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Quote of the day

May 4, 2007 by

In preparation for Free Comic Book Day, George Gene Gustines introduces New York Times readers to some of the finer comic shops in Manhattan and environs. It’s particularly noteworthy for this awesome passage:

“Chuck McKinney, 41, a voice-over actor and Web cartoonist, loves Midtown Comics. ‘The store is big, clean, well stocked and organized; and everyone gets a discount,’ he wrote in an e-mail message. ‘And best of all there are lots of hot, ethnic straight guys to check out while I’m buying my comics.’”

While I love Midtown’s Pottery Barn aesthetic and fine selection, I must confess that I’ve never noticed the eye candy during the few visits I’ve made.

Filed under: Comic shops, Media 6 Comments

Creepwatch

March 21, 2007 by

The things you find on Yahoo News.

Nissan uses manga to sell really, really cute cars:

“The pamphlet is manga-style, like a Japanese comic book, depicting the story of three young well-dressed women going shopping together, manicuring their nails to match the star-patterns on Pino seats, using aromatherapy oils in the car.”

Next up, a dealership staffed entirely by bishônen.

Avril Lavigne leads digital comic revolution:

“She also has a manga comic called ‘Make 5 Wishes,’ which will be available if you buy her album through iTunes, or you can wait for it as a series via cell phone.”

No, seriously, read that. She’s using manga to induce people to download her music legally, and she’s catering to cell-phone culture. Okay, so Lavigne likely isn’t the mastermind behind these moves, but damn.

Business Week differentiates Cartoon, Anime networks:

“‘We have more blood splatter,’ says Ledford, noting that his networks fans tend to be avid PlayStation 3 and Wii video game players as well.”

Filed under: Media 5 Comments

Uncertainty

March 21, 2007 by

At Blog@Newsarama, Kevin Melrose links to a piece from The Guardian’s arts blog that wonders if readers will be able to navigate British references in Andy Watson and Josh Howard’s Clubbing from DC’s Minx line.

If only there was some evidence that kids won’t be put off by specific references to a different culture when they pick up comics.

Filed under: Linkblogging, Media, Minx Leave a Comment

Print piece

March 16, 2007 by

Last fall, I was flattered to be asked by Print Magazine if I’d be interested in contributing a survey piece on manhwa. I figured getting paid to write about comics might be just as much fun as doing it for free, so I said yes. The results are in the current issue.

It was a real pleasure corresponding with folks at various publishers and other sources, and they were all incredibly gracious in subjecting themselves to what might laughably called my “interview technique.” My editor at Print was wonderful as well, and given how much… ahem… self-directed writing I do, it was great to have thoughtful feedback and direction.

I could live without having my dorky picture on the contributors’ page, but what can you do?

Filed under: Media 3 Comments

Manga bestsellers

March 7, 2007 by

Once again, Publishers Weekly Comics Week hasn’t come up with anything to say about the manga entries on its monthly Comics Bestsellers list, and since I don’t have anything better to do…

1. Bleach, Volume 17. Tite Kubo. Viz Media, $7.99 ISBN 978-1421510415. The “Cartoon Network Effect” reasserts itself, placing this supernatural adventure series at the top of the list. Bleach was well into its run and had built a solid audience by the time its anime adaptation debuted on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block, but the extra exposure has given it an extra bump.

2. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Volume 2. Shiro Amano. Tokyopop, $9.99 ISBN 978-1598166385. With tie-ins to both Disney characters and a popular video game franchise on its side, it’s not surprising to see Kingdom Hearts properties moving extremely well.

3. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 3. Yuu Watase. Viz Media, $8.99 ISBN 978-1421510033. Watase has earned reader (and retailer) loyalty with hits like Ceres: Celestial Legend and Fushigi Yûgi. While she hasn’t scaled the sales heights of Natsuki (Fruits Basket) Takaya, Watase is right near the top of the list of commercially successful shôjo manga-ka.

4. Tsubasa, Volume 12. CLAMP. Del Rey, $10.95 ISBN 978-0345485328. Along the same lines, there’s generally little risk in licensing a CLAMP title, particularly when it’s a sequel to a perennially popular work like Cardcaptor Sakura.

6. Loveless, Volume 4. Yun Kouga. Tokyopop, $9.99 ISBN 978-1598162240. The highest-ranked boys’ love title for March is also one of the bestselling boys’ love titles period. While the branding a boys’-love or yaoi imprint generally results in strong comic-shop sales, Loveless has succeeded without any marker, both in comic shops and bookstores.

8. Buso Renkin!, Volume 4. Nobuhiro Watsuki. Viz Media, $7.99 ISBN 978-1421508405. The recent conclusion of Watsuki’s Rurouni Kenshin apparently hasn’t quelled appetites for Watsuki’s work.

9. Full Metal Alchemist, Volume 11. Hiromu Arakawa. Viz Media, $9.99 978-1421508382. The placement of this mega-hit manga initially seems surprisingly low until you realize that it ranked second among last month’s bestsellers. The sales powerhouse is cited as one of the chief agents in the demise of Monthly Shonen Jump, having driven sales of Square Enix’s rival anthology, and it promises to be an evergreen seller here.

Filed under: Del Rey, Media, Sales, Tokyopop, Viz 1 Comment

Monday linkblogging

March 5, 2007 by

Congratulations to Brigid on the second anniversary of MangaBlog, which is just essential reading for the mangaholic.

One of her recent finds was this excellent article on yaoi in the Patriot-News by Blog@Newsarama‘s Chris Mautner. Tina Anderson is right; it’s a keeper.

