A few links making the rounds related to the health of various sectors of the comics business.

§ In Boston, while book industry sales are “in freefall”, comics sales are strong enough to support new retail outlets:

They couldn’t find a single financial backer willing to risk a penny on a comic book store, but the pair knows something about their kind: namely, that comic book fans, who number more adults than kids these days, are serious about their reading material. Look no further than the man who posted a comment on the store’s Facebook page praising the recommendations of the “in-house sommelier.’’ Reed has faith that the business, which has seen heady peaks (hello, Stan Lee) and crushing lows (television nearly wiped it out half a century ago), is poised for another revival.

§ Meanwhile, in Japan as the above scary chart shows, this writer believes the manga industry is in “Dire straits.” In the above chart, magazines sales (red) are plunging, while tankōbon sales (blue) are flat:

The very notion that the health of a medium can be measured by the number of blockbusters it produces is itself increasingly obsolete – in music, books and other media, markets are increasingly centred on the so-called “long tail,” with modern distribution allowing vast numbers of niche titles to be economically supported where before only a few very popular titles could ever find commercial success. Having low or high sales is thus not a measure of how “good” a title is, but instead merely reflects the size of the particular niche a product serves.

§ Meanwhile, Canadian Business magazine salutes the success of Drawn & Quarterly:

While Oliveros is reluctant to claim credit, D&Q was pivotal in that transition. Its titles were lavishly, lovingly produced, and mainstream media outlets took breathless notice of this blurring of publishing boundaries. In 2004, The New York Times noted D&Q’s (along with its closest competitor, Seattle’s Fantagraphics’s) role in shaping the renaissance of the comic book form. Crossover success was concomitant: the titles started to appear in traditional bookstores where, suddenly, every self-respecting independent and chain devoted a section to graphic novels, and major publishing houses started getting into the game. D&Q’s fastest bestseller, Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, an improbable “comic strip biography” of the controversial 19th-century Métis leader, sold 10,000 copies in its first season, and to date has sold more than 36,000, more than most bestselling books in Canada. Publishers Weekly called it a “major achievement.”

Those of you savvy enough to predict that a planned adaptation of the OLD BOY manga by Steven Spielberg and Will Smith was extremely unlikely to ever be made were RIGHT ON THE MONEY, Latino Review reports. Yet, it was not the idea of two of America’s most beloved filmmakers adapting a bleak, violent, disturbing tale of torture and vengeance that did the movie in, but a squabble between Mandate Films and DreamWorks.

Somehow, we can’t help but feel that the world will sleep a little sounder tonight.

According to Drawn & Quarterly’s blog, the next gekiga artist we need to pay attention to is Imiri Sakabashira. He’s also been published in Vice, so that should give a little idea of what to expect. Can’t wait!

Ever since the manga revolution hit American shores, comics industry observers have been writing for parents to catch on to the fact that their kids are reading stories about passionate gay love affairs and teachers seducing their students, and a full-on book burning crusade taking place.

Fortunately, that hasn’t happened. Outcry has been limited to isolated incidents where parents found out their kids were reading something beyond their age-appropriate level; there have been a few library board meetings, a few local TV news stories, but nothing approaching a movement.

And the latest incident will probably end up the same way. A father in Salisbury, MD was surprised to find his son reading DRAGONBALL Z by the great Akira Toriyama, and, after complaints, the school library pulled the book. Although DRAGONBALL has been shown on American TV and was the subject of a secret movie earlier this year, it was the sexual content that the dad found objectionable:

In one, the protagonist, a young boy, pats the covered crotch area of a sleeping teenage girl before removing her panties. The same boy later appears naked in the bathtub and is naked when he performs flying jump kicks.

In another scene, a Peeping Tom watches a naked teenage girl as she takes a shower. Furthermore, the novel shows a teenage girl flashing a bearded man; and another man asking a girl about her bra size.

The book, published by Viz, is rated T for Teen, and that sounds pretty saucy, but as J. Caleb Mozzocco reports, it’s not quite as bad as an ad for GIRLS GONE WILD:

If you’ve read Toriyama’s Dragon Ball comics, you’re no doubt familiar with the scenes in question (Yamcha’s the peeping tom, Bulma’s the girl and Master Roshi is the bearded man). You might also be scratching your head that this is something that even needs discussed at the level of a county government.

