago, but their publishing houses took special measures to keep the books alive, even if sales sank to 30,000 or 40,000 copies per issue. Artificial resuscitation cannot be cited as natural law. Sure, against overall average sales of less than 15,000 per issue, 150,000 for BATMAN or NEW X-MEN looks great, but are either anywhere near saturation of the potential market?

He then goes on to say that the big reason for holding up manga's success as a big story is not just their success at getting new readers, but that in general their business practices have shown to be very strong and cast a light on just how troublesome the American model may be proving. I do agree that the manga companies seem to be doing a very good job on the business side or exploiting their advantages and running with it in a sensible way. He also brings up the linking up with anime and video games, which they do seem to be quite good at organizing.

But the most interesting thing in the article, IMO, is his direct comparison of the current popularity of manga to both the b&w crash and the 90s crash. He points out how bad the content was in much of the comics coming out in the b&w boom and how both crashes were driven by speculation instead of content (looking for the next TMNT breakout hit in the b&w crash, and the various chromium covers and such in the 90s crash). In comparison, he argues that a lot of the manga released is at least competent and that a lot of the people reading the stuff are actually fans of the stories and not driven by any sense of how much the stuff will be worth in a couple of years.

He aknowledges that eventually there will likely be a glut of too many titles, and perhaps companies bringing over titles that aren't as good (even though as he points out, the fact that there are several companies with a good foothold on the market, as well as new material coming out all the time in Japan may help to mitigate it at least a bit), it isn't likely to all just disappear, in the same way that something like the mystery or romance sections in bookstores didn't go away after they were first introduced. He also points out that if instead of a sudden huge crash, if there is a slow decline, American companies should be able to step in and fill the void, but a sudden crash is more likely to just have bookstores drop comics entirely and do more harm than good. I think this is a nice quote:

The curious subtext to the "manga will die" predictions is the intimation that if manga dies on the market, American comics will rise again, but that's like saying that when hip-hop dies, Henry Mancini will make a big comeback. There's no basis to assume cause and effect. Likelier would be hip-hop dying and it having no effect on the sales of Henry Mancini recordings at all. If the manga craze dies slowly, there's the possibility of niches opening up that smart American publishers could swoop in to fill. If it dies abruptly, it'll probably just kill the bookstore market for comics material, regardless of country of origin, and it's unlikely the death of the bookstore market would drive hordes of hungry readers back into the comics shops because there wouldn't be any hungry readers. That's what the manga craze ending means. Any American comics fan or comics shop owner eagerly anticipating the death of manga as a market force may as well anticipate shooting themselves in the book, because that's what it will amount to.

That is something I agree with 100%. Instead of just hoping manga goes away, people who care about the local industry should be trying to see why what is happening is happening and figure out ways to exploit it for the gain of the whole industry. I think people like Oni Press see what is going on and are actively working to use it to their advantage. A lot of other people in the industry aren't as confident about the direction to go in, especially if they have a big vested interest in the old way of doing things. I think there's also a lot of fans who feel threatened by their favorite comics not necessarily being the biggest thing anymore and instead just another piece of the pie. What is happening with manga is very much a part of the American comics landscape and not something that is happening off in isolation somewhere. It is going to effect things whether people like it or not, and I think it is really a case where people need to be examining the effects instead of trying to look the other way...

Eddie took some time off from blogging, but is now back, and has asks Were there any good comics in 2003? Lots of people have written these up, but this one seems to click with me for some reason, as titles that I haven't read yet but are interested in looking into. Plus, it is always good to see someone blogging again after an absence (I know how that is!).

We're seeing quite a lot of threads lately on everything from people waiting for trades to the future of the market. This thread asks if Dirk's assertion of fans buying more variety can really work. This is one case where I partially disagree with Dirk, in that I don't think the blame can be put entirely on consumers (or more accurate to his essay, that they are the only possible salvation). Some interesting aspects get brought up (thought not much really new), and I can't help posting myself and ending with some optimism for the future...

It is interesting to see how introspective everyone is lately. I guess it is that time of the year, but we also seem to really be in a transitionary mode. People have been yelling about changes for years now, but they finally seem to be showing up in visible ways. I'm just glad to see discussion on these topics.

I remember bringing up manga like a year ago (or maybe more like 8 months ago) and people still going "Tokyowho? Can't be THAT big a deal since I haven't even heard of the company before". There is still a lot of arguing about particulars of manga success and what should or shouldn't be copied, but at least a lot less people have their heads totally in the sand and have some awareness now that stuff is going on...

Hey, it seems like Pam has a blog, who looks to have reviewed quite a lot of manga over time (as well as american comics). Some recent reviews include Fake (one of the few online reviews for shonen ai that I've seen), Trigun, Boys Over Flowers, and Buffy GN Fray. Nice work Pam!

From this thread, it seems like Sarah Michelle Gellar is set to play in yet another Japanese movie remake. However, the interesting thing to me is that it'll actually be directed by Takashi Shimizu, the writer/directer of the original film, as well as being filmed in Tokyo. Not only that, but aparantly he's done two theatrical versions and two direct-to-video, so this will actually be his fifth time making the movie??? Weird stuff...

Courtesy of Dragon Tear, Tokyopop now has their official page up for Princess Ai. This actually seems like something I have some interest in. The artwork from Ai Yazawa (Paradise Kiss) looks really nice (check out that blue cover), and the plot seems like it could be interesting. I guess we'll only know for sure when it is on store shelves.

This manwha called Evils Return seems like it has some promise as well. Basically involving a lady who seems destined to carry an evil baby and so gets protection from a young monk (who ends up popular at the school) as she also gets involved with the heart-throb at the school. Hard to tell if it'll actually be any good from just the description, but seems like it has some promise at least.

Courtesy Sunwukong, there is aparantly a half-hour audio interview with Dark Horse editor Chris Warner on Galaxy Anime. The site itself is kind of annoying. I'll see if I can't get a direct link later on.

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but people have summerized it:

-The collected edition of Ghost in the Shell II might be released in June. It's going to be about the size of the Japanese version. It is also going to be shrinked rapped.

-They are also going to be re-releasing the first Ghost in the Shell in a smaller format plus they will be including the deleted pages for this new edition!

-They say Berserk is doing very well for them and expect more volumes released (hopefully with more frequency than before! ).

-They are also going to re-release Gunsmith Cats in more affordable, non-westernized format in the future.

He also goes into how book readers are not interested in the 32 page "pamphlet" format and sees that the bubble won't burst as big as comic books did.

Sounds like there could be some interesting stuff in there, especially that last part. And as someone who enjoyed the movie Ghost in the Shell, I've always been curious about the manga. Perhaps I'll pick up the re-release of the original.

Sorry, can't find where I got this from, but Ninth Art put up a very nice list of various companies and titles. Lots of good stuff in there, including Planetes (which I finally read half of and is great!).

Whew... I had like 1000 e-mails in my new mail folder, and then I d/led a bit over 500 new messages today (I'd been reading them via webform for a couple of weeks). Now the folder has about 300 messages in it total. So, that's something like 1200 spam messages I sifted out.... I'll set up a better systems one of these days..

So, with reading so much manga, you can't help notice the sheer variety of sound effects. This got me wondering more about the history and perhaps future of western sfx, and so I just started up a thread on TCJ to see what info. people have on the subject. Hopefully will proove enlightening (even though I have no illusions that it could somehow descend into madness, being that TCJ is somewhat eclectic that way..heh).

Lots of interesting stuff in this thread. The main thing is that aparantly a DVD is finally coming out soon, but unfortunately from Artisan. That means it might be pan and scan.. will have to wait and find out. I think I only saw the movie once as a little kid, but I had rented it a couple of years ago and enjoyed it.

This page gives some really interesting information on various connections. For instance that the same animation team in Japan called Topcraft that worked on Last Unicorn, the Hobbit and other Rankin Bass features made their first Japanese film with Hayao Miyazaki as Nausicaa, and then they reformed into Studio Ghibli. He has a translation and pics of an article that ran in Animage (the magazine the Nausicaa manga ran in) to show Topcraft's competency. Especially notice the first tapestry imagery which is similar to what they'd use at the beginning of Nausicaa.

As I watched Warriors of the Wind extensively as a kid (a fairly cut version of Nausicaa but still very amazing for a kid if you haven't seen the original), so this is all very much tied up into my childhood. Fascinating to see the connections between things...

Also, I hadn't heard about the live-action movie coming, but aparantly it'll be out soon. A scary thought at first, but aparantly Beagle has written the script for this version as well and even has voice actors from the animated version making physical appearances (Christopher Lee, etc..)! With that and the general buzz around fantasy movies with the LotR trilogy, I have some hope for it...

Whoah! Take a look at this (courtesy of SPrintF. Aparantly, a series of screams were created for some scenes of a movie and then put into a sound bank. Since then it has become a kind of injoke for sound people to put at least one into a movie. It seems like they've been in everything from all the Star Wars movies, to at least two of the Lord of the Rings films. I'm always fascinated to find out behind the scenes stuff like this.

Gah.. from here the two new Godzilla DVDs for GMK and GxM are both reported to be dubtitled instead of subtitled. Geeze.. you'd think someone could get some decent DVDs out there some day...

