Harlequin will be taking over the reins of the marketing and distribution of its translated manga adaptations, according to an article over at ICv2. Dark Horse will continue to oversee production, but Harlequin will handle getting it into bookstores.

“The Harlequin sales force has demonstrated a great ability to place books in multiple channels including mass-market retailers and grocery stores as well as bookstores. Harlequin does not plan to distribute to comic shops via Diamond Comic Distributors, although interested retailers will be able to order directly from the publisher.”

I can’t say I find this particularly surprising. Dark Horse does a nice job with production, but the Harlequin books have always seemed like a particularly odd fit with the rest of Dark Horse’s line. (Zombies! Samurai! Assassins! Zombie samurai assassins!) And comic shops don’t seem like the best venue for them.

In part, it’s consistent with the trend of manga publishers linking up with prose publishing giants to get product into mainstream outlets. It also seems partly like a case of two parties admitting that an experiment wasn’t having quite the desired outcome and making corrections. Harlequin is obviously better positioned to get their books in the places where they’ll move, leaving Dark Horse to handle the portion of the equation that plays to their strengths.

I’m trying to savor Linda Medley’s wonderful Castle Waiting (Fantagraphics), but it isn’t easy. It’s addictively readable, and I know I’m going to be hungry for more smart, funny fantasy after I’m done. I still have plenty of Terry Pratchett books yet to read, but it still seems prudent to develop a list of recommendations in this category to have on hand for when my restraint inevitably crumbles.

So if anyone feels like playing a little round of “if you like…” and suggesting some fantasy novels (prose or graphic) that have something of the same flavor as Castle Waiting, I’d be more than happy to receive them. Bonus points for stories with strong and central female characters, because I tend to find male fantasy heroes much less interesting. (I like the Discworld witches a lot more than the City Watch, for example.)

It’s looking like a worthy week at the comics shop, with plenty of interesting titles on the way.

I’m particularly excited about The Squirrel Mother Stories (Fantagraphics). I love short-form comics stories, and Megan Kelso’s work looks really appealing. Tom Spurgeon’s review made me even happier that I pre-ordered this.

The second volume of Anne Freaks (ADV) shows up. I thought the first was a pretty riveting piece of nihilistic comedy, and the art is gorgeous.

CMX provides the concluding volume of Monster Collection, which is better than it has any right to be. I mean, it’s based on a video game and features a fair amount of fan service, but it’s got a great sense of humor, endearing characters, and some pretty exciting action.

Tales of Woodsman Pete (Top Shelf) certainly has the week’s most charming title, and it was apparently a big hit at MOCCA over the weekend. (Speaking of MOCCA, I wouldn’t have been able to resist adding a “Vote for the Cutest Couple of Comic Creators” poll in PW Comics Week’s photo parade. Then I would have stuffed the ballot box with votes for Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, even though they aren’t, to my knowledge, that kind of couple.)

Back to Top Shelf, I thought the preview copy of Renée French’s The Ticking was beautiful and disturbing, and it is for the content, but the final product is absolutely gorgeous. Top Shelf sent one my way, and it’s a really lovely object in its own right. It’s a really nice production for an endearingly unnerving comic.

Come to think of it, lots of good stuff came in last week while I was out of town, too.

Evil Twin’s Action Philosophers! Giant Sized Thing collects the first three issues of this funny, informative comic at the very ethical price of $6.95. If you’ve been meaning to give these books a look, this is a great way to do it.

I always find the work of Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá lovely to look at, but the stories can run on the slight side. That was partly the case with their new collection, De: Tales (Dark Horse), but some of the pieces really had impact. My particular favorites were a retelling of a tense encounter on a Paris subway, a cleverly structured urban slice-of-life look at a typical Saturday, and a really moving story of an unusual reunion that goes a long way towards converting me to magical realism by being just the right mix of magical and realistic.

One of the nominees for MangaCast’s Best Manga Award is Ai Yazawa’s Nana (Viz – Shojo Beat). The third volume showed up last Wednesday, and I think the title is really building in strength as Yazawa fleshes out her characters and their setting. It didn’t have the immediate, gripping impact of Paradise Kiss (Tokyopop), but it’s more than engaging enough to keep me reading.

I’d been wondering when there’d be a story like this one from Variety. There’s been lots of talk about the enduring profitability of super-hero movies (even bad ones) and an increasing occurrence of adaptations of lower profile titles (with concomitant sales boosts for the collections), but what about new movie adaptations of manga titles? Several are apparently in development:

“The tipping point could be ‘Priest,’ based on a popular manhwa (Korean comicbook) about an immortal priest battling demons in the Wild West. Screen Gems‘ live-action version of the popular Tokyopop title is being produced by Sam Raimi‘s Ghost House and starts shooting Oct. 1 with ‘Amityville Horror’ helmer Andrew Douglas.”

