Episode 1694 Talkback - April 2018 Previews and C2E2 Recap

Adam_Murdough

It's Previews time once again! We go through the April 2018 catalog for items shipping to stores beginning in June 2018 and afterwards Pants recounts his recent trip to Chicago for the C2E2 convention. (1:46:50)

Listen here.

matchkitJOHN

Mike Norton, artist, writer, and career counselor! @Pants Glad you had a great time at C2E2. I had hoped to run into you maybe at Heroes in 2019!

nweathington

Sullivan’s Sluggers was originally a Kickstarter in 2012, and shipped in 2013. Then it ran into some controversy over shipping delays and a second Kickstarter for the same book. I found a scratch-&-dent copy—an oversized hardcover with a slipcase—at a show for $15. Worth it just for Stokoe’s artwork.

nweathington

The Charlton Hercules book was actually pretty good—especially for Charlton. Sam Glanzman is one of those sadly underappreciated artists. But I already own all that stuff.

But more importantly, how did you not know Denny O’Neil’s psuedonym, @Pants? :smiley:

nweathington

I enjoyed Hellstorm quite a bit, @wildpigcomics. The second half wasn’t as strong as the first half, but overall it’s worth checking out.

TheOriginalGMan

"Leo Durocher"

*crickets chirp in the distance as an uncomfortable silence ensues*

As they say on ESPN ... c'mon, man! Even if you're not big baseball guys, you have to know who Leo Durocher is! That dude was on, like, almost every great 1960s sitcom!

aquatroy

I knew who Leo Durocher was, but didn't know the quote was attributed to him.

That was a deep cut, Pants.

TheOriginalGMan

aquatroy said:

I knew who Leo Durocher was, but didn't know the quote was attributed to him.

That was a deep cut, Pants.

Eh, kids these days!



(Don't worry, Baron Von Corduroy ... I was immediately picking up what you were putting down, brother!)

aquatroy

TheOriginalGMan said:

aquatroy said:

I knew who Leo Durocher was, but didn't know the quote was attributed to him.

That was a deep cut, Pants.

Eh, kids these days!



(Don't worry, Baron Von Corduroy ... I was immediately picking up what you were putting down, brother!)

"Baron Von Corduroy"

That's a good one.

Evening639

In regards to the changes to this month's Previews catalog, I am really not a fan of the newly segregated manga section. Firstly, it's set up rather confusingly. Secondly, it makes it that much easier for people to simply ignore manga solicitations. It's already hard enough to sell American readers on manga. Hell, my wife had to explain what the hell manga IS to a Reading teacher today while assisting in the set up of a book fair at the school she works at. Her coworker was perplexed by the strange backwards comic she was holding.

I know others have argued that this might make it easier for people to find manga, but, seriously, by show of hands, how many members of this forum who are not regular manga readers plan to look through this new manga section? Anybody who claims they will, I expect you to have a book report ready for me two months from now when your DCBS orders arrive containing all of the exciting new titles Kodansha, Seven Seas, Yen Press and Viz Media are offering.

I warn you, though, I will no longer accept book reports on Tokyopop releases. If Joseph Heller can arrogantly claim James Michener's work is not literature despite Tales of the South Pacific being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I can arbitrarily decide that Tokyopop is not true manga. Damn sellouts.

alienal

Thanks for that Previews episode and the C2E2 recap. These Previews episodes consistently help me to revise my order or my pull list for each month. Also...well, I'm one of those who don't mind that the manga section is being separated. Even though I live in Japan, I'm just not into manga.

TheOriginalGMan

aquatroy said:

"Baron Von Corduroy"

That's a good one.

Hmmm, not sure if I came up with that or not. I may have plagiarized it from @wildpigcomics.

TheOriginalGMan

On another note, think how good those Dodgers teams of the 60's could've been:

Koufax, Drysdale, Maury Wills, Herman Munster, Mister Ed, and Jethro Bodine ... wow!

BionicDave

Never ceases to amuse me how much Pants worships the JSA :)

Great show (again), guys. Looking forward to reading lots of the stuff you earmarked.

fredzilla

Evening639 said:

In regards to the changes to this month's Previews catalog, I am really not a fan of the newly segregated manga section. Firstly, it's set up rather confusingly. Secondly, it makes it that much easier for people to simply ignore manga solicitations. It's already hard enough to sell American readers on manga. Hell, my wife had to explain what the hell manga IS to a Reading teacher today while assisting in the set up of a book fair at the school she works at. Her coworker was perplexed by the strange backwards comic she was holding.

I know others have argued that this might make it easier for people to find manga, but, seriously, by show of hands, how many members of this forum who are not regular manga readers plan to look through this new manga section? Anybody who claims they will, I expect you to have a book report ready for me two months from now when your DCBS orders arrive containing all of the exciting new titles Kodansha, Seven Seas, Yen Press and Viz Media are offering.

I warn you, though, I will no longer accept book reports on Tokyopop releases. If Joseph Heller can arrogantly claim James Michener's work is not literature despite Tales of the South Pacific being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I can arbitrarily decide that Tokyopop is not true manga. Damn sellouts.

As a teacher myself, I don't think manga has ever had a problem in the last 15 years finding an audience of young people. I regularly get a few students writing about a manga series they are reading. My first teaching position, I was the Anime Club sponsor and we had a sizable group of kids each week. And as I think about it, none of those kids would even know what PREVIEWS is let alone how it was formatted.

I'm not trying to discredit you or your wife's experience, but I have yet to meet a Reading teacher or English teacher that isn't somewhat familiar with manga or "Japanese comics." They may not know that the book is "backwords," but they generally know what the medium is. I was in a workshop once where a teacher was using manga Shakespeare to teach Elizabethan dialogue. If the teacher doesn't know what manga is, it's likely because the teacher is probably old and/or out of touch with what his/her students are reading in general, and not too far away from walking across that rainbow retirement bridge. I don't know a whole lot of manga myself, and mostly what I do know is from anime, but my students are dumbstruck when I talk to them somewhat coherently about a series. They don't realize I know what I know, and it's always entertaining to see them suddenly realize that they can talk to me about it. Many of them can't even talk to their parents about what they're reading.

Evening639

@fredzilla I certainly agree with you that Previews is not aimed at children. It's aimed at adults. And that's where I encounter the most indifference toward manga, which disturbs me because when I hear most adults discuss manga, they speak of it as if it's a genre of comics, rather than recognizing that it's simply a Japanese word that MEANS "comics". I often hear people dismiss all manga because they did not care for a small sampling of what is available.

In my opinion, the catalog is not helping to dissuade that attitude but may indirectly be supporting and encouraging it. By segregating the manga to the back of the catalog, Previews is putting it in a spot that most people never even make it to when casually paging through, which puts it at a disadvantage when it's already difficult enough for anything existing in the "back half" to compete with the premiere publishers. Hell, now the manga even has to fight with Zenoscope for attention. And nobody should have to fight with Zenoscope to sell books.

I will say that I am pleased to hear that your students enjoy manga and that you are able to engage in discussion of it with them. I respect any teacher who makes that effort.