Paul Gravett, author of Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics and Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know (both highly recommended), gives an overview of the United Kingdom’s original English language manga scene.
Webcomic creator and champion of overlooked manga of all flavors Shaenon K. Garrity makes a case for Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra… (Vertical), and makes a request of a certain on-line reference site:
“(Okay, I just went over to Wikipedia and Takemiya only has a stub. An inaccurate stub. There’s a Wikipedia entry for every single individual Pokemon, and this is the best they can do for one of the most gifted and influential cartoonists in manga history? NOT COOL, WIKIPEDIA. Quit systematically deleting everything about webcomics and get to work writing some damn articles.)”
At Manga Recon, Katherine Dacey-Tsuei gives Fumiyo Kouno’s Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (Last Gasp) a well-deserved A+. If I haven’t said it lately, buy this book.
At Blog@Newsarama, Graeme McMillan rounds up some news related to Osamu Tezuka, the God of Manga. While I’d love to see new editions of Frederik Schodt’s marvelous Manga! Manga! and Dreamland Japan, a collection of essays on Tezuka will certainly tide me over. (Now, when is Matt Thorn going to write the definitive history of shôjo? I’ve been hoping for it since he interviewed Moto Hagio in The Comics Journal.)