Let me begin with a disclaimer: I did not attend San Diego Comic-Con. Though I consider myself reasonably adept at maneuvering through crowds (after all, my LCS of choice is located in Manhattan’s ultimate tourist Mecca, Times Square), I confess that I didn’t have the stomach for the noise, the lines, the hoopla, the Star Wars cosplay, the six-hour flight, the traffic jams, or the $10 hot dogs. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, however, I can behave like a proper manga pundit and offer my two cents on the biggest news stories to emerge from this year’s convention. My votes go to…

5. CMX licenses Crayon Shin-chan.
Don’t be fooled by the series’ crude artwork or youthful protagonist: Crayon Shin-chan is as irreverent (and adult) as South Park, and should only be consumed by folks with a strong stomach for raunchy humor and mangled phraseology. Several other publishers have fumbled the ball with this particular license, so it will be interesting to see if CMX can adapt its culturally-specific humor for Western audiences.

4. Tokyopop “brands” four manwha series by artist name.
In a market where only a handful of manga-kas enjoy name-brand status, it’s interesting to see Tokyopop incorporate artist Park Hee-Jung’s name into the titles of such books as Hotel Africa and Too Long. Tokyopop and Viz have had mixed results with such branding efforts—for every Mitsukazu Mihara or Naoki Urasawa is an Erika Sakurazawa—but Tokyopop’s willingness to test this strategy with a Korean artist attests to manwha’s increased clout in the US market.

3. Manga didn’t fare so well at the Eisners.
This point has been blogged to death, so I’ll just say that any awards committee that favors Old Boy over The Walking Man (or Monster, for that matter) spends too much time at the multiplex and not enough time reading comics.

2. Viz licenses Slam Dunk.
For many readers, this may have been the most important announcement to emerge from SDCC this year. Back in 2003, Gutsoon! Entertainment began publishing Slam Dunk in Raijin Comics, but both the magazine and its parent company folded well before completing the series’ run. This time around, Viz plans to use Shonen Jump as a launch pad, treating readers to a generous preview in the December issue before releasing the 31-volume series in tankubon format. But will Slam Dunk inspire the same devotion in the birthplace of basketball as it did throughout Asia? Given sports’ manga less-than-Olympic track record in the US, it will be interesting to see if aficionado enthusiam for the series trickles down to the rank-and-file SJ reader.

1. CLAMP strikes exclusive deal with Dark Horse.
If someone had told me that Dark Horse, home of the manliest manga editor of all, would be teaming up with the ladies of CLAMP to produce something called “mangettes,” I might have dismissed it as the ravings of a deluded xxxHolic fan. But given Dark Horse’s high editorial standards, considerable presence in comic book stores, and desire to crack the lucrative female market, the deal makes sense. The as-yet unnamed series will be distributed first in “mangette” form—short, 80-page booklets that fall somewhere between an American floppy and a Japanese tankubon—then collected into trade paperbacks. The other novel twist: Dark Horse will simultaneously produce editions for the Japanese, Korean, and American markets, thus eliminating the lag time between the Asian and American releases.

I’m not sure I’m 100% sold on the “mangette” format, for the same reason I’m not keen on floppies: the TPB is generally a better deal (and a more satisfying read, I might add). Then there’s the matter of the product’s name. In their press release announcing the partnership, the good folks at Dark Horse carefully explained the reasoning behind the term, even delving into the nuances of the kanji used to form “mangetsu” (its Japanese spelling). Alas, “mangette” makes me think of my least favorite import from the Netherlands. “Mangette…she was the other female smurf, right? The one without staples?” quips Tina Anderson. Actually, she’s the one with the katana and the school girl uniform.

Honorable mention:
Omibus fever! ADV announced a new omnibus edition of Azumanga Daioh, while Viz will be offering budget-conscious otakus three-volume installments of perennial favorites Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Rurouni Kenshin.

Least surprising news item to emerge from SDCC:
The kids still love vampires. And princesses. So now seems like a good time to ask, will someone at last have a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup epiphany and reissue Vampire Princess Miyu?

Most offbeat licensing announcement:
Del Rey will be releasing Akiro Hiromoto’s Me and the Devil Blues, a fictionalized biography of legendary guitarist Robert Johnson. Given Japanese interest in American music, I’m hoping this will be a meticulously researched, beautifully illustrated exploration of Johnson’s singular talent, and not a lurid, supernatural take on his alleged pact with the devil. (Though I will concede that such a biography might be entertaining.) If it’s been a while since you listened to Johnson’s plaintive voice and distinctive finger-picking, an inexpensive way to reacquaint yourself with his music is Sony’s nicely remastered anthology King of the Delta Blues. The producers have cherry-picked the most influential of Johnson’s 41 recordings, compiling such oft-covered tunes as “Love in Vain,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Hell Hound on my Trail,” “I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man,” and “Cross Road Blues.”