A round up of the new comic release list for the week of October 17th 2007:

• ComicList: ComicList for 10/17/2007
• MangaCast: New Manga Release List ~ Oct 17, 2007
• Manga Recon: Weekly Recon, 10/17/07
• theOtaku: New Manga Releases
• Comicsnob: Watch List: Manga et al. for the week of 14 October

October 17, 2007 (Gardena, CA) - Dream Shoppe, 801 Media Inc., Digital Manga Publishing and Pop Japan Travel have teamed up to auction off one of their own at Yaoi Con's bishonen auction. Ben, who graciously volunteered after being badgered by 801 Media's Tomo-chan and 801-chan, will be sporting a lovely Wa-Lolita outfit in a floral pattern (which Tomo-chan says "Really accents Ben's emerald eyes.") courtesy of Dream Shoppe. The winning bidder at Yaoi Con will not only receive Ben's company for the rest of the night, they will also receive Ben's lovely outfit and a $100 gift certificate for Pop Japan Travel's upcoming Fujoshi Paradise Tour!

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The New York Times has published an interview with Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation. According to the interview, the Daniel Pink has been doing research in Japan in order to create a new manga for a business audience:

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In the latest issue of PWCW, Kai-Ming Cha interviews Rain (Ru An), one of the most popular Chinese comics artist and illustrator today:

The prolific creator is also one of the oldest on China's emerging comics scene and a professor at her alma mater, the China Academy of Art. Her ethereal watercolors were featured in a gallery alongside Korean manhwa artist Seeyeon Won's works during last May's Third China International Cartoon and Animation Festival in Hangzhou.

From Icarus Publishing's blog comes a preview (NSFW) of the adult manga coming out in January 2008, based on Diamond Previews for November (Shipping in January 08).

Gardena, CA, October 16, 2007 - Digital Manga, Inc. will be creating a new mail order catalog, Club Otakie, for fans. To promote the mail order catalog, Digital Manga is offering a contest for all signups where Digital Manga will be giving out prizes each week until December 17, 2007.

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ANN reports that staffs from Tokyopop and Viz Media will be leading manga-related seminars during the "Manga Festival" taking place at the Akihabara Enta Festival:

For the international market symposium, Tokyopop CEO Stuart Levy is scheduled to lead a seminar on the manga market in the United States, while members from the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) will present on other foreign markets.

Chuosha is reporting that Takuya Fujima's Negima!? neo, an alternate retelling of Ken Akamatsu's Mahou Sensei Negima!, will begin serialization in Magazine Special No.2 (1/18) after it ends in Comic Bom Bom.

Yahoo Auction Watch is reporting that "a fake signed sketch by Akira Toriyama" recently appeared on Yahoo! Auctions. Although the item seemed obviously fake, the seller seemed to believe that this is a real sketch (or at least pretended to believe it), and replied politely to all the rude comments. Later the sketch was sold for 39,800 yen.

Source: New Akiba

Canned Dogs reports that the online novel Sena★Sena will be adapted into a manga and begin serialization in the December issue of Comic Gum:

The manga will be illustrated by the pixel maritan artist (who also did the art for Fate/Tiger Colosseum)

Sena★Sena was previously introduced here. Also the picture in the post is from the online novel and not the manga, because I like co2a more than I like maritan.

(San Antonio, Texas) October 15, 2007 - Devil's Due Entertainment exclusive creator Tim Seeley sat down recently with ComicBloc's Eric Moreno for the latest installment of the acclaimed interview series Inside the Comic Writers Studio.

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From ManagCast comes another installment of its "Morning Report," an feature that looks at Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Morning, as well as works and manga artists related to the magazine.

From Yaoi Suki comes the annual Yaoi Awards. In '06-'07 Yaoi Awards: Part II, the winners are:

• Fumi Yoshinaga's Shit-Ton of Titles Award: Hyouta Fujiyama
• Best Mangaka Whose Best Work is Still Unlicensed: Mika Sadahiro, Under Grand Hotel
• Best Unlicensed Mangaka: Taishi Zaou
• Thank God It's Over: La Esperanca

ICv2 has released the September 2007 top 100 graphic novel sales estimates and the top 300 comics sales estimates based on Diamond Indexes and Publisher Title Data. Also from ICv2 is an analysis of the trends in September based on the graphic novel sales chart.

