I'll be attending the Alternative Press Expo on October 17-18 in San Francisco, California. Not only that, my good friend and artist of King of RPGs, Victor Hao, will also be there for at least one day! This is our first time attending a convention together, but not the last!

We'll be at table 365, which we're sharing with Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farago. Stop by to pick up King of RPGs minicomics, our spectacular new color and B&W postcards designed by Jay, and green, red and blue dice necklaces from our friends at Paw and Claw Designs! We'll also have the top-secret complete finished pages for King of RPGs volume 1 (and the first 40 pages of King of RPGs volume 2).

I've started a new monthly column, "Invisible Manga," at io9.com. The first entry concerns "Spice and Wolf", the recent Dragon Ball scandal in Maryland, and other issues. It's about 15% more generalist and intended for a non-manga audience than my "Manga Salad" columns and Otaku USA writings, so please check it out and let me know what you think!

It's really real -- King of RPGs is in Previews magazine, the catalog magazine used by comic and game stores! The last time I had a comic offered in Diamond Previews was "Hyperborea" back in 2004.... but "Hyperborea" was just a 24-page one-shot, "King of RPGs" is my first full-on, full-length graphic novel.

The data in the listing is a little off -- the book is actually 224+ pages, not 192. But basically, it's out there! Order copies for your entire extended family! Photos behind the link!

My awesome collaborator Victor Hao, the artist of King of RPGs, was recently interviewed by Anime News Network! Please check out the generously illustrated interview here!

My favorite zombie horror novel, Walter Greatshell's Xombies, was just rereleased in a new edition as "Xombies: Apocalypse Blues." The new cover isn't nearly as good as the old one with a blurred-out, hungry blue face peering through a thin film of ice, but the book itself is still as good as ever. What other book includes unkillable running zombies, furries, and a Pakistani Beatles cover band? I've read quite a few zombie books (more than I should admit), and Xombies is way better than Brian Keene.

I'm also looking forward to the sequel, Xombies: Apocalypticon, which will be coming out in early 2010. Anyway: these books are really good satirical-yet-horrifying zombie science fiction. After surveying the glutted field of zombies, they get my highest recommendation.

I have a new manga article on Comixology! This will be the second time I've written about Felipe Smith for "Manga Salad," but I love his stuff, and the article turned into a jumping-off point for various digressions. In a way, I feel that the story is incomplete as long as Peepo Choo continues running in Japan, until we know just how successful it was. But I guess that's the way it is with everything.

The grand age of facebook quizzes seems to be over (mercifully), but I, takin' my sweet time, have just completed the King of RPGs Facebook Quiz! And the meat of the quiz is... "What Kind of Roleplayer Are You?" If you're reading this you've probably seen similar quizzes before, but I wrote everything from scratch and tried to make it unique. Best of all, each answer is, of course, accompanied by King of RPGs artwork!

If you aren't on facebook, here's a link to the main quiz title artwork, by the great Victor Hao, on kingofrpgs.com.

It's been awhile since I posted, and I've now completed two weeks of 365 Days of Manga" on suvudu.com. I've given away about 85 manga, mostly taken from the massive boxes of manga supporting my bed. I've posted 14 reviews and received three photos of people posing with their manga.

It's a deeply satisfying feeling sending out all this manga and posting the MtCG (Manga: The Complete Guide) reviews which, in some cases, were written over a year ago and have been waiting around on my computer all this time. It's fascinating to see and meet the people who are submitting entries and the kind of things people are asking for. Please check out the blog and send in an entry for the contest!

The first real blog entry of "365 Days of Manga" -- my online continuation of "Manga: The Complete Guide," for which I'll be giving away 5-10 manga a day for a year -- has gone online! Please check it out: Day 1: Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation.

The signup form to get free manga is on the lower left part of the page. Please tell everyone you know who has any interest in manga, and get them to sign up! Shamelessly spread the word! I need to move this manga so I've descended to bargain-basement rock-bottom prices of FREE! EVERYTHING MUST GO!

Aside from that, I hope you all enjoy the new manga reviews by myself, Shaenon Garrity, Derek Guder and the other contributors. Please feel free to post comments on suvudu as new reviews go online!

What have I been doing with "Manga: The Complete Guide"? What about the long-promised update? Several bloggers and news sites have already picked it up, but you can read the answer in my own words here.

P.S. Oh, and I am giving away almost all my manga. Details behind the link.

Just posted pics from the King of RPGs D&D; game at Kumoricon!

The next page of H.P. Lovecraft's The Strange High House in the Mist is now online and (more or less) complete! Unfortunately with my trip to Portland and a lot of other things coming up, I won't be able to upload another page until September 18. But please hang in there.