Goku is drawn with the body of a Valentine’s Day cherub, and while he’s occasionally nude, it’s the innocent nudity of naïve childhood. His penis is drawn on the page here and there, and it consists quite literally of two semi-circles. Fourth-graders will see more detailed male nudity in your average book of renaissance art then in Dragon Ball….The peeping scene could be considered sexual, as could a later scene where Bulma flashes the panties-obsessed Master Roshi (readers just see her butt) but there’s nothing even vaguely sexual about a Mowgli-like little orphan boy who lived his whole life in the woods running around naked here.

In short, this wasn’t quite the smoking gun you’d think. Mozzocco includes scans such as this:

And that’s about the same level of nudity as you will find in an average Go Daddy ad.

Simon Jones has more:

The early volumes of Dragonball did have a great deal of sexual (or I guess, what puritanical individuals would percieve as sexual) comedy, much of which actually played on Goku’s complete and utter naivete of gender roles and boundaries; Bulma’s no-pants flash and constant incontinence, Goku’s predisposition for free-balling, Roshi’s dirty old man persona, and a certain memorable match in the first tournament come to mind. But disgusting? Imagine if some of the more risque Bugs Bunny cartoons were made today. Would Holloway say they promoted transvestism, bestiality, and sexual sadism (re: Little Red Riding Rabbit)?

The wait is over as Calvin Reid  finally confirms Kodansha’s entry into the US Market:

After years of speculation about its plans, Kodansha, the largest publisher in Japan and a prolific manga licensor to U.S. publishers, is establishing an office in New York City to publish and sell manga directly in the U.S. market beginning this month. The new line of manga will be called Kodansha Comics, which will be published under Kodansha USA Publishing and distributed by Random House.

Kodansha USA Publishing is headed by Yoshio Irie, v-p and board member at Kodansha, and general manager Tomoko Suga, a familiar figure in the U.S. manga market and U.S. comics conventions through Kodansha’s relationship with Random House. Kodansha Comics will launch with two classic manga titles, the postapocalyptic sci-fi epic Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo and the metaphysical sci-fi police thriller Ghost in the Shell by Shirow Masamune. The two series have been published in the U.S. by Dark Horse Books, and both offer an extended array of multimedia franchises that include animated films, video games, prose novels, merchandising and more.

According to the piece, Kodansha will continue to work with a number of its licensed publishers.

Kodansha is Japan’s largest publisher, and their huge line of manga had been variously licensed to Dark Horse, TokyoPop and Del Rey.The confirmation of the move — which has been evident for over a year, since the Tokyopop and Dark Horse licenses were ended then — marks the beginning of what could be a major player in the American GN scene.

The full transcript of the interview with Irie will appear in tomorrow’s PW Comics Week.

We’re hearing that the New York Anime Fest was a big hit. Lance Fensterman, who runs the show, reports:

Saturday was by far the most insanely busy day in the history of the New York Anime Fest. Unbelievable numbers of people. But even with the crowds, we managed to count them all and this year’s attendance including fans, professionals, press, guests/speakers but NOT exhibiting staffers was 21,388! Woot! That’s a 16% increase over last year’s 18,399.That’s an awesome number of otaku roaming the aisles, sitting in panels and dancing all over the Javits Center this weekend.

The fantasy economy is strong!

We haven’t done a scientific blog scan, but this, from one Jack Shippo seemed to be representative:

And packed it was. The amount of attendees for Saturday was nearly triple the amount on Friday from what I could see (My brain hurts from lack of sleep so my estimation skills are weak right now). Compared to Friday though, the con was really fun! The day started with walking around the dealers room jumping from shiny object to shiny object to cheap object to overly priced object I dreamed of having (Yay for A.D.D!) and deciding to waste money or not. This was easy because there was hardly anything that really drew my attention in the dealers room that I could afford, only things I really bought were a gashapon Witch Yuki (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) figure and a gashapon Yoko Kurama figure (Yu Yu Hakusho). The dealers room was pretty crowded during the day but it wasn’t crowded to the point of not being able to breathe all the time. It did get unbearable in certain areas though, and smelly too….

