Dirk Deppey offers a lovely review of Kaoru Mori’s Emma (CMX) over at The Comics Journal:
“Mori’s subdued manga style allows for nuanced changes in gesture and facial expressions to convey a great deal of information, and her enthusiasm for the period is genuine and infectious — her author’s-note omake at the end of this first volume is practically a giddy teenager’s love letter to Victorian trappings.”
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I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the Flipped Forum over at Comic World News. At the moment, I’m primarily using it as a repository for publisher press releases, but I’m thinking it might be fun to start threads that track reviews of books I’ve covered in the column, just as respite for people who read my opinions and think, “What the hell was he on when he wrote that?”
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Speaking of those publisher press releases, Naruto is headed towards its natural habitat: the mall! (And yes, I realize that, in addition to its undeniable sales power, people like Tom Spurgeon and Bill Sherman also think it’s a solidly entertaining comic. The snark was just sitting there!)
The featured events are a nice illustration of the property’s burgeoning, multi-media empire. I wonder if Viz will be taking the opportunity to cross-promote some other properties at the same time?
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I’m very intrigued by this announcement from Sweatdrop Studios, a UK-based original manga studio. While I’m not entirely convinced that there is a unifying style or approach to either shônen or shôjo manga, I love the idea of concurrent versions of the same stories told by different creators.
Plus, as Pata notes, you can’t go wrong with an introduction from Paul Gravett.
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You also can’t go wrong when Jake Forbes pops by to offer his two cents. He shows up in comments at Comics Worth Reading to discuss what power really means in the manga business.