Fight! Fight!

The Tenjho Tenge firestorm continues to grow. Shawn @ Worlds Within Worlds does a fine job of rounding everything up and I'm particularly amused that Jake Tarbox's DC/Wildstorm/CMX headquarters is right in my own backyard (La Jolla, CA). Hell, I could stroll down there and give him a piece of my mind in person if I wanted to. With ICv2 reports on the censorship as well, iterating most of what's been said in various places. The newly formed FIGHT: DC CMX website establishes itself as "the unofficial campaign site to convince DC CMX to release the manga as originally released in Japan, with no censoring or edits made to the artwork."

Well, congrats, CMX. Looks like you've finally made your big splash in the manga world. Though probably not in the way originally intended.

And here's what would normally be a first-paragraph news item: a man being arrested for importing child-porn manga. ANN also has some of the coverage from the Edmonton Journal: "[the Internet Child Exploitation team in Edmonton] searched a house on Edmonton's south side on Feb. 10 and found 78 books containing thousands of pages of explicit pictures, commonly known as anime.... anime has been given a black eye from a perverted offshoot of the industry called Hentae[sic]." To which I say, journalism has been given a black eye by writers who still can't tell the difference between manga and anime.

Love Manga trots out more awesome charts! It's remarkable that American-made Megatokyo is holding such a high position against is Japanese kin. Do people seriously think the comic is all that good, or are they just driven by the whole Piro fandom thing?

Tania del Rio, who brought "manga style" to Archie comics via Sabrina the Teenage Witch, will take on Josie and the Pussycats for her next project. I guess that makes this manga experiment a success.

Where fighting is okay, but boobies are NOT!

ListerX catches every single edit made in CMX's release of Tenjho Tenge Vol. 1. ANN picks up the news and the forums throw a very justified conniption. Honestly, I'm disappointed in CMX. Why not just do what all the other publishers do for mature titles -- shrinkwrap?!

I like to support new resources for comickers, so here's Comic Foundry, a site where creators and would-be creators can mingle, pick up tips, and generally discuss the fine art of comic-making.

ANN notes that, not surprisingly, most manga is sold through bookstores and not the direct market. But it looks like Tokyopop is now going to make a push for the DM. As Immelda @ LM notes, "Surely if Manga can live in both markets, we could see comics break back out of it's secluded market into the clear light of day...... ?" And who knows, a better manga presence at direct market stores could also cause some manga readers to cross over into non-Japanese material, which can only result in a better, more balanced comics readership overall.

Thank God it's yaoi Thursday! Courtesy of PoMoBa.

And from MNS (no permalink), Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo -- which was adapted into the headache-inducing anime series Gankutsuou -- is now going to be a manga too.

100% authentic editing

Love Manga notes that CMX has made edits to the boobs-and-fighting series Tenjho Tenge. AoD forumites are up in arms, for truly, a manga without front-cover pantyshots is scarcely a manga at all.

I'm truly curious as to what this BECK videogame is going to entail. Does Yukio go around beating up rocker villains with a guitar ... ? (Anyone, please feel free to give me a rough translation.)

March Lions

ICv2 reports that graphic novel sales were up 25% for 2004. You get three guesses which subsection of graphic novels grew fastest, and the first two don't count.

Publisher eigoMANGA declares March to be "Manga Month," or apparently, "direct market month."

With the partnership with Diamond Distribution during "Manga Month", eigoMANGA will supply an exclusive line of its manga publications, RUMBLE PAK and SAKURA PAKK only to comic book stores as well as encouraging manga fans to form relationships with their local comic book retailers as well as empowering them with the ability to request and order their favorite manga publications through comic book retailers.

CEO Austin Osueke makes grandiose proclamations about the media chain-store market vs. the direct market. David @ Love Manga picks apart aforementioned proclamations.

Just so you know, I saw eigoMANGA's "Rumble Pak" No. 4 at Tower Records a while back, and it still looks like some guy is printing them right off his inkjet and stapling them together at home. You can even see the pixelation!

From Manga Jouhou comes a brief history of manga, and while this one's not on the Frederick L. Schodt level, it's surely a good way to kill 10-15 minutes.

Florida-based Metrocon, an anime, manga & Japanese pop culture convention, has secured Lupin III creator Monkey Punch as a Guest of Honor. Now there's a cool guy if there ever was one.

I would get the Nickelodeon Mag "All-Comics Issue" for the names alone. Shouldn't be too hard to find it in the supermarket ...

Into the future

AoD reports a ton of new solicitations and release dates (scroll down) for the next few months. I'm not going to list them all, but some of the highlights include:
CMX - Gals! Vol. 2, 06/01. Haven't even checked out the first volume yet, but I hear this is a highly lauded shoujo comedy.
Del Rey - The injury of CLAMP's primary illustrator doesn't seem to have slowed things down much, as Tsubasa Vol. 7 is slated for 10/25 and xxxHOLiC Vol. 6 for 09/27 (remarkable since I'm not even aware of how soon that same Vol. 6 comes out in Japan).
DR Master - Iron Wok Jan like the crazy (04/11, 06/10, 08/12) and my personal pet favorite that isn't actually a very good comic, but is just plain cute: Stellvia* Vol. 1 on 07/11.
Tokyopop - Blame! Vol. 1 on 08/05; there's been some buzz about this one.

Help out a fellow blogger: publishers and those in the know about the industry, lend Franklin some expert opinions as he writes a manga column for his newspaper.

ANN chats with Range Murata, the man behind the highly-anticipated Robot anthology. He actually only discusses his work on the Last Exile anime, but you can get some insight on his approach to character design, and, well, just being an artist.

And YES! Next chapter of Yuuto!

*Scanlators AnimeWaves, who were working Stellvia until it got licensed, have been nice enough to finish up the first volume so you can at least get a preview -- but you'll need IRC to get the later chapters until they make it downloadable via other means. And remember, if you like what you see, be sure to buy the actual Vol. 1 when it comes out.