Manga, manga, everywhere!
Johanna Draper Carlson does an excellent overview of DC’s CMX line of manga at Comics Worth Reading. (As a side note, I knew she’d like Alice 19th.)
Dorian at Postmodern Barney had pretty much the same reaction to IWGP that I did, which is always reassuring. He seemed to like Worst a bit more, though I agree that the character Hana is a winner.
Christopher Butcher talks about some of the week’s upcoming releases, including manga, at Previews Review. In the process, he points to Tangonat’s review of Doubt! from Viz. I’m a little more ambivalent about the title than Tangonat, and I think I’ll have to give it another read before I say anything more.
At Ninth Art, Alex Dueben jumps on the Planetes love train.
At Newsarama, Brian Hibbs provides a very detailed analysis of Bookscan’s graphic novel report for 2004. I would love to hear other retailers respond to something Hibbs has encountered:
“I truly don’t understand why we’re seeing such drastically different results in the DM than in the bookstores with manga. The other places on the list where BookScan shows great sales, I’m doing well with that work – but not manga. I can barely give manga away. Sales are compressed in the first weeks, then I never sell another copy again. I’m stuck with a disproportionate amount of unsalable stock, and more product is being released than I could possibly rack, even if the sales were there. This perplexes me.”
I’ve heard some stories that run from mirroring Hibbs’s experience to the polar opposite, that manga flies off the shelves and has brought in a whole new group of customers.
Last, and least, at Comic World News I gush about Paul Gravett’s Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics.