NY Anime Fest Mascot Contest
The New York Anime Festival, in partnership with TheOtaku.com, has opened a contest to select the mascot for this year’s festival. The mascot should be the artist’s interpretation of “Anime” and “New York City” expressed as an original manga character. Contestants can enter now though April 29 on TheOtaku.com. Ten finalists will then be chosen and put on display at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens Matsuri on May 2-3, where attendees can vote for their favorites. The winning mascot will be displayed on the NYAF program guide and on signs throughout the event. The nine finalists selected will each receive a weekend pass to The New York Anime Festival and a prize package from Del Rey Manga including the first volumes of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Orange Planet, and Yokai Doctor. The winner whose mascot is selected will receive one of each kind of New York Anime Festival 2009 merchandise, 10 weekend passes to the festival, 50 volumes of manga from Del Rey Manga, and a profile in the festival program. The New York Anime Festival is a convention celebrating anime, manga and Japanese pop culture that takes place September 25-27 at New York City’s Jacob Javits Center.
Feehan’s Dark Hunger Goes Digital
New York Times bestselling romance novelist and comic creator Christine Feehan’s manga Dark Hunger has now come to manga ebook format. Dark Hunger features Carpathians—her popular shapeshifting race—n a romantic adventure story in an exotic rainforest setting. The manga is on sale for $10 in a variety of formats wherever ebooks are sold, and is compatible with Sony Readers, Kindles and iPhones among others.
Government Comics Now Online
Two years in the making, the digital edition of the University of Nebraska’s Government Comics collection has now gone live and is open to the public. The collection includes 168 titles such as Adventures on Space Station Freedom, Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover and Dick Wingate of the United States Navy in their entirety for free download, and features art from such luminaries as Hank Ketchum, Will Eisner and Scott Adams. Most of the comics are American in origin, but also includes contributions from the UN, the EU, Canada and Ghana.
Tomie Movies on Crunchyroll
Crunchyroll.com, the popular streaming video site devoted to anime and Asian live action entertainment, has announced a deal with Kadokawa Pictures to bring the first three films in the manga-based Tomie series of horror films to the site. Tomie, Tomie: Replay and Tomie: Another Face will all become available on the Kadokawa page of Crunchyroll.com. The films in the Tomie series, based upon the manga by Junji Ito, are horror movies centered around Tomie, a mysterious girl who simply won’t stay dead. The Tomie series is popular enough in Japan to have inspired eight feature-length installments so far since Tomie premiered ten years ago.
Invincible on G4’s Fresh Ink
Invincible, the quirky superhero comic created by Walking Dead writer Robert Kirkman and artist Cory Walker, appears on this week’s installment of Fresh Ink with Blair Butler on G4tv.com. The web video comics review show has an exclusive first look at the art and storyline of Walker’s long-awaited return to the book. The first issue of Invincible is available online for free at ImageComics.com.
Warren Ellis on Wired UK
Warren Ellis, the critically acclaimed creator of such comics as Planetary, Transmetropolitan and webcomic FreakAngels, just posted the first installment in his new ongoing column for Wired UK. A colorful musing on the fact that the world is getting stranger faster than he can make things up, fans may find it reminiscent of the fictional writings of Transmetropolitan’s gonzo journalist hero Spider Jerusalem. Warning: Not safe for work due to imaginatively graphic language.
Mondadori Gets Spanish Rights for Stitches
W.W. Norton executive editor Robert Weil announced that the house as accepted a pre-London Book Fair offer for World Spanish rights for children’s book artist David Small’s forthcoming graphic memoir Stitches. Rights were sold to Monica Carmona of Mondadori Spain. The deal was negotiated by W.W. Norton’s foreign rights director Elisabeth Kerr
