Hikaru Sasahara and friend.

Sasahara spoke with PWCW about the beginnings of DMP and how he's managed to develop the company into a one-stop shop for Asian pop culture. DMP is credited with being an early publisher of yaoi, contributing to the genre's growth in the American market. Sasahara's companies—among them Akadot online news and retail, Pop Japan Travel and the online instruction site, Manga Academy—offer a variety of related services, while publishing a different, edgier brand of manga in a market dominated by formulaic shojo titles aimed at teen girls.

The uniquely American art of the comic strip and the cartoon are on display through January 26 at the Library of Congress, in a major exhibition titled Cartoon America: Highlights from the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature. In conjunction with the show, Abrams has recently published Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress. Book and display trace the history of the cartoon from Leonardo Da Vinci to Lynn Johnston.

Lester Girls wants a mundane life—Cs in school, dead-end job, plain wife—and more than anything else, a good night’s sleep. It’s not his fault that he can’t go for a drive without terrorists launching missiles at him, or walk into one of his many mansions without a beautiful, talented, buxom woman reposing half-dressed on his bed. He’s so dashing and capable he just can’t shake the fame and fortune. Poor Mr. Girls is the creation of nonfiction authors Jacobs and Jones, a lost gem of late ’80s comics, hence the occasional mullet on view. Rescued from obscurity, the first seven issues of the comic show not only an intelligent James Bond satire but a genuinely endearing hero whose plight, however absurd, we can’t help sympathizing with. Hamilton’s clean, linear art evokes classic superhero comics. In one stunning four-page set piece, Apache Dick, a Girls analogue who loves the high life, launches an escape that starts with pole-vaulting the Great Wall of China and ends with crawling from the smoking wreckage of a kamikaze plane muttering only, “bungalow.” The Trouble with Girls is satire with restraint, charming and hilarious. (Dec.)

With the second volume of her bestselling Dramacon OEL recently released, Svetlana Chmakova has found herself among the best known non-Japanese manga-ka. Following the romantic twists and turns of a group of anime convention attendees, Dramacon takes a familiar setting and adds both comedy and real emotional investment in the characters to make a charming story. Chmakova, 28, is certainly at the forefront of the North American original manga movement.

• A Bit Haywire (Viper Comics)
• Birthday (Vertical)
• Blank (Tokyopop)
• Bucky O' Hare And The Toad Menace (Vanguard Productions)
• Don't Go Where I Can't Follow (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Dream Of The Rarebit Fiend: The Saturdays (Checker Book Publishing Group)
• Heroes Reborn: Avengers (Marvel)
• Lone Racer (Top Shelf Productions)
• Lucky Luke Dalton City (Cinebook)
• Mail (Dark Horse)
• Portent (Image)
• Train Plus Train (Go! Comics)

• Barefoot Gen Donated to Libraries
  
• Shadow To Fall On Movie Screens
  
• Comics Artists Speak About Contemporary Graphic Novels
  
• Martin Nodell Passes Away
  
• Broccoli Books Acquires Titles
  
• Vertical To Publish Apollo's Song
  
• CBLDF Auction Begins