The strong attendance is despite the show having relatively few vendors and becoming more of a social occasion for con-goers. Next year, the NYAF will be held concurrently with New York Comic-Con, a situation which will doubtless bring new challenges.

Yamila Abraham, the publisher of Yaoi Press and a frequently quoted manga industry observer, has been indicted on seven counts of mail fraud, one count of misbranding a drug, one count of introducing goods into domestic commerce by means of false statement and criminal forfeiture for selling “Snurf.” The drug was billed as an “herbal alternative” to street drugs, but actually contained DXM, (dextromethorphan hydrobromide), a stimulant found in over-the-counter cough syrup. Arrested and indicted in Las Vegas, authorities say Abraham sold as many as 20,000 pills via mail order.

Abraham later posted to the Yaoi Press blog saying that while she was not allowed to talk about the ongoing investigation, she wanted to let readers know that Yaoi Press would continue in business:

Please keep a cool head, and have faith. This situation is not going to end Yaoi Press. Don’t believe the hype.

However, Yaoi Press survives on our convention income. A great portion of that income comes from those shows where I make personal guest appearances. You would think that if a show is willing to put the author of the Trach the Tentacle monster stories on their guest-list they aren’t too concerned with her reputation.

[snip] I will be at OtakuMex this weekend. Yes, I really will! You can also meet me at the Hollywood Book Fair on October 4th, then Anime St. George October 10th. I’m seriously looking forward to Yaoi Con October 30th.

There are no cancellations. I will be at these shows. I should have panels at them all. People may ask me about this situation. I probably won’t be able to answer them. I’m hoping for a fast resolution, but the sky started falling over 3 years ago, in 2006! If it’s taken this long to drop I’m not hopeful about this being over with fast.

We’d like to echo what Deb Aoki wrote:

A gentle reminder to readers: This indictment only means that charges were filed against Abraham, and it is not evidence of guilt. She’s innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. As she mentions in her statement, she will be continuing business as usual at Yaoi Press and will be honoring her convention appearance commitments. However, understandably, she will not be able to answer questions about these pending charges at her upcoming appearances.

Very sad news out of Japan as the body of manga-ka Yoshito Usui was found over the weekend. Usui, 51, had left the house on September 11th, telling his family he was going hiking on Mt. Arafune. When he did not return by nightfall, his wife alerted the police. Over the past weekend a body matching Usui’s description was found at the base of a cliff, and family members and dental records ID’d the body. Usui is believed to have fallen off a steep part of the trail.

Usui was the creator of Crayon Shin-Chan, an extremely popular manga that sold 25 million copies of its first volume in Japan, and has been translated into dozens of languages and spawned an equally popular cartoon. Often called the “Bart Simpson of Japan”, the strip concerns five-year-old Shin Nohara and his uncensored behavior which drives his parents to tears at times. Usui’s art is in the simpler, more underground style of manga, and while the stories are often crude — one of Shin’s most notorious pranks involves drawing an elephant around his penis — they have universal verve and biting humor that has successfully survived translation — it has many of the same virtues (although the content is very different) as other great darkly humorous kid’s comics like Little Lulu and the work of Toriyama.

Crayon Shin-Chan is currently being published by CMX, and the cartoon aired on Adult Swim for a while (with dialoging by Evan Dorkin, no less!) Although it’s a cult strip here in the US, in some parts of Europe it’s extremely popular — it’s so well-known in Spain that Usui created a special episode where Shin-chan goes to Barcelona.

ANN reports that two more episodes of the strip which Usui finished before his death await publication. New episodes of the anime were also set to air in October, but their timing is being discussed.

• Katherine Dacey wonder what’s happening at DrMaster, and the evidence is not encouraging:

Over at the ANN forums, site user Facesforce speculates that DrMaster is on the verge of shutting down. He notes that several vendors have been unable to reach the company about overdue shipments, and points out that DrMaster has not released any new books or made any announcements since May, when the company ceased posting updates on Twitter. He adds that the company’s customer service number has been disconnected — not a good sign. While I haven’t read much from the DrMaster catalog — just Iron Wok Jan and Metro Survive — I’m always disappointed to learn that a publisher has folded. More publishers means a greater variety of titles, and a greater number of niche audiences served. Let’s hope the rumor is just that: a rumor.

