MangaCast reports that adult manga publisher Icarus Publishing has licensed Yuzuki N Dash's Cheerful Eros Project manga (the title can be found on Icarus Publishing's "Retail Product Schedule/Order Code" page). Some samples of the manga can be found here (NSFW).

From Channel NewsAsia comes an article titled "China eyes French comic book festival as springboard to Europe" that looks at how China is trying to break into the European graphic novel market through the Angoulême International Comics Festival and compete with established Japanese manga:

With their own national pavilion set up in city hall, a large Chinese delegation boasted of 11 million euros (US$16 million) worth of deals in the fields of comics and animated cartoons.

From Channel NewsAsia come an article on how manga helped a kid come back to school:

While the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) is her immediate route to a great graphic artist, Sam has her sights on bigger things. She hopes to enroll in top design schools in the United States for her degree, and work in Japan in future to produce top notch Manga for comic lovers around the world.

Source: MangaBlog

The late mangaka Shotaro Ishinomori has entered the Guinness Book of World Records on January 23rd for being "the mangaka with the world's largest number of published books (manga)."

Shotaro Ishinomori, who passed away on January 28, 1998 of heart failure, is the creator of popular works such as Cyborg 009 and Kamen Rider. In his career, Ishinomori has published over 770 titles, which amounts to over 500 volumes of manga. Last year, Kadokawa Shoten announced the Ishinomori Shotaro Complete Comic Works, a republication of all of Shinomori's works in 12 separate issues.

Source: Nikkan Sports

McGill University will be hosting an academic conference titled "TranscultureELLE: How Girls Cross Cultures" from from 1/25 - 1/26, which will look at "transculturalism associated with shōjo cultures." Go here for more information.

According to Del Rey's official blog, a 25-page preview of Miyuki Eto's manga Hell Girl is currently available on MySpace Comics.

Also, MangaBlog points out that Del Rey Manga's Dallas Middaugh has a blog post talking about his experience with comics.

ANN reports that Animate, one of the largest retailer of anime, games, and manga in Japan, is buying (PDF) a 11.31% stake in Broccoli, a publisher of manga, games, music, owner of the retail chain Gamers and the parent company of U.S. manga publisher Broccoli Books:

the two companies are forming a partnership through a new joint venture called AniBro. ANIMATE has obtained 3.7 million shares, or 11.31%, of Broccoli from the Digital Adventure company. Although the value of those shares have not been officially announced, 3.7 million Broccoli shares were worth about 250 million yen (US$2.3 million) at the close of trading on Wednesday.

According to ICv2, one of the newest play style for Green Ronin's Mutants and Masterminds RPG will be based on manga and anime:

Green Ronin has announced that it will initiate new styles of play for its Mutants and Masterminds RPG system in two new books, one based on manga and anime, and one on comic fantasy. Both will be released in the second half of 2008. The tentative titles are Mecha & Manga, and Warriors & Warlocks.

The Yaoi Press blog has announced that both Yaoi Press and Yaoi Jamboree will be exhibiting at the Phoenix Comicon that's taking place this weekend:

We're at booth #6. We're signing up 'Yaoi Boys' to take part in the skits, improv, and Bishounen Wheel at Yaoi Jamboree (more info here). There's a free raffle for a $40 computer game at our booth, and of course there will be hundreds of yaoi titles to browse including all the Yaoi Press titles currently in print.

Del Rey Manga is currently looking for proposals for "original, manga-style graphic novels" as well as artists who are"proficient at drawing in the manga style." Writers are also encouraged to find an artist partner to work on their ideas.

Source: MangaBlog