So, I had a pretty remarkable experience yesterday. I was flipping through channels and decided to stop on VH1 Classic. First, I have to say that I've been kind of impressed with that channel in general. Having been born in '78, the first half of my life was spent in the 80s. However, at that point I was mostly watching cartoons and Nickelodeon and not any music videos. I heard various stuff on the radio, but not really in a concerted way. So, most of the stuff from that time was already filtered down before I got to see it. Obviously they showed stuff from the 80s on VH1 and MTV throughout the 90s, mixed in with videos and as part of countdowns.

For VH1 Classic, I expected it to just be more of the same, but I was rather shocked by the sheer number of stuff I'd never seen before (or perhaps seen just once). Some of it is lesser-known songs or artists (some of which can be quite interesting and/or insane), and some are well-known songs they just never show the videos to anymore. An example might be Little Lies from Fleetwood Mac. I've always liked that song, but I never saw the video. Basically the four of the band walking around a farm. Normally that'd be dull and/or cheesy, but it managed to be pretty creepy (probably through a combination of the twisted song itself, and that the band members had all kinds of issues going on that showed through)...

Anyway.. that's all way off track. The thing that happened yesterday was they decided to play an entire two-disc album on air! It was Sixty Six to Timbuktu by Robert Plant, his new "not a greatest hits but has a lot of hits on it" type thing. Pretty much what they did was have this constant loop of footage from various videos and concerts and stuff of Plant with a picture of the label and text at the bottom. Between each song, it'd blow up the album cover full-screen and then it'd go back. I'm not sure how much I missed at the beginner, but I only saw like one really short commercial break in the whole 2 hours or so I was watching it. Very impressive.. The video loop got boring/annoying after I realized what was going on, so I just shut my eyes and listened.

OK, here is where I admit that I know like nothing about Robert Plant. Or I should saw I knew nothing until I read a short bio a couple of minutes ago..heh. I mean I knew what he looked like and I heard a song or two of Zepplin (maybe one of the unplugged things in the 90s?) to know what his voice sounded like (or so I thought), but that was about it. When it comes to music, I have huge huge huge gaps of knowledge.

The only two where I have any kind of profeciant knowledge would be basic pop music and well-known hits (basically from watching VH1 and MTV or many years in the 90s) and the classic MOD file demo scene. For those that don't know, the MOD stuff came out of Amigas and then spread to the PCs. MIDI on PCs were limited for a long time because of a lack of good sound cards, and there was never any consistancy of sound. No telling how a piano would sound on one or another computer. A MOD (the original file format) was a file which contained both wave file samples of a sound, and the collections of notes and effects. Lots of parties and contests happened in europe and interesting stuff emerged. For that I was able to download tons of it due to it being perfectly free, and so that was something I listened to quite a bit, like Necros and Skaven and many others. More on that another time...

When I was really young and tapes were still big, I was mostly listening to stuff like Billy Joel and the Ghostbusters sound track. When CDs got big, for whatever reason I just never got very many of them. I guess money was a big factore. With money tight and prices high, seemed better to spend on something practical, or something like a video game. At this point I probably own around a total of 20 music cds collected over my whole life, three of which were somewhat recent.

So, I'm still getting off track, but I guess you see where I'm going. If all I have to go on is music tv, occationally the radio, and a dozen CDs, I am very lacking when it comes to classic rock and many other genres.

So, that's why it was such a treat to hear so much stuff in one place, and it turns out that Plant seems to be one of the more versatile people around. The range he has with his voice is really impressive, not just of pitch, but of the whole way his voice sounds. You get used to people using particular quirks and such and I expected all this stuff to sound like what I had in my head was the "sound of Plant". But seriously, it'd go into another song and it'd sound like someone else was singing. After reading some reviews, it sounds like this is an especially eclectic collection with lots of different b-sides on the end and such, but as it was happening I had no bearings at all. I wasn't even sure at first if it was new material or not since I hadn't really heard any of it before, or wasn't sure if I had. When one song ended, you had no idea what was coming next, and that was a good thing. It'd go from an 80s ballad to a rock song, to 50s? crooning, to belting out the blues like Joplin. And when he went to one of these styles he sounded totally natural and in control of that style. Like he could have been known as a crooner or a bluesman if that's what he wanted his big thing to be. Seriously, there was enough stuff going on in here that if he started rapping on one of the tracks, I wouldn't have been that thrown off.

Some stuff didn't hit me as well as others, and a couple of spots felt like maybe he was experimenting in a way that didn't quite work, but even the styles that I'd usually find annoying I felt were done much better than usual, and I had this feeling throughout that he was loving experimenting with all these different styles and using his voice in different ways. So, it was a really interesting and involving body of work. It makes me see why people always talk so highly of Plant, and I'll have to seek out more of his work and actually listen to some Led Zepplin music...