We’d noted that we hadn’t gotten a review package from DrMAster in months and months, and with so much of the manga/anime market in flux, one is right to worry. At least they finished IRON WOK JAN!

• McSweeney’s is planning its own newspaper-style supplement— call it “Sundays” —and it will include comics by the usual geniuses:

Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time-only, Sunday-edition sized newspaper—the San Francisco Panorama. It’ll have news (actual news, tied to the day it comes out) and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there.

• In all the hoopla, you may have missed the news that Rich Johnston is now Avatar’s Foreign Rights Manager. He reports that FREAK ANGELS is hot property:
As Avatar’s new Foreign Rights Manager (no, seriously), it’s also one of the most in-demand titles at Avatar, and I helped conduct a bidding war over the French rights last week, the winner committing to the first five volumes, even though only the first two have been published (the third any day now). This week, Italy. So what’s all the fuss about?

Another popular book series is being adapted into comics form, this time The Clique, by Lisi Harrison, a #1 New York Times bestselling series in the Gossip Girl-ish vein. Yen Press will publish a manga version illustrated by Yishan Li in July 2010.

With nearly 8 million copies sold and a popular feature film from Warner Bros. and Executive Producer Tyra Banks out on DVD, THE CLIQUE (called “Sartre with lip gloss” by Time magazine), is set at Westchester County’s most exclusive girls’ private middle school, and it exactly captures the super-pressured environment in which today’s teenagers compete in every way to be the “best”. Through these endlessly entertaining stories readers live vicariously (and often, hilariously) through the lives of the memorable “Pretty Committee” where the only thing harder than getting in is staying in. 

Kurt Hassler, Publishing Director of Yen Press, says “THE CLIQUE has been an absolute phenomenon in the young adult publishing world, and Yen Press is extremely grateful to be able to work on this visual adaptation of Lisi’s story. It’s exciting to be able to work on a project like this that has such amazing potential to introduce a new generation of young female readers to the medium of comics.”

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Alarming news out of Japan as Crayon Shin-chan creator Yoshito Usui has been missing since Friday. and his wife and police are extremely concerned. Usui, 51, went hiking by himself for the day, something he did often, and hasn’t been heard from since.

Crayon Shin-chan is often described as the “Bart Simpson” of Japan and is currently published by CMX here in the States. The cartoon has also aired on Adult Swim.

In other sad news, Kenji Nakazawa has announced he can no longer draw as a result of cataracts. This has ended plans for a sequel to his seminal Barefoot Gen.

In the planned Barefoot Gen sequel, atomic bomb survivor Gen would have moved to Tokyo to become a manga assistant in hopes of becoming a regular artist — much like Nakazawa himself did. Nakazawa planned to depict the prejudice against atomic bomb survivors. He would have concluded the story by having Gen embark on a trip to France to study art. Nakazawa had already drawn two installments of the sequel and decided on a publisher. He apologized to his readers who have been waiting for over two decades for the story of Gen’s coming-of-age in Tokyo.

Nakazawa’s Gen and autobiographical I Saw It are not only searing retellings of post atomic bomb Japan but among the earliest manga to gain critical acclaim in the United States. A new edition of Barefoot Gen was recently published by Last Gasp.

The Biggest News Week Ever in Comics ® continues with news that ADV, a leading provider of anime films and, for a while, manga, has been broken up and reassembled as four new companies, three set up by Griffin D. Vance, ADV’s former SVP Business & Legal Affairs, and one of them run by former ADV marketing director Mike Bailiff. (Former ADV staffer Chris Oarr has moved to the new company.)

The story is a hard one to track, as it unfolded yesterday over several anime news sites. ICv2 has the most concise accounting:

Longtime anime producer A.D. Vision, Inc., announced today that it had sold key assets to four companies, which will continue in inter-related businesses. Film library assets and other intellectual property were sold to AEsir Holdings; account servicing and distribution operations were sold to SXION 23 (aka Section 23); Anime Network to Valkyrie Media Partners; and Amusement Park Media (ADV’s production unit) to Seraphim Studios. It appears that all of these new entities were created to house ADV assets and did not exist before the transaction.

ANN has a further breakdown that was updated as new info became available. Among the developments, that the Anime Network, which makes anime available as a streaming internet channel, will continue business as usual.