And it’s Monday, so there’s another Flipped in the can. (Does it count as linkblogging if it’s to yourself?)

Filed under: Flipped, Linkblogging, Media 2 Comments

Mayo clinic

March 2, 2007 by

From time to time, I’ve wondered what the food desk at The New York Times thinks of the celebrity chefs of The Food Network.

Mario Batali could probably open a hot dog stand and get at least two stars, but he seems to have moved out of the network’s harsher glare. I don’t know if they’re still producing new episodes of Molto Mario or not, though he is an Iron Chef. Nigella Lawson used to contribute a delightful column to the Times food pages, and her relationship to the network seems limited to rebroadcasts of her charming BBC programs. (I can’t see her taking a gig as a guest judge on Food Network Showdown: Puddings!)

The Times takes the occasion of the imminent publication of Paula Deen’s autobiography to fry her up in a stick of butter. (Free registration may be required.)

“‘Now I’m done fightin’ and I’m done hidin’,’ she said last week, gazing raptly into a mound of ham salad as if it might contain an offer to be a guest host on ‘The View.’”

The whole article is characterized by bemused, horrified admiration. If you’ve seen Deen flailing her grandchild at you from the cover of her lifestyle magazine, you can’t help but sympathize with writer Julia Moskin’s perspective.

And Deen isn’t the only target of Moskin’s questionably affectionate contempt:

“Rachael Ray, who is hardly known for hermit-like tendencies, conducted her 2005 wedding off-camera; not so Ms. Deen, who married for the second time in 2004 with a Food Network crew filming every moment from bridal shower to prenuptial spray tan.”

“Like her Food Network colleague Sandra Lee, Ms. Deen is an unabashed fan of cake mix and instant pudding.”

I admit to liking Deen initially, before The Food Network machine decided that, if a little Paula was good, a lot of Paula was better. But she has become the queen of the over-share, going so far beyond merely communicating a culinary technique that it’s hard to remember anything she’s actually cooked.

At the same time, Deen seems like the celebrity chef least likely to be bothered by this kind of derision. Heck, she could probably make a special out of it.

Filed under: Food, Media, TV 4 Comments

Love, Weekly

March 1, 2007 by

Entertainment Weekly extended some warm fuzzies to comics in its March 2 issue. It’s a particularly good day for Eric Wright and Tokyopop; My Dead Girlfriend made “The Must List.” (Dear EW: Everyone knows what Paul Reubens looks like. Next time, run a cover shot of the just-released graphic novel so people know what to look for at the bookstore.)

While I think Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra… (Vertical) deserves at least an A- instead of a B+, and I think EW miffed a plot point, it’s nice to see the book get some praise from such a mainstream source.

Other blurbs:

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home: A-
  • Scalped: B
  • The Living and the Dead: B+
    • Filed under: Media, Tokyopop, Vertical Leave a Comment

    Elephantine

    March 1, 2007 by

    When people talk about comics, they can mean a lot of different things. They can be referring to super-heroes or manga or Art Spiegelman or Doonesbury or webcomics or any of a seemingly limitless list of niches or combinations of niches. Heck, talking about manga alone doesn’t guarantee any common frame of reference. They could be talking about any one or more of a number of patches within the landscape of that term.

    So when I read that much–discussed item from the Mercury-News, I just assumed that it was missing some key modifiers. Insert “super-hero” before “comics” or “published by Marvel and DC” after, and it holds up a lot better.

    Of course, mentally inserting those modifiers doesn’t guarantee you’ll buy the article’s central argument – that the audience for super-hero comics is graying and that the comics themselves are actively unfriendly to younger readers. The American Library Association didn’t have any trouble finding items from Marvel and DC’s catalogs to recommend to younger readers, and none of their recommendations bore the “Marvel Adventures” or “Johnny DC” stamp. Whether that suggests kids read up or that Marvel and DC’s comics themselves aren’t all that mature in spite of the trappings of some of their content is another debate entirely.

    Whenever one of these discussions comes up, I’m always reminded of this parable, but especially so in this case because of J.K. Parkin at Blog@Newsarama. (Again, argument could ensue over the comparison. Who wants to be the snake-like tail or the leathery hide when you could be the big, floppy ears or the oh-so-useful trunk or the big, stompy feet?) It’s bound to rankle when someone purports to be talking about comics in general while maintaining a death grip on only one of its body parts, whether it’s this article’s conflations or a publisher blithely suggesting that no one has effectively targeted the young female demographic or what have you.

    It doesn’t mean the average reader has to interest themselves in the whole elephant. But placing the parts in context is always nice, even if you aren’t trying to say anything about the whole.

    (Edited to correct a misattribution in one of the links.)

    Filed under: Linkblogging, Media 4 Comments

    Target locked

    February 25, 2007 by

    It’s not easy identifying a target audience, is it? Be too specific and you run the risk of excluding people outside of your base or even alienating the base by reducing them to a stereotype.

    Here’s DC’s Karen Berger at the “Capturing the Female Reader” panel at the New York Comic Con:

    “Berger said Minx was being positioned ‘to the left of manga and to the right of YA’ and called Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis a ‘watershed book’ for young female comics readers. She also cited Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and described the ideal Minx reader as a girl who is not interested in young adult novels that are either overly girlie or guy-centric, ‘a smart girl interested in different stuff.’”

    So, Minx is the graphic novel line for non-conformist centrists? I’ve heard worse.

    (If you’re looking for the passage on the panel, it’s right next to the picture of the girl with the whip and the one in the belly shirt.)

    Filed under: Media, Minx 8 Comments
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