One quick link to start off with: I have a review in today’s Manga Minis, for volume four of Go!Comi’s Ultimate Venus. It’s a fun little manga that I’ve enjoyed so far, and I’d recommend it as light shojo fluff. Now on to the real topic of this post.

So, over this past weekend, I attended the first annual (yes, they said so!) New England Webcomics Weekend at the Eastworks building in Easthampton, MA, just a couple of towns over. I read a few webcomics regularly, but my husband is the real fan, so though many of the panels sounded interesting to me, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It was, however, an exceptional weekend, and I came away a fan of many more webcomics than I’d been when I arrived.

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Thanks to Brigid Alverson’s recent interview with Matt Thorn, I got inspired to read some Moto Hagio, beginning with her short science fiction manga from 1975, They Were Eleven. Last night I wrote up a review, which you can find today at Tokidoki Daylight! I’m afraid my lack of background in manga shows terribly in this review, despite my ongoing quest to become more knowledgeable, so for further reading, I’d recommend going through Matt Thorn’s website, where he has many articles and resources chronicling the history of shojo manga, all of which are much smarter than anything I could write. My review, however, does include some nice images I scanned in from my copies of the manga so it’s worth checking out if you’ve never read it! They Were Eleven is unfortunately out of print here, but the Viz pamphlets can be picked up very reasonably on ebay, which is how I got them. Don’t even think about trying to get Four Shojo Stories, though, unless you’re a lot richer than I!

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be pretty much occupied at the New England Web Comics Weekend, which is conveniently located just a couple small towns over! My husband is a huge fan of webcomics, and I keep up on a number of them myself, so it should be an enjoyable event all around. There are quite a few interesting panels being presented, and you know I’ll be at the print vs. web discussion, right? :D I’ll try to report in at some point with any interesting news.

A million thanks to those who have chimed in with recommendations over at my Let’s Talk About Manhwa post! I’m so excited to find new things to read! Please stop by if you have anything further to add!