Robert at Anime Corner talks to Bailiff:

UPDATE: Just got off the phone with Mike Baliff, formerly of ADV Films who is now heading up Sales and Marketing at the new company Section 23 Films. Section 23 has acquired all of ADV’s former licenses and most of the staff (including Chris Oarr, Destiny, Michelle, everyone formerly at ADV that mattered), and is picking up distribution of all former ADV titles, so the DVD’s will remain available and our orders will just be processed and filled by the new company. That means the changeover will be pretty much transparent to you guys. This includes pre-order items in the pipeline but not yet released. They will still be coming out, and the schedule will not change. We’ll be updating our catalog over the next few days to reflect Section 23 as the new distributor of ADV’s (former) titles. I also think it’s worth mentioning that John Ledford is not part of the new company.

And what does ALL this mean? ANN’s Christopher Macdonald has an editorial that basically explains it all. it’s a bit too complicated to paraphrase — much of it goes back to ADV’s deal with the Japanese company Sojitz, a deal which went sour and left ADV without a lot of the films it had licensed and financially hobbled.

The REALLY REALLY short version is that ADV has been broken up, Tim Geithner-style, into a “bad anime distribution company” and several “good anime distribution companies”. The old ADV carries the debts and obligations while the four new companies contain all the good assets and can go forward.

ADV was for a while a fairly large manga publisher, with such lauded and popular titles as Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days, ARIA, Cromartie High School, Apocalypse Meow, Yotsuba&! and Gunslinger Girl. They had stopped publishing in recent years, and a few of the best licenses were picked up by other publishers, including Yotsuba&! at Yen press.

The move leaves yet another of the founding pioneers of anime in America, John Ledford, in limbo and his original company in the history books and not a thriving business. It’s in many ways similar to Central Park Media and John O’Donnell, which got caught up in the general decline of the DVD business in general and the anime business in particular, especially the 2006 bankruptcy of the Musicland chain.

The official announcement is under the cut.

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Likely top news if not for that other story yesterday, Brigid Alverson dropped the bombshell that manga giant Kodansha is letting its licenses with Tokyopop expire. It’s a huge story and as good a chance as any to look at a whole host of recent Tokyopop developments.

Brigid has TPop’s statement:

The Japanese publisher Kodansha, from whom TOKYOPOP has licensed many terrific series over the years — Chobits, Love Hina, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Rave Master, Initial D, Kindaichi, Life, GetBackers, and Love Attack, to name a few — has decided to let all existing contracts with TOKYOPOP expire on all manga series that they have licensed to us. As a result, Kodansha will not renew any licenses with TOKYOPOP for any new manga volumes. What does this mean? TOKYOPOP will not be allowed to complete the publication of any series that is currently in progress; in addition, TOKYOPOP will not be allowed to reprint titles after the current inventory has been sold out, so once these series are sold out at retail, they will not be available for consumers to purchase. The reasons for Kodansha’s decision were not communicated to TOKYOPOP.

We have received many emails and phone calls about titles related to this announcement, and given the nature of the negotiations, we could not definitely answer any of those questions until now. We love all of these series, and we are disappointed that we will not get to enjoy the outcome of some of our favorite manga. We hope to see these series completed some day…. However, if they are ever published again, they will not be published by TOKYOPOP.

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Chris Butcher runs down a truly awesome team-up between the great Moyoco Anno and Japanese cosmetics firm She Uemura.

If anyone has one of the press kits that they would like to send to someone who actually wears make-up, please let me know!

Even as Twilight campers were cleaning up after two days in the wilderness, an attempt at a Comic-Con reunion between Twilight stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson went awry after Stewart learned of his affair with Emilie de Ravin, tabs are saying. (de Ravin plays the erstwhile Claire on Lost.)

The duo had dallied during filming, but Stewart, 19, went back to her boyfriend, Michael Angarano, after a three hour limo ride back from Comic-Con together with uber-hunk Pattinson didn’t mend the rift that his time with de Ravin had caused. Sources say….OKAY, THAT’S ENOUGH.

BTW, how happy is Kurt Hassler now? He’s got a bonanza by the tale with that Twilight manga license. A few folks asked us how Yen Press landed this coup? The answer is simplicity itself: Yen is an imprint of the Twilight Saga’s prose publisher, Hachette.

