Dave Merrill is, among many other things, the Anime Weekend Atlanta conrunner who achieved satanic status in fandom by proposing the elimination of the cosplay/masquerade in less-than-diplomatic language. He used to write a column for an online Georgia webzine called Athenstown; when that gig ended, AnimeJump put up his archive and gave him a place for his intermittent columns. His latest column talks about the sudden deluge of "How To Draw Manga" artbooks in the direct market, and touches a bit on why that's a damn silly notion, rather along the same lines as "How To Write Russian Novels" or "How To Make Iranian Movies".

Meanwhile, on the rest of AnimeJump, Mike Toole has inspired me to go buy Interstella 5555, which is saying something. I was almost certain that the prolonged intersection of French synthpop and Leiji Matsumoto would drive me nuts, but Toole's description has me interested....