⢠Yoshihiro Yonezawa, founder of Comiket, the world’s largest comics convention, has died at age 53:
Yonezawa organized the first Comiket (Comic Market) in 1975 to display and sell dojinshi (self-published manga and novels). In 2002 he won a Japan Society for Children’s Literature Prize for his novel “Fujiko Fujio-ron: F to (A) no Hoteishiki” (Fujio Fujiko discourse: the F and “A” equation).
The manga critic’s funeral will be held jointly by his family and the Comiket committee at Zenpukuji Temple in Tokyo’s Minato-ku on Oct. 7. The chief mourner at the funeral will be Yonezawa’s wife Eiko.
⢠CLAMP is launching a new series in Monthly New Type:
A new Clamp series, titled “Kobato.” apparently a sequel to their series “Kobato (ka)” (currently serializing in Monthly Sunday GX will start serializing in “Monthly New Type” starting their November issue (on sale October 10th)
⢠Love Manga interviews Simon Jones, of Icarus, which pubishes erotic/porn manga, and talks about their manga anthology, BLUE EYES:
…early on, we knew we would have to crack the direct market. Tokyopopâs trade boom was just over the horizon; periodicals was still the bread and butter for comic shops. As a new publisher, we were an unknown quantity to retailers. Had we started trying to shove $20 books into the market with no track record whatsoever, most consumers and retailers probably would have just looked at us and thought âhey, who are these jokers?â?
[snip]Price concerns is another big reason, of course. Knowing that weâd appeal to a niche market, and weâd have limited options in distribution, we had to price our books accordingly. Having an anthology âfloppyâ? means thereâs an inexpensive option for casual readers. Everyone jokes about anthologies as a way to get people to pay for the same thing twice, but itâs definitely not the case in practice. We donât make a profit on Comic AG. I mean, who else releases 80-page comics of fresh material for 5 quids? (Other than Viz, damn it.) Itâs all about building confidence in readers, and retailers. If our circulation goes up, weâd start adding pages to it.