Meanwhile, Female Force now includes best selling AUTHORS with this bio of Stephenie Meyer:

Publisher Stephen Robson describes the doings of the literary manga publisher:

Showcasing will be this year’s Eisner nominee The Quest For The Missing Girl by Jiro Taniguchi in which a mountaineer comes to Tokyo to search for his dead friend’s daughter. Come and cheer us on at the awards Friday night - or pass by Saturday morning with a hangover cure - whichever way the vote goes!
 
Our other banner title is a future release Years of the Elephant by Willy Linthout. This one is particularly close to my heart. Willy, totally unknown in North America, is an award winning comic artist in Belgium with over 130 titles in print and more than 10 million copies sold, mostly from a series about the zany adventures of a real-life stand up comic Urbanus. But this isn’t what we will be publishing - you know us better than that!
 
In 2004 Willy’s only child, a 21 year old son, Sam, committed suicide. Although fictionalised, this is the story of how Willy attempted to cope with the event and the rift it caused in his marriage.
 
Willy is scheduled to appear at SPX in September if you’re in the Bethesda area and will be signing copies there.
 
I will have a copy of the Ponent Mon Spanish edition for you to look at and touch plus some photocopies of Chapter One to take away so please remind me!
 
We have a new printer who we suspect will have done a stunning job of the first two titles entrusted to them. Because of the delay caused by losing our original printer, we are running a little behind our original schedule for 2009 and will only be able to bring a very small quantity in by airfreight for SDCC. These are:
 
A Distant Neighborhood vol. 1 by Jiro Taniguchi and
The Summit of the Gods vol. 1 by Yamemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi
 
These are two of the most amazing books I have worked on to date. Come and see why!

EW’s new book blog, SHELF LIFE, has the news that TWILIGHT, the insanely popular vampire series, is being adapted into a graphic novel. The book will be published through Yen Press, and Young Kim is the artist — with much input from author Stephanie Meyer.
This week’s EW will have exclusive excerpts of the comic. With Harry Potter author JK Rowling eschewing any spinoff media adaptations (except movies, video games and so on), TWILIGHT was next on the list of giant literary franchises ripe for GN expansion. With the manga style so popular with the target audience, this is a huge get for Yen.

What do you think? Will Twilight fans ruin comics the way they are ruining Comic-con?

Wow, here is a book we can’t wait to get our hands on, the story of early Everest explorer George Mallory by Yumemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi. The very real mystery of Mallory — last seen alive in 1924 nearing the summit of Everest, his frozen corpse discovered 70 years later minus the camera that could prove once and for all whether he made it to the top– is one of the great tales of adventure. Plus, Taniguchi is to drawing mountains what Jaime Hernandez is to drawing aging Latina punkers, so this is perfect casting.

PR:

85 years ago today, on JUNE 8, 1924 at 12.50pm, was the last time that George Herbert Leigh Mallory and his companion Andrew Irvine were seen alive. They were observed by the expedition geologist, Noel Odell, when the clouds parted briefly and allowed him a vision of the summit ridge and final peak of Mount Everest with the two tiny black specks moving towards the summit. Then the scene vanished and became enveloped in clouds once more. They never returned. There has been much speculation as to whether they ever reached the summit and were on their way down when disaster struck.

Almost seventy years later in 1993, with Mallory’s body still undiscovered on the mountain, a Japanese expedition photographer, Makoto Fukamachi, stumbles across a 1920’s Kodak camera in a Kathmandu bazaar which sparks a whole series of questions with few answers.

The Summit of the Gods is an epic story of man and his personal conquests against his own limitations. No mountain is too high, no peak too distant in his pursuit of this passion for achievement.

But Taniguchi’s realistic art and Baku’s tireless script will take you to such heights that mountaineers only dream about!

Winner “Best Art” Award at Angouleme Festival, France (2005)

Winner “Excellence Prize Manga Division” at Japanese Ministry of Culture’s Media Arts Festival (2001)

George Mallory’s body is discovered on Everest’s North Face minus his Kodak (1999)

Original novel, Kamigami no Itadaki, winner of the prestigious 11th Shibata Renzaburo Award (1998)

§ Wired interviews Christopher Handley’s lawyer, Eric Chase, who explains what he was up against.

Chase says he recommended the plea agreement to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.”

