PW and bookstores give yaoi and yuri some love, ignores ero-manga… boo!

Now we have Yaoi-con coverage from PW Comics Weekly, and it’s quite “meaty” (eww!)

Interesting bits include:

• Tokyopop apparently made attempts to hide its connection to Blu.  Umm… did anyone not know their relationship out of the gate? @_@
• One major book chain dropped Blu books until they shrink-wrapped them and added an explicit content advisory sticker.  Oh, boo-hoo… at least you get bookstore distribution at all! Once again, more proof that the fem-tocracy of the manga industry conspires to keep us down!  ;_;
• This kind of plays into a point I (and others) have made before… the more explicit these books become, the more likely they’ll have to rely on independent stores.  If Diamond and direct market retailers take advantage of this and give an honest stab at serving the female BL-reading audience, they have a good chance at reversing the bases of power in BL manga, and even the perception women have of comic shops in general.  Of course, does anyone listen to me?  Noooo… the DM will probably pass up this golden opportunity like they did with shoujo manga 5 years ago.
• These BL publishers and creators are a hot looking bunch.
• You know, now I feel bad for BeBeautiful.  Every article about them has to bring up the battered state of CPM Manga first.  I promise not to do that again… today.

PW also covers the launch of Seven Seas’ Strawberry.  Jason DeAngelis was careful to point out:

We€™re dedicated to leaving the material we license uncensored, so we will be releasing a wide range of yuri aimed at different age groups. That said, we have no intention of releasing outright pornographic material.

Looking at the cover art, they had better not be pornographic, or people are going to jail.