They also talk about Neon Genesis Evangelion’s cautious march to the cinema, though they don’t delve into troubles with the manga line at ADV. There are lots of interesting tidbits at the link about some very popular books.

Over at the Japan Times (free registration required), there’s a look at global manga. Tokyopop’s Stuart Levy weighs in:

“‘Ultimately, for manga to really become a mainstream part of global culture, there needs to be local creation,’ Levy declared in an e-mail interview. ‘To me, that would be the epitome of success for Japan — to have exported a piece of global culture that sticks. We still have a while to show that this is possible — the Japanese creators are truly senpai [mentors] to a young generation of global creators, and we want to encourage them to help nurture and train their international kohai [proteges].’”

We’re just back from a week of vacation. I decided to spend it free of internet connectivity and comics, and I have to say it was a lovely break. I thought I’d be twitching from withdrawal, but we were too busy for me to notice the absence.

Now, some random impressions:

1. Staying in a hotel that used to be an observation facility for long-range missile testing during World War II isn’t as cool as you’d think it would be.
2. Portion control is completely insane at your average family restaurant. It’s just about right at high-end eateries where, ironically, you’re paying more for considerably less food.
   “White salsa” is an abomination, and it will visit my nightmares for years to come. It’s like Miracle Whip with taco mix or something, and it’s best handled by the Environmental Protection Agency, though I have no idea how they’d develop adequate disposal protocols.
3. When drinking with a former resident of New Orleans, don’t be foolish enough to try and keep pace. You can’t. But if you insist on trying, make sure and take some aspirin both before and after and drink lots of water.
4. Sitting at the counter of a restaurant instead of at a table can result in interesting conversations. We sat next to the sommelier of the Queen Mary II during lunch one day in Charleston, S.C., and while we were unable to fully explain to him what grits are, he was happy to gossip about the gigantic ship.
5. We started the trip at a randomly selected North Carolina beach, and when the name would come up later in the trip, everyone would refer to it as “very family oriented” in a slightly hushed, frightened tone. We could tell they were wondering how in the hell we wound up there and how we made it out with our sanity intact.
6. Water conservation is all well and good, but I will find you completely moronic if you have a sign in the yard of your beach house espousing the virtues of water conservation right next to the automatic sprinklers that are running in the middle of a thunderstorm. And I will also wish you had a basement so it could flood.
7. Wilmington, N.C., is a really pleasant little down and made for a great day trip to get away from the very family oriented beach. If you’re ever down in the historic district on the water and need lunch, go to the wine bar. They have great salads and little tapas-y type plates, but with a French feel.
8. Charleston is one of the best locations we’ve found for gaping at houses we’ll never be able to afford but covet all the same.
9. I’m shocked by the lack of interesting miniature golf courses in the Carolina coastal region.
10. In the interest of following the “try something new during every vacation” rule, we stayed at a bed & breakfast while in Asheville, N.C. While it wasn’t a particularly unpleasant experience, it confirmed for us that we aren’t B&B people. We like big, anonymous hotels, preferably with no military history.
11. Asheville is kind of charming, but it plays fast and loose with the terms “gallery,” “antique,” and “folk art.”

We were getting a little stir crazy by Monday, so we decided to go see a movie. My partner flatly refuses to see X-Men: The Last Stand, I’ve done my damnedest to spare myself The Da Vinci Code, we figured Over the Hedge would be mobbed with jabbering children, and next to no inducement could get either of us to see Tom Cruise in anything, so that pretty much left Poseidon.

It’s hardly The Poseidon Adventure, so blissfully stupid that it spawned an entire genre of “star”-studded disaster movies, but there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours in a movie theatre. Fondness for the original is actually a bonus in this instance, because I had fun seeing which character types got updated and integrated into the new survivors.

Richard Dreyfuss gets the Red Buttons lonely-hearts gig, though he’s old and gay, so he has no Carol Lynley to offer the prospect of romance if he survives. Mia Maestro partially fulfills Lynley duty, dragged quivering from peril to peril in one of the more credible displays of post-disaster behavior the movie offers. She also has a bit of Shelly Winters to her, what with a promise to a child to uphold as incentive to swim her way to freedom. Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas play mix-and-match with some of the qualities of Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine, though both are generically aesthetically superior to their predecessors. (Russell, oddly enough, seems to base his performance more on the dignity-amidst-the-rubble theatrics of Charlton Heston, one of the few members of the Irwin Allen Players not to appear in The Poseidon Adventure. Though I’m grateful no one decided to use Hackman’s performance as a model for their work in Poseidon.)