The case began in 2006, when customs officials intercepted and opened a package from Japan addressed to Handley. Seven books of manga inside contained cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts. One book included depictions of bestiality, according to stipulations in Handley’s plea deal.

(Note: This confirms that it was Customs, not the Post Office, which opened the package,)

§ Manga expert Matt Thorn clarifies some of the language from his previous posts. There is no “literal gag order.” Also, Thorn, who lives in Japan, is attempting to find out what are the actual manga involved in the case, as that really seems to be the crux of the matter. Some descriptions of the material make it sound like out-and-out hentai type porn; others sound like yaoi/lolicon, where the characters may appear younger than they are.

And two from:

§ Brigid Alverson. FINDER, a gangster manga by Ayano Yamane, has been “indexed” in Germany, where it’s published by Tokyopop’s German arm. This means it’s been deemed “harmful to minors,” but apparently that has something to do with minors being able to buy it, unchecked. In the US, FINDER was published by BeBeautiful.

§ AND, Yamila Abraham on Yaoi Press reports that her printer refused to print a yaoi-themed coloring book calling the images “disturbing.”

“Because of the nudity of this file we are unable to print this for you. The order before this one should not have been printed but did slide by without us looking through the entire book.”

It doesn’t pay for us to throw tantrums over things like this. However, I feel they’ve made a mistake. The coloring book is 16+. There are side views of nude characters, but naughty bits are not visible. There are no sex scenes, but some images are suggestive that sex is coming. It didn’t even cross my mind that a printer might not agree to print it. I called and told them that the characters are all male. I think they might think the characters are female and we’re showing bare breasts.

The images can be seen in the link, so judge for yourself.

The 4thletter! blog spotlights a rare treat: HARUKU: MONSUTAA KOMIKU, a manga version of the Hulk published in 1970. The strip was written by Kazuo Koike (LONE WOLF AND CUB, and many, many others) with art by

Yoshihiro Morifuji

.

From what I and my lovely assistants managed to figure out of the story, it stars Dr. Araki, survivor of Hiroshima. Both of his parents died in the blast, and he’s come to Nevada to work on the gamma bomb. General Ross, Major Talbot, and Igor retain their names, but Rick Jones has been turned into Ricky Tenda. He’s got a Japanese mom and an American dad. Betty Ross is now Mitsuko, though Dr. Araki calls her Mitchan.

We feel that only seeing a few panels reveals a simple, salient fact: THE HULK WAS MADE FOR MANGA. It may be wishful thinking to hope this would ever come out in the US, but…Marvel! Heed our plea!

A lot of talk everywhere about Christopher Handley’s guilty plea for owning obscene material. As always, go to Brigid for the complete rundown, but a few call-outs.

§ Lawyer Jeff Trexler points out some very important facts, including the fact that because the case did not go to trial, it did not set a precedent. But he’s also frank about the realities:

Local counsel versus the CBLDF. The decision of local counsel to work for a plea bargain was not irrational. In fact, it reflects a sober assessment of the law and the underlying facts. The chance of success on the constitutional claim was slim, perhaps non-existent. Moreover, the manga images in question did not appear to be the sort of thing that an Iowa jury would find to have socially redeeming value. No matter how many manga experts or First Amendment scholars you bring into court, your average midwestern juror is not going to declare “graphic bestiality, including sexual intercourse, between human beings and animals such as pigs, monkeys, and others” to be a reflection of community standards.

Over at Japanator, someone claiming to be a friend of the Handley family is posting,

The list went on and on. The thing of it is, the four comics that started this whole mess, he didn’t even see what pictures were inside of it. At one point, they even tried to claim that he was a child molester (never at ANY time has Chris been inappropriate with a child. NEVER) They stated that they could prove that he had a thing for kids. They never found ANYTHING other than comics and drawings of anime. PERIOD. They claimed that since the females in the drawings had no pubic hair, then they must be minor children. Which is ridiculous. They tried to claim that he was a threat to society. He’s not a threat to anybody. He had told his sister that he was taking the plea for obscene materials, because that he was guilty of. But he was NOT guilty of obscene materials containing children. The “containing children” part was not told to him by his lawyer. I think Chris got screwed three ways to Sunday on this.

But you should take all that with a grain of salt.

