News, reviews and features with a focus on manga, self-published works and a Canadian perspective. Enjoy fulfilling your Kuriousity!
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This week’s On The Shelf went up a couple days early but that just means more time to plot and plan your manga buying trip tomorrow! Sailor Moon (Vol.04) is an easy decision for top pick but I can’t ignore all those new boys’ love books either. The full list for this week’s shipping manga is available over at Otaku USA – enjoy!
I was a bit late picking up my Previews magazine this month so my apologies to the two of you who were wondering where the heck my second installment of Previews was (I kid! …don’t I?). So here I am taking advantage of that extra day – Happy Leap Day! This month’s previews didn’t have as much manga content as January’s but still lots of fun stuff to look forward to and order in at our local comic stores.
February 2012 Manga Previews Checklist (PDF)
You may continue reading at your own discretion for my thoughts, elaborations, random pictures and the Top 10 Selling Manga of December 2011 and Diamond Comics top selling manga of all 2011!
New Wednesday! New comics! The shipment’s a bit light this week but three of the four titles are some of my favourite currently running series – Sailor Moon (Vol.03), Arisa (Vol.06) and Afterschool Charisma (Vol.05). Huzzah! You can see the full list of titles and read a bit about the volumes over at my On The Shelf article at Otaku USA.
This week some places also got shipments of Yen Press‘s big batch releases for the month. Diamond Comics is still behind on their shipments from Yen Press but you’ll see their slew of titles on next week’s list including the first volume of their new series, Durarara!. Look forward to it!
Diamond Comics is North America’s largest comic book distributor. If you have a local comic store in your area, it’s very likely they get their books from them. Every month Diamond releases a giant magazine, Previews, containing all the products they have – from comics, manga, DVDs and merchandise – that will be released starting in about two months’ time, giving retailers and buyers the chance to put their orders in before shipping dates.
I’ve been picking up the Previews magazines for years, oogling all the different books coming out from publishers and wondering how long until the stacks of Preview magazines I’ve yet to get rid of will crush me in my sleep. Starting now I’ll be writing about the different manga content published in Previews each month here on Kuriousity. This includes all the manga titles listed, the top Manga sellers as tracked by Diamond and mention of other things of interest I spot. With the small two month window, Diamond Previews has rarely been the source of new licenses but it’s a great reminder and showcase of all the books coming our way soon, plus the perfect time to get your orders in, whether through Diamond or at your online retailer of choice.
I’ll also be including with these monthly Preview posts a downloadable PDF that you can print off and check off the manga you’d like to order. Then it’s as easy as bringing it into your local comic or book store – wherever in your area that orders in through Diamond Comics! Currently the list is just the names and does not include the Diamond order codes. I’ve never come across a store that requires them for ordering but if yours does, let me know and I’ll include them on subsequent files:
January 2012 Manga Previews Checklist (PDF)
You may continue reading at your own discretion for my thoughts, elaborations, random pictures and the Top 10 Selling Manga of November 2011!
Here at are the end of the holiday season – decorations are going away, hangovers are being recovered from and everyone’s getting back work. We’ve got the big wide world of 2012 ahead of us – Happy New Year!
In celebration we’ve got a brand spankin’ new layout. I stripped Kuriousity down to the basics with some shiny rotating artwork, a new logo and the same fun content. I hope you like it and if there are any issues, don’t hesitate to let me know!
In recap of 2011, I went back and revisited our top posts and site news of the year. It was an enjoyable trip down memory lane and a good way to say bye to the old and look forward to the new. Onward!
There are no shortage of ‘Best Of’ lists this time of year. While I like popping around to different peoples’ sites and seeing what they thought, it’s a bit of a frustration that I can’t seem to write one myself. How people choose a solid list containing five or ten favourites, from across different genres and subject matters, is just something I can’t seem to muster the brain power for. Not enough conviction I suppose? There’s just so much to love!