Another fun diversion the movie offers is noting which more expensive actors the casting director would have liked. Can’t afford Anne Hathaway? Call Emmy Rossum. Is Matthew McConaughey out of your price range? Lucas isn’t! John Leguizamo locked into a one-man show during filming? Freddie Rodruigez is free! In such straits that none of the go-to plucky single moms are available? May I introduce you to Jacinda Barrett, who will remind you of several of them simultaneously? Need that trademark Dillon family magic for your obnoxious douche? Kevin will step in if Matt declines.

Speaking of the obnoxious douche, I was relieved to see that the filmmakers chose to distill all that into the one character, Dillon’s “Lucky Larry.” (Har! Disaster irony!) Usually there are two or three deeply obnoxious bits of cannon fodder, so this almost indicates restraint. Dillon tries his best to wear out his welcome, hamming it up to a level that would make Earthquake’s Richard Chamberlain blush, but circumstances happily intervene.

And Wolfgang Petersen does a perfectly serviceable job of keeping things moving. The ship flip is genuinely chaotic, and there was one scene so claustrophobic that I almost had to avert my eyes. I kind of wish he’d shown more of a sense of humor, though. The early scenes begged to have odds of survival flash across the screen when each character is introduced, though I guess such numbers are fairly intuitive at this point. If the character is white, straight, and won’t sully the gene pool too much if they procreate, you can be fairly sure they’ll make it to the closing credits. (Sorry, just about everyone else!)

But really, if it’s broiling out, and you’re sick of being cooped up at home, and you can catch it during a matinee, go see Poseidon! You won’t regret it as much as some of the alternatives.

Today is the last day to submit nominations for MangaCast’s new awards program.

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If you’re in Toronto on Saturday, you probably want to attend this event. And if you do attend this event, please pass along my thanks to Bryan Lee O’Malley for the scrapbooking joke in Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, which just might be the thing that convinces my partner that there are graphic novels even he’d enjoy. Picking a favorite line from that book is kind of like picking the prettiest flower in the cutting garden, but come on… scrapbooking.

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Time is running out to enter Comic Book Galaxy’s First Second contest, where you could win a complete set of :01’s spring line of graphic novels and other nifty items. Entries must be received by 11:59 PM on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006.

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And you can still win free comics from Dave Carter at Yet Another Comics Blog in his second observation of Free Comic Book Month.

Ed Chavez at MangaCast is taking the bull by the horns and starting a manga awards program:

“Sure Kodansha, Shogakukan and others can have their own fun dishing out awards left and right but that’s all the way across the ocean. And the Eisners don’t have a manga award. So why not hand one out of our own at the biggest comic and manga con in the US?!”

Chavez is looking for nominations in the following categories:

• Best Publisher
• Best Manga Series
• Best Short
• Best Global Manga
• Special Award (for the most important thing that happened to manga in the last year

Deadline for nominations is May 26.

(Found via MangaBlog, but reposted here because Chavez is right. It sounds like a cool idea.)

Sure, nothing else on offer this week can quite inspire the same level of enthusiasm as the arrival of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness (Oni), but since you’re going to be at the comic shop anyways…

You should probably run over to The Comics Journal’s site and save a copy of Michael Dean’s piece on the Taki Soma/Charles Brownstein incident so you can see what gets redacted from the print version when TCJ #276 arrives tomorrow. (I’m still breathlessly awaiting the results of Buzzscope’s investigation into the incident.)

If you aren’t getting your fill of shinigami in Death Note (Viz – Shonen Jump Advanced), Seven Seas offers Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator. The book is part of the publisher’s first foray into licensed manga. I like Seven Seas president Jason DeAngelis’s views on the development:

“The best way for us to stand out from the crowd is to focus on quality over quantity. We plan to give our licensed works the same sort of love of the medium and attention to quality as we have with our original properties.”

Brigid has reviewed Boogiepop Doesn’t Laugh over at MangaBlog, and the series sounds intriguing.

Do I stick with the floppies or wait for the trade? That’s the question with Peter David’s X-Factor (Marvel), which hits issue #7 and offers a reasonable opportunity to change over. I’m enjoying the book so far, and I buy so few floppies these days that it makes for a nice change. If I see a big Civil War logo on the cover, I’m headed for TPB City.

There won’t be an installment of Flipped this week. I’ll probably be taking the occasional week off over the summer months to recharge and catch up with other life stuff that’s been falling by the wayside. Those weeds aren’t going to pull themselves out of the ground, y’know.