Jason Thompson is back, manga-style, posting online updates to his seminal Manga: The Complete Guide (to which I contributed reviews) and giving away free manga. Check it out here.

I wrote a blog post on samurai manga for the Asian Art Museum here in San Francisco. I was a little surprised that more great samurai manga haven't been translated into English. Actually, Ooku doesn't have all that much samurai action, but I included it anyway because it's so boss.

I've got a new Comixology column up, part one in a three-part series about my trip to Tokyo. With photos!

Also, for the first time, the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award in Japan has resulted in a tie, and both winners are not only amazing manga, but available in English. Ooku, shonen-ai genius Fumi Yoshinaga's most ambitious yet sexy work to date, is published by Viz, and A Drifting Life, gekiga legend Yoshihiro Tatsumi's autobiographical story of the birth of the manga industry, is published by Drawn & Quarterly as the biggest damn one-volume manga you ever saw. If ever thou didst love the Overlooked Manga Festival, you need to read these two awesome mangas.

When I posted some scans from Noboru Ohshiro's Kasei Tanken back at the beginning of the month, I promised to scan pages from another Ohshiro manga. Then I got distracted by yarn and brightly-colored scraps of paper for about three weeks. But here it is at last: Yukaina Tekkôsho!



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I have here a copy of Kasei Tanken (A Voyage to Mars) by Noboru Ohshiro, and it is totally sweet. Published in 1940, which was, er, not a good time for the Japanese publishing industry, or indeed the Japanese anything, Ohshiro's one-volume opus has survived as one of the classics of early manga. If you were wondering what manga looked like before Tezuka, Kasei Tanken will give you an idea (answer: a lot like early American comic strips). It was one of the first manga to tell a complete self-contained story, one of the first manga with science-fiction themes, and one of the best-drawn manga of its time.

Also, have I mentioned that it's totally sweet and kicks your ass?



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Look! Back at last!

http://www.girlamatic.com/comics/mell.php

I haven't posted to LJ in a while, partly because Neil's been too busy with the lawyering to draw new Li'l Mell pages, and partly because I've been busy writing a book about CLAMP. Man, writing stuff takes forever.

In place of a proper post, here are RANDOM MANGA FACTS!

1. Back in their amateur days, CLAMP did fancomics based on Overlooked Manga Festival favorite JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, featuring the love child of male leads Jotaro Kujo and Noriaki Kakyoin. Fans have speculated that the CLAMP manga Wish is based on these fancomics, since the two leads in Wish look suspiciously like Jotaro and Noriaki. This is super awesome.

2. The creator of the manga Case Closed! was married for two years to the J-Pop singer who does the voice of Conan Edogawa in the anime. Wouldn't it be weird to be married to the person who plays your cartoon character? Especially if your character is a six-year-old boy? I probably shouldn't think too hard about this.

3. Manga Obama is poised to join The Parade of Manga Presidents, courtesy of Air Gear. I hope McCain has been alerted to the existence of a manga gap.

Manga Conquers America: The Whole Story

A Presentation by Jason Thompson

A Talk with the Author of Manga: The Complete Guide
and WIRED Magazine's "How Manga Conquered America"

Thursday, December 6, 2007
7:00pm to 9:00pm
At the Cartoon Art Museum
www.cartoonart.org

7:00 PM: Presentation by Jason Thompson
8:15 PM: Book signing
Both Events Free and Open to the Public

For some people, the manga boom in American bookstores may seem like it came out of nowhere—but actually, manga has been in the U.S. long enough for the first generation of fans to be grandparents. In the November 2007 issue of WIRED magazine, manga critic Jason Thompson took us back to 1963, when Astro Boy first appeared on U.S. television, and 1987, when the first manga made it to U.S. comic stores, to 2002, when the boom really took off. But did you know about the very first manga-influenced comics in America were published all the way back in the 1970s? Do you know the tragic tale of Raijin Comics, America's first attempt at a weekly manga magazine? Or the unsung dreamers who produced the first translated manga? And you haven't lived until you've experienced the Sailor Moon-meets-hip-hop stylings of MixxZine!

The Cartoon Art Museum proudly presents an evening with Jason Thompson, manga editor and author. In October, Del Rey released Thompson's Manga: The Complete Guide, an encyclopedia of 1200+ Japanese comics available in English, most of them reviewed by Thompson himself. Thompson will present an all-new, illustrated presentation on the history of manga in America, with material never before seen in English, followed by a Q&A about the manga market in America, how manga is licensed and edited, and his own experiences in the industry. Thompson will be signing Manga: The Complete Guide. Other Manga: The Complete Guide contributors will also be present. Whether you're a manga newbie or a diehard fujoshi or otaku, it'll be a manga-studded evening which will expand your mind like you've been punched by Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star!

About Jason Thompson

Jason Thompson has over ten years' experience as a manga editor, producing the English editions of titles such as The Drifting Classroom, Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z, Hana-Kimi, One Piece, Shaman King, YuYu Hakusho and Uzumaki. As the first editor of VIZ Media's SHONEN JUMP magazine, he helped launch Japan's #1 bestselling manga magazine in America. His writings on manga appear regularly in Otaku USA magazine, and have also appeared in The Comics Journal, PULP and Animerica. His webcomic The Stiff is available at www.girlamatic.com.