Harem Potter rules all

In what is hardly a surprise, Negima Vol. 4 dominates the start of the year. What is a surprise is that the book was listed under BookScan's "Children's" category ... HUH? Meanwhile in the rest of the graphic novel section looks like:
1. Rurouni Kenshin Vol. 10
2. Fruits Basket Vol. 6
3. Imadoki Vol. 3
4. Hellsing Vol. 5
5. Rurouni Kenshin Vol. 9
6. DNAngel Vol. 5
7. Yu-Gi-Oh the Movie Ani-manga
8. Naruto Vol. 5
9. .hack//Legend of the Twilight Vol. 3
10. Saiyuki Vol. 6
11. Wallflower Vol. 2
14. Othello Vol. 2

Gaaaan! Doki doki! Comics aren't just for boys anymore! (Sorry, it had to be said. We seem to be getting an influx of these "ZOMG! Girls read manga!" articles lately.)

AoD reviews Samurai Executioner Vol. 2, the much-lauded prequel to Lone Wolf and Cub.

Taking stock of Tokyopop

Tokyopop is planning an IPO later this year ... but on the Japanese stock market.

Manga-ka and other writers in Japan are growing increasingly concerned about the rise of manga rental stores, which make things cheap for the reader but swipe the royalties out of the creators' hands.

And yay, I reviewed my favorite!

Of things to come

Active Anime looks at the new alt-manga anthology, Manga Mover -- a product that has its ups and downs.

ADV makes a really cool offer with their Cromartie High School floor display: Vol. 1 the CHS manga comes with a mini-DVD containing episodes 1 and 2 of the corresponding anime series. Let's hope the guys at my Local Comic Shop buy into it ...

The Comics Journal finally cries uncle and covers manga in the TCJ Special Edition. But c'mon guys, if the best name-dropping you can do is Suehiro Maruo and Hideshi Hino, maybe a visit to Kotonoha is in order.

For more mainstream tastes, there's King of Wolves coming out from Dark Horse pretty soon, written by the creator of Berserk and illustrated by the creator of Fist of the North Star. With a manly combination like that, it's got to be top-of-the-line hard-hitting adventure fare.

EDIT: Actually, it's the creator of Berserk doing the illustrations and the creator of Fist of the North Star writing.

And, holy crap you guys. FLIGHT VOL. 2.

The ONE PIECE of news that matters

Sorry, I've been busy tonight, so I haven't had time to go link-hunting, but the launch of Manga News Service is definitely the one thing that matters today. (And will probably render my blog useless.)

Short and semi-sweet

PreCur has some nice, snappy capsule manga reviews, and the comment section's gotten pretty interesting too. ;)

Dark Horse brings a typically American sales approach to manga with a 25-cent comic about Trigun's cross-toting antihero, Wolfwood.

Bullet-time News Day

AoD has a nice double-review of the complete X-Day (only two volumes long). And honestly, if the first thing you thought of was "huh? is that a Marvel title?" ... I don't know what to say.

Newly relaunched TokiDoki has an encouraging review of Yakitate!! Japan. "There are manga about bread making in which Brad Pitt and Péle make cameo appearances. And George W. Bush eats giant pretzels." I think that says it all.