Posts Tagged “magazines”

I was flipping through a recent issue of Time Magazine (July 14th) that was lying around the house and saw a feature called “Famous Authors’ Guilty Pleasures”. What struck me was that Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz chose the Monster manga as his, although I probably shouldn’t have been surprised after reading the front flap of his immigrant-family novel, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao:

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien, and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú — the ancient curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still dreaming of his first kiss, is only its most recent victim — until the fateful summer that he decides to be its last.

Diaz described Monster’s Johan as “one of the weirdest, most attractive psychotic masterminds in literature” and mentioned other characters like Nina, Inspector Runge and Eva as components of Tenma’s “epic quest”. I am idly interested to see how US sales of the manga are affected by this mention in a mainstream magazine and I might have to take a peek at Oscar Wao because it seems interesting…and because it won an award, like Monster won the 2001 General Shogakukan Manga Award. (I also want to check out The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps for a different reason.)

And yes, I did discover that ANN wrote about this two weeks ago during this post’s composition but it was news to me so I’m posting about it anyway.

A few days ago I received the first of four expected issues of PiQ magazine (produced by PiQ, LLC) and after reading most of it, I have to say I am already beginning to prefer it to Newtype USA, its previous anime- and manga-focused iteration. Those two subjects are still covered but the focus of more on a greater variety of entertainment including comics, video games, sci-fi, and American cartoons. For instance, there are features on Appleseed Ex Machina; Avatar, which I still haven’t seen despite many recommendations; Invasion U.S.A., a Marvel comic beginning next month; Code Geass; and the currently on hiatus Sarah Connor Chronicles.
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I was looking through the old Animerica issues I bought at Sac-Anime and found a short focus piece in the August 1999 issue: “Be An Anime Missionary”. Some of the advice Tom Root gives for bringing your friends into the fray may be dated with Battle Chasers and FFVII references but other elements are still viable such as the diversity in convention attendees. Reading this and the other issues I got give me a sense of where the fan community was nine years ago; actually I have one from December 1996 when laserdiscs were being sold at $45 a pop alongside VHS sub or dub releases. For some reason, I enjoy reading about the American market before it really began to grow. Anyway, I also found a couple neatly worded ads, which I put after the cut.
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The news this week that Newtype USA was ceasing publication with February’s issue took me by surprise but the follow-up announcement of its replacement, PiQ, was more so. Supposedly the new magazine will put out its first issue in mid-March and ADV is giving subscribers a two-for-one exchange rate on their remaining issues which makes me think that it’s going to be priced on the same level as Anime Insider. That also means that since my 6-month stint was supposed to end in April, I’m due to receive the first four issues of this new endeavor for free. I’m still going to miss the preview discs and postcard contests but hopefully PiQ (”peek”? “pique”?) will be worth reading.

I just got this month’s issue of Newtype USA in the mail today and was a bit surprised when I began flipping through it. Among their regular two-page series spreads were eight consecutive vertical spreads (16 pages in total) that composed the Japanese half of their Anime Invasion ‘08 theme. This caught me off guard since I don’t remember them doing this in the past. When I read a magazine I might be fine turning it sideways to read it maybe once or even twice but it gets to be uncomfortable if it happens on a regular basis. I might get used to it but it’s bugging me right now.

On a positive note, I was glad that many of the “new style” layouts involve currently airing anime such as Bamboo Blade, Ghost Hound, Dragonaut, and Rental Magica. I’m also making a poll about this topic so let your voice be heard there as well as in the comments about whether you prefer vertical or horizontal photo spreads or simply don’t care.

After the jump: some more vertical spread pics and, for comparison, the two horizontal layouts that bookend them in the volume.
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Remember a couple weeks ago when I posted about the decline in manga sales in Japan? Well, this month’s issue of Wired Magazine has a feature story about Japan’s manga industry as well as a 10-page manga-style history of Japanese comics in the United States. The main article begins at a dojinshi market called Comic Ichi, shifts to providing the reader a sense of the art format’s influence within Japan, and returns to the topic of dojinshi artists while suggesting that the pool of enthusiastic artists could hold hope for solving the industry’s issue of homogeneity.

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When I was over in Germany I saw two different versions of AnimaniA, the rough equivalent to Newtype USA, for sale: a DVD-edition for 8.50 Euro (~$11.88) and a DVD-less version for 4.80 Euro (~$6.71). One can also subscribe to DVD and DVD-less versions of the magazine. This made me think about Newtype USA, its current $12.98 newsstand price, and the possibility of a similar thing being implemented.
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