DA-DA-DA-DOOM!!! To my great pleasure, I am going to be a guest at Kumoricon in Portland, Oregon on Labor Day Weekend (September 4-7). I've never been to Kumoricon, but Portland is one of my favorite cities and I always love an opportunity to go up there to get rained on, go to Powell's Books, visit some of my good friends and now MANGA IT UP! Here's my programming schedule so far (you can see the whole schedule on the website... wow, Crossplay 101 on Saturday!).

SATURDAY
11:00am-12:00pm: THE SECRET HISTORY OF MANGA
It’s been more than thirty years since the first manga was translated into English! But how much do you REALLY know about manga? From MixxZine to Raijin, from Astro Boy to Tenjho Tenge, discover the bizarre secrets of translated manga in this visual time machine full of dreamers, censors, antiwar activists, and ninja.
12:30pm-1:30pm: LOOK BACK IN MANGA with Carl Gustav Horn
From 1997 to 2003, VIZ published the underground/seinen manga magazine, PULP, which featured the first English appearances of critically acclaimed manga artists such as Junko Mizuno (Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu) and Junji Ito (Uzumaki). Today, the spirit of PULP lives on in VIZ’s new IKKI line of alternative manga (one of the original proposed titles for IKKI was PULP Japan), in violent, sexual seinen (men’s) manga like Crying Freeman and Oldboy, and in experimental/art manga like Disappearance Diary and Tokyo Zombie. Jason Thompson and Carl Gustav Horn, two of the original editors of PULP magazine, talk about manga and about what it was like to work in the industry in the mysterious future (?) year of 199X.
12:30am-1:30 am (Sunday night): LATE NIGHT YAOI READING
In this very special panel, I, Jason Thompson, will join an as yet unnamed volunteer in reenacting scenes from various yaoi/BL manga. 18 and older only, please.

SUNDAY
11:30am-12:30pm: MANGA THE COMPLETE GUIDE Z!
The big event! I talk about the creation of "Manga: The Complete Guide" and make a major, major announcement about the ! Also, I will be giving away a ton of manga! That's 2,000 pounds of manga! (Well, not literally. Probably more like 20 pounds. I do own a ton of manga, though. And there will be a giveaway. Really.)
1:30pm-2:30pm: CENSORSHIP IN MANGA
In 2009, Christopher Handley, a manga collector in Iowa, pleaded guilty to charges of possessing obscene manga, after a three-year ordeal which began when the U.S. Postal Service opened a package he received from Japan. Meanwhile, censorship is a fact of life in mainstream manga, affecting everything from nudity in Naruto to pot leaves in Shaman King. Why is manga censored in America, and what do the laws really say about what you can and can’t show? Jason Thompson and other industry guests discuss the legal, moral and economic aspects of this complicated issue.
11:00pm-4:00 am: KING OF RPGS TABLETOP THROWDOWN
Calling all magic-users, role-players and D&D; fans! In honor of the January 2010 release of King of RPGs, I will be running a five-hour D&D; tournament adventure. The best role-players (or, alternately, the survivors) will receive fabulous prizes! Beginners welcome. Dice and characters provided.

I've put up some notes and images explaining how Eric Adams and I designed the King of RPGs logo.

I'm a little late putting this up, but my latest Manga Salad, on autobiographical/underground mangaka Shigeyuki Fukumitsu, has gone up on comixology.

King of RPGs volume 1, still on track for a January 19 release date, is now available for preorder on amazon. (But when will old beaten-up copies start showing up on alibris?)

I would say to preorder one for every member of your adventuring party, but it's also great if you go to your local graphic novel or game retailer and ask them all kinds of leading questions about King of RPGs and preorder through them. This way, you'll be supporting local businesses, and also spreading the legend of the myth... the magic... the first tabletop RPG/manga/black comedy mashup graphic novel. I also like the fact that when you look at "active discussions in related forums" on the amazon page, the forum links that come up include "The RPG that only you seem to have played", "Graphic Novels for Intellectuals", and "Yaoi manga/anime discussions."

Another page is up at www.mockman.com. To my mind, this page is about 40% adequate and 60% in need of revision. But onward I go, saving all fixes and modifications for later... The next page will go up on Friday, August 21.

King of RPGs now has a facebook page! Please check it out and become a fan!

More cover sketches for King of RPGs! Also check out Victor's design notes on flickr.

King of RPGs is now running on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday update schedule, for which I'll be posting sketches and information about the book. Today's post: Rejected Cover Designs for Volume 1. Check 'em out!