Archive for the Events Category


Events: Otakon and MangaNEXT

July 20th, 2008

Two event-related news items!

Otakon – August 8-10, 2008, Baltimore Maryland.

Yuricon/ALC will be running the Yuri Panel on Friday, August 8th at 1PM. Check the schedule for the location – and to confirm the time. You *know* it will change. :-)

Also, drop by the Yuricon/ALC booth in the Dealer’s Room (Table 611) for Yuri manga, t-shirts, pins, postcards and other goods – we even have a “I Love Yuri” Teddy Bear! Anyone who spends more than $25 at the table will get a chance to enter a drawing for this anime art-inspired Catwoman figurine. Cool, huh?

MangaNEXT – October 31 – November 2, 2008, Somerset, NJ

ALC Publishing is looking for Yuri artists and doujinshi creators to get together for a “Circle of Yuri” in the MangaNEXT Artist’s Alley. If you are a Yuri artist, and would like to reserve a table in the Circle of Yuri, please contact me at anilesbocon at hotmail dot com with the subject “Circle of Yuri”. You will be paying for your own table – a table and membership will be $50. I’ll provide promotion and a sense of community. :-) I’d love to see if we could get a little Yuri Row started in the closest thing to Comiket here in America! :-)

I’m looking forward to seeing you all at these great events!





Quick AnimeNEXT 2008 Recap

June 22nd, 2008

AnimeNEXT and MangaNEXT (yes, there will be one in 2008) are my “home” cons. The audience is usually quite friendly and exhaustingly fresh-faced and youthful. :-)

Yuricon and ALC never have a major impact here, mostly because the audience is so young. Paddles are likely to do quite well here, because these attendees aren’t quite old enough to buy porn – which for some reason, is all they really want. lol

This year it was a lot of new faces at the Yuri Panel, mostly none of whom had ever heard of any of the series we’ve been going on at great length about here and on the Yuricon Mailing List. So it was a bit of an upstream swim, but we all warmed up to one another after a little while. :-)

Secondly and quite majorly (but no one in the Yuri Panel knew what I was talking about so, again, no impact) Media Blasters told me that why yes they have licensed Maka Maka and they are working on it right now. I’m assured its going to look great. :-) I asked if could say anything and they were like – sure, all surprised. I replied – you know you never made a licensing announcement. They looked puzzled, “didn’t we?” Uh, no. lol And lots of love to Clark this weekend for being a really nice guy. :-)

So, let’s see, major thanks to my best lackeys Serge and Donna, translator extraordinaire Mari Morimoto, the lovely Isabel, Hyo, Devin and Leanne, who is as evil as ever. :-) And thanks to everyone who got something from our table, whether it be book, postcard or grab bag! (Did I ever tell you people about those? Every year at ANEXT, I clean out my house of all the stuff I got over the year. DVDs, magazine, books, toys, promotional items, etc. I scoop ’em all up and make grab bags which *always* are sold out by Friday night here. It’s crazy. lol)

Today should be quiet for us, but I do have a Fanfic Writing workshop today at noon. Always fun. See you there! :-)

I’ll be back to reviews soon.





Event: Yuricon & ALC Publishing at AnimeNEXT 2008

June 20th, 2008

This weekend I will be at AnimeNEXT 2008, in Secaucus, NJ.

Yuricon and ALC Publishing will have a table in “Con Row” which is immediately outside the Dealer’s Room. We’ll have a nice selection of 100% Yuri manga, as well as our annual ” Yuri grab bag” sale, in which you can get twice as much crap as you pay for!

We’ll be doing a Yuri Panel at 3PM on Saturday, June 21 and I’ll be running the Fanfic Writer’s workshop on Sunday at 12. Both times are subject to last minute changes, so check the schedule to make sure!

We’ll see you there!





Event: "Ghost in the Shell: Innocence" Lecture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

June 13th, 2008

Just a heads up for all the New York City-area readers we have here.

Tomorrow, Saturday June 14, at 1:PM, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, as part of a New York citywide exploration of Japanese culture and art, is showing the Ghost In The Shell: Innocence movie.

I will be introducing the movie, and doing a short Q&A afterward.

The movie begins at 1PM, I’ll be doing my intro at about 12:45. It all takes place in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Forum on the 4th floor. Admission to the movie is free with admission to the museum. If you pay for a Muakami exhibit ticket, you get to see that exhibit, the rest of the museum AND the movie, so I hope you’ll come early and take in the great art, then join for Ghost In The Shell: Innocence!





MoCCA Report and Egregious Self-Promotion

June 8th, 2008

As expected, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art event was fabulous. I never fail to have a good time there – the level of creativity and passion and attendee engagement is much higher than the usual con at which the attendees expect to be entertained, rather than be part of the entertainment.

As always, my sincere thanks to David Stanley and Prism Comics. I cannot say enough good things about these people. Every time I’ve had the pleasure of their company it has been a genuine pleasure. Thanks to Peter, for finding good coffee, to Chris and his boyfriend Chris and special thanks to Kate Fitzsimmons of Girlwonder.org/Four-Color Heroines for hanging out with us all day and keeping us company. And also for having the line of the event – Is it so much to ask that a manga have a couple whose lives *won’t* be ruined by them having sex? lol

We were right next to Jennifer Camper, who was selling her cool new mylar-covered artbooks and her fabulously funny comics. Abby Denson’s Dolltopia 2 is out! Got a couple of copies of that. Spent some quality time busting J.D. Glass’s chops – she got posters made for “Sakura Gun,” her American Goth side story which will run in Yuri Monogatari 6, and X, her next novel. (Which is my favorite so far, fyi.) And it was a pleasure to see Allan Neuwirth and Ivan Velez again.

Oh, oh, oh! I got to meet Mariko Tamaki, author of Skim, which I absolutely adored. If you haven’t, you should definitely read it.

Here’s the self-promotion bit. The Prism Comics Guide 2008 is now in print and its chock full of GLBT-themed comics by many talented artists. And coincidentally, it contains an article by me on Yuri (I know, can you believe it?) Right now you can only get it by having your local comic book store order it from Diamond. But soon it will be on sale on the Prism Comics shop. Support independent GLBT comics and get the Guide!

Kate (thanks Kate!) gave me a copy of Comic Foundry, a new comics culture magazine which, I have to say, seems pretty cool. Volume 1 includes a glossary of manga/anime-related terms, which includes Yuri, and lo and behold! ALC’s books are recommended. Who knew? A nod of appreciation to the CF folks for that.

Before I wrap up, I have a few more names to drop – hello to Margeaux and the Comics Alliance folks, Eve is once again starting up Blood and the Art of Baking, a Vampire lesbian baking adventure comic I quite like, and great big thanks to translator extraordinaire Mari Morimoto, reviewer and writer Casey Brienza and brilliant journalist Kai-Ming Cha, all of whom I got to spend some quality time with and as always, laughed my ass off, traded good gossip and had some fun. :-)

Seriously, IMHO, MoCCA is the best comic show of the year. See you at the MoCCA Art Festival, 2009.