Kokmen on Broccoli’s move away from Diamond (sort of), Keito Koume porno hits stores

At Anime News Network, simple news of Broccoli’s move from Diamond to PGW becomes far more interesting when the dicussion turns to Diamond’s shortcomings, and Ali Kokmen of Del Rey somewhat comes to its defense.  A few quotes:

That curiousity is natural, but whatever benefits Broccoli sees in their new book trade distributor are likely the kind of business decision that’s invisible and irrelevant to the individual fan or bookbuyer. And that’s kinda the way it should be.

(snip)

Complaints you may hear about one aspect of their business might not be relevant to the other–and, of course, may or may not be fair anyway.

Those complaints, mostly, are pointed at Diamond’s comics business.  Something pretty evident from the disproportionate amount of bile and snark generated by comics-related blogs and forums (for such a relatively small industry) is that comics, from fans to creators to retailers and everyone in between, is filled with loud, petty, bitter, obsessive whiners with no remorse.

Which isn’t a bad thing.

Passionate people complain.  Kvetching is a great American institution.  And nothing is more American and filled with more passionate people than comics.  In few other business will you find such close intermingling of the fan and professional sides… you have readers opening stores or becoming artists and writers, and creators taking shots at publishing.  Oftentimes, you’ll find people working out of their element, to put it kindly.  Bad things happen, and monolithic Diamond gets a lot of the blame not only because it’s easy, but because they’re the only target around.  There’s no other company of that size distributing comics.  There’s no other company of that size offering periodicals with non-returnable terms.  Fans are eager to eat it all up, because they have aspirations of breaking into the industry themselves.

Ali Kokmen is from a traditional book publishing background (originally Collins, I think), so he takes a very gentlemanly view of it.  But the decorum of the book world is a facade… it’s just as trecherous a business in its own unique way, we just don’t hear about it like we do with comics.

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Heisei Democracy notes that Keito Koume’s ero-manga tankoubon from Wani Magazine has shipped (which was previously discussed here.)  Keito Koume is drawing Kujibiki Unbalance, the spin-off from Genshiken.  This would make him a former doujin/eromanga artist illustrating a manga which previously only existed as the fictional subject of an ero-parody doujin by the protagonists of another manga about otaku.  Ehhhhhhhhhhhh?

And man, that guy can draw a mean orgy scene.