Manga publisher Viz Media has launched its official blog, VIZBlog:

There are a lot of itchy fingers around the VIZ Media offices. Wait, that didn't sound right. There are a lot of people around here just itching to write some blog posts. Yeah, that's what I meant. We'll be telling you about manga we are reading – both professionally as well as personally, anime we are watching – again, for money or for fun, games we are playing, our co-workers and their habits, what we ate for breakfast, the contents of our handbags, hell, all kinds of really, er, interesting stuff. We hope you enjoy it!

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The artists I've covered in my book Manga Zombie all went against the grain of manga as just a commercial product - whether they realized it or not. They're something different. They shine. Especially set against manga made for sales purposes only. These are forgotten artists who worked in pulp genres and got pushed out of the scene when the massive-sales weekly magazines took over. They were monomaniacs, possessed muscleheads, spinning worlds of ultraviolence and eroticism...all of them now forgotten in the brave new shiny world of commercialized manga. A lot of readers will not like what they see here. Some will be truly outraged. But these works are the real thing - scabrous, scandalous, a danger to all comers. They're what manga is all about.

These artists may even have the power to help the manga genre to smash out of the commercial cellblock it's been locked into. That's what I hope. That's why I wrote Manga Zombie.

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Burn manga. Especially Eighties manga on.
Burn these pre-programmed comics that have been churned out ever since manga turned into a business. Burn these bastard things conceived in boardrooms and born as products.

For example, love stories that go on...and oon... and ooon...and oooon.
Burn them. Stories about heroes beating the odds through sheer grit and friendship. Burn them.
'Interactive' stories swinging any way the reader surveys tell them:
Burn. Them. All.

Come out of the grave, manga!

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By Udagawa Takeo
Translated by John Gallagher

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Manga Zombie, written by Udagawa Takeo, was published in Japanese in 1997 by Ohta Shuppan. The book covers a range of thirty-one Japanese manga artists active primarily in the 1960s and 70s. Some of the artists are relatively well-known in the English-speaking world, while others are famous or cult figures only in Japan. However, they are all, in some sense or other, "outsider" artists and figures of the sixties and seventies cultural underground. Most of them spent the bulk of their careers in short-lived magazines oriented towards graphic sex and violence, like Manga Erotopia. Some, however, saw success in more prestigious publications like Garo and mass-circulation mags like Shonen Jump.

The selection of artists was made by Udagawa Takeo on the basis that they represent the most authentic and exciting work being done in the medium before market forces (in Udagawa-san's point of view) squeezed the artists' freedom of expression to an absolute minimum in the late seventies.

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[ABOUT TOKYO INTERNATIONAL ANIME FAIR]
The Tokyo Inernational Anime Fair 2008, which is sponsored by the governor of Tokyo, is the largest anime exhibition.

At the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007 that was held in March 2007, we were able to welcome 106,395 visitors including overseas.

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Nagoya Zokei University of Art & Design announced that Naoki Urasawa, mangaka of Monster, 20th Century Boys and Pluto, will be a guest professor for its new manga course.

According to the university, Urasawa accepted the university's request be a guest professor, and will be teaching with his ex-assistant for a year.

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Fujima Blog reports that Negima!? neo by Takuya Fujima, an alternate retelling of Ken Akamatsu's Mahou Sensei Negima!, will stop serialization after the suspension of Comic Bom Bom (a few months ago, Kodansha announced the suspension of Comic Bom Bom). However, the report also mentions that the manga may be moved to a new magazine. Official announcement regarding the manga's future will appear in the last issue of Comic Bom Bom (11/15).

Asahi Shimbun reports that the Tokyo District Court has approved horror mangaka Kazuo Umezu's construction of a new red-and-white striped house in Musashino city, Tokyo. According to the report, two of Kazou's neighbors complained to the court that "the 'unpleasant' exterior would 'destroy the landscape.'"

From Newsarama comes an article titled "Yûjô! Doryoku! Shôri! The fiery spirit of battle manga" (guest commentary by Jason Thompson), which looks at the similarities between shonen manga and superhero comics:

In both American and Japanese comics, there is one question that never gets old: "Do you think character X could beat character Y?" Despite the relative popularity of Japanese girls' comics and increasingly fluid gender demographics, shonen manga is still the #1 demographic category, and within shonen manga the #1 genre is "battle manga."