Author Archives: Alexander Case

Would you buy US comics in a “Shonen Jump” style magazine format?

A discussion topic at AnimeVice.com caught my attention, so I thought I’d pass it to all of you here. Currently, the way manga is published, the “chapters” of the manga (equivalent to one issue of a comic) are run in a larger magazine like Shonen Jump, Young King Hours, etc. usually on lower quality paper (similar to the quality of the paper in your Essential Marvel collections) and then the chapters are later collected in a Tankobon (basically the equivalent of a trade paperback).

Now, if you could choose to get you comics in a form similar to that, printed chapter-by-chapter in black-and-white in a magazine similar to Shonen Jump (Detective Magazine), with lower-quality paper, and then getting the color and so forth in the “tankobon” anthologies, similar to the trade paperbacks we’re getting now, would you do so?

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Rick Eddleman pleads guilty to embezzling over $1.5 Million from Decipher

I don’t know how many of you, dear readers, play table-top role-playing games, or collectible card games. However, you’ve probably heard of Decipher, who put out the first Star Wars CCG, and the last Star Trek and Lord of the Rings role-playing games – both of the latter had problems getting books out for both of them, Lord of the Rings due to licensing issues restricting them to the films and not to Tolkein’s later material, and Star Trek due to lack of funds.

Well, we now know why the lack of funds happened – The Virginan-Pilot is reporting that former Decipher VP of Finance Rick Eddleman has plead guilty to embezzling over $1.5 million from the company. The embezzlement was not caught until 2000. Thus far they’ve only recovered $50,000 from Eddleman’s 401K – about 1/30th of the amount stolen.

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Disney Cancels Power Rangers

The New Zealand Herald is reporting that Disney has canceled its long running “Americanized” version of the “Super Sentai” franchise of Tokusatsu shows, “Power Rangers”. The franchise ran on American TV since the early 90s with the original series “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and has since gone through various other iterations reflecting the Japanese series from they’re adapted from (for example, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger becoming Power Rangers: SPD, Mahou Sentai Magiranger becoming Power Rangers: Mystic Force, etc.)

This leaves Kamen Rider as the only Tokusatsu franchise represented on American TV, with Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight (adapted from Kamen Rider Ryuki).

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Watchmen Review Up At Hollywood Reporter

chad writes, The Hollywood Reporter has reviewed the Watchmen movie and calls it “the first real flop of 2009.” Warning: spoilers if you haven’t read the comic.

Our own review of Watchmen should be up this weekend, once we’ve (we being the Royal We, referring to a member of the staff) had a chance to see it (we don’t get invited to those swanky advanced screenings, unfortunately.)

EDIT: Clarified the article title – sorry, those who were misled on the RSS feed. My bad.

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New York Times adds best-seller lists for Graphic Novels, Manga

The New York Times has introduced three new Top 10 Best-Seller Lists, Graphic Novels (Hardcover), Graphic Novels (Paperback), and Manga. The first installments of the list can be found here.

Unsurprisingly, Watchmen is on top of the Graphic Novels (Paperback) list, and Naruto is on top of the Manga list (and has appeared to have used Shadow-clone jitsu to take over much of the rest of the list save two spots). On top of the hardcover list is Starman Omnibus Volume 2, featuring the first and second incarnations of the character. The Hardcover edition of Watchmen is at #3.

Nebula Award Nominees List Up

Sci-Fi Wire has the final ballot for the SFWA’s Nebula Awards. Notable nominees include Making Money by Terry Prachett, Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin, and Little Brother from Cory Doctrow. Not surprisingly, The Dark Knight and Wall-E got nominations Best Script – though Battlestar Galactica didn’t get any nominations for that category.