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Episode 1694 Talkback - April 2018 Previews and C2E2 Recap
Adam_Murdough
Posts: 506
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.
Listen here.
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But more importantly, how did you not know Denny O’Neil’s psuedonym, @Pants? :smiley:
*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!
That was a deep cut, Pants.
(Don't worry, Baron Von Corduroy ... I was immediately picking up what you were putting down, brother!)
That's a good one.
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.
Koufax, Drysdale, Maury Wills, Herman Munster, Mister Ed, and Jethro Bodine ... wow!
Great show (again), guys. Looking forward to reading lots of the stuff you earmarked.
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.
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.