In case you’re curious, I’m pro-pro-whaling manga

ComiPress has a translated report on the French comics scene from a Chinese perspective, along with a few stats on Chinese publishers who are active in that market (the original source is here, for the simplified Hanzi-capable.).  According to the article, 253 out of 3313 new titles published in France were of Chinese origin, or roughly 7.6%.  That’s really respectable, considering the number of Chinese comics adapted for the US.

Besides that, there’s no one item that’s really eye-popping; I’m just surprised that there’s a desire and concerted effort to promote Chinese comics in Europe at all.

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Neil Gaiman explains why he defends “icky” speech.  Print this out and hang it on your wall.  (Via Journalista)

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Typically I avoid posting links to manga translations, but this one’s too weird not to warrant mention… Tokyo Damage Report has a translation of a pro-whaling manga from far-right-wing mangaka Kobayashi Yoshinori, an odd collection of truths, half-truths, and outright lies, all delivered with a heavy dose of self-assured swagger and nationalistic fervor on par with the very best propoganda. (Found on Khyungbird)

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A couple of links that should be of interest to current or would-be self-publishers… Canned Dogs has a translated item-by-item cost breakdown (written by an anonymous doujinshi-ka) for all the expenses and profit one may expect from a doujinshi.  Keep in mind as you read this that the costs listed are for two 70-page doujinshi with a combined print run of 10,000 copies.  Any single doujinshi with a print run over 1000 is considered a rather major release, and many smaller doujinshi events actually have print run limits in place which are far below 1000.  Most doujinshi printers provide an online quote sheet that only goes as high as 2000 copies.  So while all the expenses are quite typical, the actual figures, expecially the net profit, are far from what average circles can expect.

Closer to home, GGY provides a real-world cost comparison between several major POD services.  It isn’t… pretty, to say the least.  The cost per copy through two of the PODs would almost certainly rule out traditional bookstore or DM distribution, although I think there’s some room to tweak the MSRP there…

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Missed it… Sporadic Sequential gives comic publishers his Christmas wishlist of things he wants from digital downloads.  What, no cool, crashy flash animations or low-bit sound effects?

Semi-related is this post at Kleefeld on Comics comparing the various digital comics formats, although I think some of the information provided is misleading.  (Qualitatively, PDFs handle raster images just fine… it saves images as JPEG, so it’s the same as a CBR with JPEG files.  And file size savings from CBR/CBZ are very small, unless there are a lot of images, or multiple books, being compressed into one file.)

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One last bit of amusement… Sankaku Complex posts two images with the exact same dialogue - one representing porno manga for men, the other for women – and a long discussion about the differences between the two genres follows.  It’s a fun read, but let me just tell you now that all of the theories are wrong, wrong, wrong.  There is one, and only one, determinant separating men’s porno and women’s porno:

The magazines in which they were originally serialized.