From Comics212's Christopher Butcher comes a pictorial report of the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Japan. More photos can be found here.

Via: MangaBlog

From the Yaoi Press blog comes the "2007 Wrap-up," which looks at the state of Yaoi Press in 2007, as well as plans for 2008:

Our greatest success was Dark Prince vol. 1, which had the highest preorders and lowest initial returns of any title to date.

Our greatest failure was the comic books. Without book store sales the comic book line was unsustainable.

Celebrating its first anniversary, manga blog Shuchaku East is giving out a free copy of the manga Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms:

Of course, no blog anniversary is complete without freebies. I'm going to offer you a gratis copy of what is without a doubt the best-book-of-2007-that-no-one-read; even if David Welsh couldn't convince you to shell out for copy of "Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms," I'll take it upon myself to ship you one fo' free. Yes, that's right; free.

In his latest blog post, Del Rey Manga's Dallas Middaugh has listed his top 10 manga of 2007:

1. Phoenix: Sun by Osamu Tezuka
2. Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaki
3. Genshiken by Kio Shimoku
4. Monster by Naoki Urasawa
5. Emma by Kaoru Mori
6. MPD Psycho by Eiji Otsuka and Sho-u Tajima
7. The Drifitng Classroom by Kazuo Umezu
8. xxxHOLiC by CLAMP
9. Guru Guru Pon-chan by Satomi Ikezawa
10. Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service by Eiji Ohtsuka and Housui Yamazaki

Source: Active Anime

From Weekly Jump Readers' Journal comes an article feature titled "WSJ Illustrated Guide: pt. 2 (1980-1984)," Part 2 of a 6-part series of articles that look at important Shonen Jump serializations, with a focus on titles that were adapted into anime.

Takehiko Inoue (mangaka of Slam Dunk and Vagabond) will be hosting a manga exhibition "Final Exhibition" at the Ueno Royal Museum from late May to early July. Promotion for the exhibition can be found here.

Source: Manga Jouhou

From Weekly Jump Readers' Journal comes an article feature titled "WSJ Illustrated Guide: pt. 1 (1968-1979)," Part 1 of a 6-part series of articles that look at important Shonen Jump serializations, with a focus on titles that were adapted into anime.

From ICv2 comes a 3-Part interview (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) with Dark Horse CEO Mike Richardson, who talks about the state of Dark Horse and the graphic novel market, as well as Dark Horse's plans for 2008.

Via: MangaBlog

From PopCultureShock comes ComicRankings, a new project that "will collect reviews from across the web and calculate the average score. [...] emphasize the bigger picture to show how a series or creator or publisher has fared over time." Included is the "ComicRanking's Best & Worst Of 2007," which looks at rankings of manga, publishers and creators in the year 2007.

ICv2 is reporting that Tokyopop's global manga Undertown by Jim Pascoe (story) and Jake Myler (art) is being turned into a Sunday newspaper strip:

[...] beginning this Sunday January 6th. It will appear in over 50 papers, including the LA Times, Denver Post, Vancouver Sun, and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Via: MangaBlog