2008 has been an exciting year at Manga Recon. We’ve tricked out the site with a brand new look, established a presence for ourselves on Facebook, joined the microblogging revolution on Twitter, and caused a fuss by daring to suggest that Yaoi-Con is demeaning to gay men. Though I’m delighted to see Yotsuba and Mokona’s smiling faces every time I visit the new site, the changes I’m most proud of are the least visible. Over the last twelve months, our reviewing staff has more than tripled with the addition of Ken Haley, Phil Guie, Chloe Ferguson, Isaac Hale, Sam Kusek, and Michelle Smith. Each has brought a unique perspective and style to the site, allowing us to cover a much broader spectrum of the manga publishing scene than ever before.

To help manage our growing team, I have asked Michelle to serve as our new Manga Editor. Michelle and I will work closely to develop new features, edit ongoing series, and ensure a steady stream of new and exciting reviews each week. Please help me congratulate Michelle on her new position.

I also want to take a minute to sing the praises of another member of the Manga Recon team: Jon Haehnle, our webmaster. As some of you know, Jon is the webmaster for Midtown Comics—hence our inside track on new manga releases—as well as the webmaster for the entire constellation of PopCultureShock sites. He’s responsible for the shocking pink color scheme and vastly improved site navigation features, as well as the many new bells and whistles on the front page, and he does it all with MacGuyver-esque ingenuity. So please join me in thanking Jon for the terrific work he does here at Manga Recon.

We have some great feature articles in the works, including our annual Best Manga of the Year list, a new “Classics Corner” column, and new installments of On the Shojo Beat and The Otaku Bookshelf. So please, stay tuned—we anticipate that 2009 will be an even more exciting year at Manga Recon. In the meantime, you can keep tabs on what we’re doing in a number of different ways:

Bookmark our site:
www.popcultureshock.com/manga (Note this is different than the blog’s old address at PCS)

Follow us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/people/Manga-Recon/1495303787

Follow us on Twitter:
twitter.com/manga_recon

Subscribe to our RSS feed:
www.popcultureshock.com/manga/index.php/feed/

Thanks for reading!

Katherine Dacey
Senior Manga Editor