Dave Fiore wonders what the point is of having comics specialty stores change their ways:

However, what all of the "comic stores are killing comics" people seem to ignore is that most "comic stores" have never been "comic stores" at all!! In Montreal, we've got retailers with names like "Captain Quebec", "Heroes and Villains", "Super-Heroes", etc--do you see what I'm saying here? They are "genre stores". We also have bookstores that specialize in stuff like New Age material, and Sci-Fi. I don't have any interest in either type of book, and I wouldn't set foot in either establishment--but I would never dream of telling the owners of these stores to 'diversify' their product! They are specialty shops!!

He also likens getting these shops to sell non-superhero fare to having a local burger joint sell samosas, and wonders why people care when bookstores have stuff availible.

Well, I think there are some different reasons, actually. First of all, the "revelation" of shops being superhero shops is something that people like Dirk has been saying about for a while, but something that not a lot of others want to admit to. Even for shops with "superhero" in the name, there would be the claim that superheros were the main stock just because that is what people wanted. I mean that's why people still call Marvel/DC "mainstream" comics and everything else is "indy/art."

That's why the comparison to a sci-fi bookshop is a bit faulty. You've been able to read sci-fi books in any bookstore or library for many years now. The reason to go to a sci-fi bookshop is to get a better selection and an atmosphere catoring to that audience. But if it was like comics, then for a bunch of years now, you'd pretty much only be able to get books in a sci-fi bookstore, any books. If you wanted a romance novel, it probably had sci-fi elements added to it to help it sell, as there "wasn't a market" for straight romance novels. Changing a local burger joint is a different proposition when they've been the only resteraunts availible and claimed people didn't want differently...

The marketplace has been changing a lot lately, but a lot of people still seem to think that the bookstore market won't last. I hope it will, but it is still a very different type of thing from a specialty store. I think specialty stores are great. You can't beat the variety of titles and local creators and everything if the owner chooses to go that route.

I think that's the real point that people like Dirk a trying to make. It seems like the audience for superheros themselves aren't as strong as they used to be and with people who are interested in other things like manga able to shop at bookstores, a lot of the shops are closing up. Instead of having that trend continue, it seems better to instead either remake old shops or open new ones which are comic shops that specifically try to carry a variety of titles, clean and professional, cater to what different people want, etc. There are shops out there (and locally) that are managing to do this and seem to be doing quite well. For all the gloom that people throw around, I refuse to give up on comic specialty shops as a valid place of business. I'll also say that shops that specialize in superheros is fine in and of itself (as long as there are alternatives), but that they'd better be sure that they can stay viable by doing so.

And as for this:

why do you care if the super-hero guys go under? There will still be outlets for Fantagraphics books...

Dave, I think you've missed the many times Dirk has said that if all comic shops closed Fantagraphics could very well be put under. It sounds like several of these companies have been able to move a lot of sales into other venues in recent years, but the DM is still not insignificant. It is probably fair to say that most of the sales are from a few of the better DM shops, but then it makes those all the more important and something to get more of if possible.

Hmm.. now this really makes me want to see the new Peter Pan movie. I remember seeing some stills of it in a magazine that were really lovely, but hadn't heard anything on it after that. The fact that it is based on the origional material and so is fairly dark, as well as containing a lot of metephors, that people are saying kids will enjoy it but adults may get more out of it.... Well it sounds like just my kind of movie. Plus, I also love a lot the other movies people are using for comparisons (like Neverending Story, City of Lost Children, Dark Crystal), and that makes me think I have some similar taste...

Congratulation to everyone at the Tart for providing a great mag for so long. From the first time I saw the site, I knew it was something different. =)

They mention that they've decided to change things around. Editors have been shifted around and it sounds like more is on the way. But the most interesting thing to me was this:

On the other hand, we knew that Atsukamashii Onna had started to outlive its time. Manga (and anime, for that matter) is no longer the marginalized artistic style that it used to be. Manga is, in general, outselling comics at mainstream bookstores, and the manga style has crept its way into both mainstream and indy comics. For many people, manga is as much of their comics diet as anything from the "Big Three" American publishers. The idea of having a separate section for manga and anime seems to be a quaint coinceit from a different time — one that was appropriate then, but certainly isn't so now. Comics and manga are both sequential art, and with that, we're putting the two together and starting the new year with a cohesive, integrated 'zine.

That is quite a statement and I think it describes what I'm starting to see everywhere. I've been happy to see them cover manga/anime in any context, but the difference in outlook is pretty significant, and shows they really understand what's going on. So, I say good show! You've always seemed a bit further ahead of the curve than others...

Revealed from this thread on AoDVD, carpboy's computer at Barnes & Noble is listing Prince of Tennis as coming from Viz in May. No price, but likely another in the $8 Jump line.

I haven't read it myself, but have heard generally good things, and I know it is very popular in Japan. I'm just glad to see another sports title coming out. There seems to be a decent number of people into tennis in the US, so hopefully it'll get some attention on that point.