Killer also eroge fanatic?; PJT’s doujinshi printing price list

For one last, final word on the Manga Pilot contract, Comics212 offers a thinly veiled, brutal assessment of what the platonic ideal of publishing should be, and what it has become.  (No, this isn’t really directed at publishers, potential or otherwise.  We already know how evil we are.)

Granted, print may not necessarily be the focus of some legitimate comic publishers and standard deals may no longer be adequate, given the fear if not the eventuality of the paper-less, net-driven future of books.  But it is worth asking, amid ever-sliding publishing standards and ever-more questionable boilerplates, how often the IP farm method currently in vogue has actually generated decent financial returns, or even met the promise of visibility for its creators beyond what one could come by with some elbow grease and a $15-a-month website.

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Creepy news with potential implications for the otaku set… a man named Takanori Hoshijima confessed to Tokyo police that he murdered a woman, dismembered her, then flushed her remains down a toilet.  Sankaku Complex finds an angle that I have not seen in English language reports… a close acquaintance of Hoshijima claims the alleged murderer is an ero-game fan, and even a 2D fetishist… he is so enthralled with the female characters of those games, he has no interest in real women.

The greatest crisis adult manga faced in Japan was when the Miyazaki murders took place.  Whether this may turn into an event of that magnitude for eroge may depend on how far the Japanese media decides to sensationalize this aspect of the story.

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Via MangaBlog… the people behind Same Hat! Same Hat! have been working on Tokyo Zombie for Last Gasp, and shares pictures of the dummy copy.  The book can be ordered RIGHT NOW in Previews.

Speaking of which… I just watched a commercial for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening.  Anyone else think some scenes were highly reminiscent of this manga?

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Missed it… Weekly Young Sunday is dead.

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A couple more news links on the UK ban on pornographic cartoons here and here (2nd link via The Comics Reporter).  No commentary, you know where I stand on this…

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Manga Jouhou has a press release from Pop Japan Travel, a sister company of Digital Manga Publishing which offers packaged tours to Japan, that might be of interest even to those not planning on a doujinshi shopping splurge any time soon.  The Mind Over Manga tour will allow vacationers the chance to participate as a seller at Comitia, an original doujinshi convention.  PJT will arrange for printing in Japan, and offer English-to-Japanese translation and lettering services.  The price list (assuming it is for thick white interior stock and square binding) is quite representative of most doujinshi printers in Japan… the markup is tiny, if there’s any at all.