From TMCnet comes an article that talks about how top creators in Japan are calling for the creation of museums to save Japan's "modern heritage":

What do industrial design, architecture, manga, anime, video games and traditional craft techniques have in common? Well, apart from each having spawned some of Japan's most popular cultural exports, the similarity is this: Japan has no national museums dedicated to their preservation, display and study, writes Edan Corkill.

Originally known as Mixx, the well-known Tokypop is a company that licenses, publishes and distributes translated Japanese anime and manga as well as Korean mahn-wa and global manga. Stuart Levy, who still maintains position as owner to this day, originally founded the company in 1997. Tokyopop has since released hundreds of manga graphic novels in both English and German, including global manga and 'cine-manga' (manga styled graphic novels using images from animated shows).

A co-publishing agreement with HarperCollins Publishers in 2006 handed over the distribution rights for a portion of Tokyopop's inventory. Along with this came permission for Tokyopop to begin creation of global mangas based on HarperCollins Publishers' books. It was the largest corporate news heard from the manga-publishing giant until June 2008, when Tokyopop announced a restructuring of the company.

On June 3rd, 2008, Tokyopop representatives issued a press release stating that Tokyopop would be split into two separate companies. While one side will continues its lead focus on the publishing aspect of the company, the other, titled Tokyopop Media, will deal with the company's recent endeavours with its digital releases and comics-to-film division.

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Sunrise, FL - May 22, 2008 - Cuban American fine artist, Carlos Aleman has begun a series of paintings called 'Springtime'. Working from his home studio, the artist is time lapse videotaping some of his work and featuring it on Youtube. The paintings are a tribute to Japanese comic book art and animation. The series focuses on love and the passing of time as represented by flower petals floating in the wind. You can view Aleman's work on his website http://www.carlosaleman.com.

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Japanese fansite Takahiro no Kenkyuukan reports that recently Ichijinsha has released readership data of their magazine for potential advertisers. Canned Dogs has a summary of the data in English.

IGN has published an extensive article on Tokyo's Akihabara district titled "Next Stop: Tokyo's Akihabara District."

From Japanator comes an article titled "Manga growth slows in 2007. Is a crash coming?" that ponders the question of whether the U.S. manga market is on a decline:

We've all heard about the trials and tribulations the anime industry in general is undergoing, but we've also heard that while the market for anime DVDs is ailing, manga sales are active and healthy. Things might be changing fairly soon, However - a recent report from industry analysts at ICv2 indicates that the manga market only grew about 5% last year.

Jiji Press reports that UNIQLO, a Japanese casual clothing store chain, is planning on bringing its manga and anime T-shirts overseas:

Fast Retailing hopes to boost sales of the manga and anime T-shirts by luring more overseas customers who seek after Japanese pop culture as "Japan Cool." [...] In France, Fast Retailing on Monday opened a time-limited T-shirt shop at Galeries Lafayette, a major department store in central Paris. [...] UNIQLO's adult-size T-shirts are priced between 1,500 yen and 1,900 yen in Japan. [...] In 2008, the company aims at selling more than 12 million T-shirts worldwide. It operates UNIQLO shops in Britain, France, Hong Kong, mainland China, South Korea and the United States in addition to Japan.

Source: MangaCast

From ManagCast comes an article titled "Jump & Fujoshi - The Mangacast Special" that looks at the relationship between the fujoshi culture and Shueisha's Weekly Shounen Jump.

ICv2 has released the February 2008 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 December based on the graphic novel sales chart, and an analysis of Diamond Comic Distributors' October sales.

Also, MangaBlog provides its own look at the data, as well as a list of manga from the Top 100 Graphic Novels chart.

From ITP AlumniBlender comes an article titled "Character facelifts," manga style, which looks at how DC Comics and other publishing companies are trying to create manga versions of their properties.

Matt Thorn ponders why all manga characters look Caucasian in "The Face of the Other."

OregonLive.com looks at the works of Yoshihiro Tatsumi in "Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Good-Bye."