A quick news item for folks who, like me, spend too much time online reading about manga: Viz just launched a new blog. Like the one penned by Vertical’s Kerim Yasar, the new Viz blog seems more like an outlet for editors to discuss favorite series, post random pictures of action figures, and muse about odd Pocky flavors than a site for announcing release dates and book promotions. It’s still much to early to know what kind of “personality” the blog will have, but I’ll be adding it to my feedburner to see what develops. You can, too, with the following link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/viz/vizblog

Here’s hoping the Viz crew decides to follow Shannon Gaerity’s much-admired example and post a few overlooked manga festivals of their own. I can think of some awesome Viz titles, old and new, that would benefit from the SG treatment.