But I can’t overlook the perfect chance to look back at all the great titles a year had to offer and 2011 had some really fantastic ones. So then where is this going, oh rambling one, you ask? My semi-traditional equivalent to the yearly best of – the random Lissa’s favourites and best-ofs list! Which really just means you get a lot more titles broken into a lot more categories so I can remain a lot more loving to a lot more series. And in some cases not so loving… From the Best Release Quality to the Favourite Fan Service and even to the most Gag Worthy – here are a bunch of my favourite titles from 2011!
So it’s that time of year again. Yes, the “everyone makes lists about the best/worst things of the year.” And you know what? I love it. Yes, love it. And so, I decided to put together my own list of my top five best manga of 2011.
To be eligible for this list, all a series had to do was have one book this year that I have read. Some (most actually) began in earlier years but they were the titles I looked forward to reading the most in these last twelve months. And so, without further ado, here are my top picks of the year.
Halifax is having its first snow of the year today and it’s hitting hard! Stores are closed and transit is slowed or stopped – not very good conditions for getting out to buy new manga. It is a great day to sit at home in a cozy pair of PJs and enjoy a stack of manga you already have though (you know, even more so than usual!).
Sailor Moon (Vol. 02) and Codename: Sailor V (Vol. 02) are the two big titles out this week, the latter of which comes to an end as the storyline merges with Sailor Moon. If you’re reading them both, be sure to read Sailor V first! I’m also really eager to pick up a copy of Saturn Apartments (Vol. 04) and see if I can finally find a copy of Project H’s first title, Shocking Pink! now that it’s on the open market.
You can read the complete list of titles out on the shelf this week at my (aptly named) On The Shelf article over at Otaku USA.
A rather small list of titles out this week but the book count remains about the same (if not more) if you account for two more big box sets out from Viz Media. This week’s releases are posted in my On The Shelf article over at Otaku USA.
After doing this article for a few months, it’s been interesting seeing the patterns that emerge when it comes to how and when books come out. The two biggest descrepencies in information, meaning those that vary the most between what the sites says and my bookshelf indicates, are from Digital Manga and Kodansha, while Viz Media is often the most reliable (if you don’t include back orders anyway!).
Digital Manga lists release dates that only their own in-house supplier, Akadot, gets books for so they’re usually off by a month or two for anyone else (including Amazon and bookstores). Kodansha Comics predomiantly gets its books out to bookstores and online retailers on the days they indicate but Diamond Comics notoriously ships them from 2-3 weeks late from the release date. This differs a lot from Viz Media and Dark Horse titles, which always seem to be consistent between sources (excluding publisher push-backs).
Yen Press and Vertical Inc sit on the fence – usually on time but random titles arrive 1-2 weeks late from Diamond Comics. Oddly there rarely seems to be rhyme or reason to which titles arrive (or don’t) to individual stores despite ordering manifests and regardless of what titles are on the main Diamond Comics shipping list that week. Their titles do however have a tendency above others to arrive early sometimes.
Seven Seas hasn’t had enough physical releases in the past few months for me to notice a trend but that could change in 2012 based on the increase in titles we’re seeing.
Alas that at the end of the day noticing these trends doesn’t make coming up with a list that’s right for everyone any less difficult. Take this week for example, where online and chain store retailers have Sailor Moon (Vol.02) but Diamond Comics doesn’t yet have it listed as available. Frustrating both as a reader and an article writer. Patience, patience, patience…
It’s been almost a month since New York Anime Fest with recaps and reflections still trickling out from the thousands who attended. 105,000, in fact. Wow!
Ed Sizemore invited Erica (Okazu), Melinda (Manga BookShelf) and I to be guests on his Manga Out Loud podcast. It’s posted online now and is part two of his New York Comic Con podcasts. We had a good conversation about what we did at the convention, how we felt it was handled by staff and organizers and about the discussion of legal issues surrounding comics.
The podcast got my brain turning again on my thoughts on the convention. Overall I found other elements of my trip to New York more fulfilling than the convention itself (dinners with awesome people! Kinokuniya! Book-Off!) but from an organizational point of view, I thought NYCC/NYAF was much better handled this year than it was in 2010.
My thoughts and some accompanying photos can be read below:
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