After talking to a few people in the know about this case, it is important to stress in all of this is that Handley does not have a history of being any kind of sexual predator; he does not collect erotica, pornography or anything like it. He is a manga collector. As the poster above, whoever it is, points out, he is not a threat to anyone anywhere. He could be any one of us. Hopefully this plea bargain will get him less than 15 years in jail, because that would be a travesty of justice of sickening proportions.

The takeaway? It’s always a good time to support the CBLDF.

Hm, what were we just saying about the print/online shift? Even as they cancelled SHOJO BEAT, Viz has announced the launch of a new online seinen (young men’s) manga anthology, Ikki, which you can read right here.

Kai-Ming Cha gets the scoop.:

In the wake of the cancellation of its print Shojo Beat manga fan magazine, manga and anime publisher Viz Media will launch IKKI, a new online magazine venture that will be used as promotional vehicle and to launch new works and to solicit feedback on whether to release some titles in print. Named after the Japanese manga anthology of the same name that is published in print form, IKKI will feature similar material found in its Japanese counterpart publication.

In Japan, IKKI magazine serializes seinen manga which caters to young men ranging in age from their late teens to college age and beyond. The American version of IKKI will feature chapters of a variety of seinen manga, but much like their other popular print magazine, Shonen Jump, Viz editors will select the best content for the American audience.

It’s worth noting that the first lead feature is Daisuke Igarashi’s CHILDREN OF THE SEA, (above) a very unusual manga by a Tezuka Prize winning cartoonist that would definitely go more under the “indie” header here in the States. Very much worth checking out.

GIve it a try — it’s free!

Evelyn Dubocq at Viz is sending out the following statement regarding SHOJO BEAT, confirming that it is ending with the July 2009 issue.

Yes, the final issue of Shojo Beat magazine will be the July 2009 issue which is on newsstands June 16th.

We are very proud of the past issues of Shojo Beat magazine and the efforts of the entire team. The magazine developed quite a fan base but unfortunately in today’s difficult economic climate we felt the need to place our resources elsewhere at this time.

Of course all of our great shojo manga titles previously serialized in Shojo Beat magazine will still be published and available as graphic novels under the Shojo Beat imprint from VIZ Media.

Each Shojo Beat Subscriber will be receiving a free copy of the August issue of Shonen Jump magazine with the pertinent information on what their subscription/refund options will be.

Subscribers and fans of shojo manga can get the latest information on all new Shojo Beat titles and news by visiting www.shojobeat.com.

Over the last couple of years, many rumors have circulated about Japanese publishing giant Kodansha entering the US manga market. Anime Vice digs up some evidence that the time may be now:

Keen-eyed reader paploo points to his new blog, complete with a post featuring some interesting findings on Amazon.ca: Akira and Ghost in the Shell, both volumes one.

“Big deal!” you might say. “Dark Horse has had those for ages.” Ahhh, but there you would be missing the key: both titles are listed as being due from Kodansha Comics on October 13, 2009.

I haven’t found any such Kodansha titles on Amazon USA, but things have been known to appear on the Canadian site first in the past. Could it be that Dark Horse’s licenses are expiring? I rushed to my phone to try and call my contacts there before the work day was over at 5.

A Dark Horse rep confirmed that they would no longer be publishing these titles, so it looks like there’s a new player on the bench, one with some huge, huge titles in their catalog.

A key piece of Manga/Anime history slides into the sunset, as ICv2 reports that Central Park Media has filed Chapter 7. Many will remember CPM as one of the trailblazers of the anime (Patlabor, Uetna, Grave of the Fireflies) and manga fields, with manga titles like Record of Lodoss War and Slayers, as well as being an early adapter of the boys love genre with the Be Beautiful imprint. Things began to go bad in one of the early manga slumps, however, and after the manga/anime supporting retailer Musicland went bankrupt in 2006. There was talk of a comeback, but it never really made much of an impact and now the company has filed the bankruptcy of no return. (Chapter 11 and 13 bankruptcies allow for reorganization, but Chapter 7 means the company is completely disbanded.)

According to ICv2, CPM reports assets of $126,282 vs. secured liabilities of $908,173 and unsecured liabilities of $277,531. It’s a sad end for a company that did much to promote the rise of Japanese entertainment in the US.