A note on the manga giveaway methodology – I picked names randomly out of a hat. Some people wrote in requesting one title, and some people wrote in with a list of ranked choices. I was thinking of figuring out a way to accomodate the multi choice people while keeping the odds fair for everyone else, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that easily. To keep the logistics simple, I ended up just putting everyone’s name in once, for their first or only choice of manga title.
Red River is being sent all the way to Tomas V. from the Czech Republic. He provided palindromes in Czech, “Kobyla ma maly bok” and “Jelenovi pivo nelej” (meaning ~”A mare has a small side” and “Don’t give (pour) beer to a deer.) The Czech people have very profound palindromes!
Happy Mania (volume 1 AND 2, surprise!) goes to Bethany T. from South Carolina
She provided the palindrome “Swap for a pair of paws?”
Alichino goes to Mangablog, whose palindrome was an easy to remember phone number.
Gals! goes to Alvin W. from Nebraska. “Madam in Eden I’m Adam” was his palindrome
Saikano goes to Jeanette W. from California, whose palindrome was “lol”
Ray goes to Brandon D. from New Jersey, “racecar” was his palindrome.
Swan goes to Andrew W. from Pennsylvania, his palindrome was the lovely name “Anna”.
Swan also goes to Shawn Fumo (due to DC giving Swan away at the last couple of ALA conferences, I had an extra copy of this!). “Hah” was his palindrome.
Bizenghast goes to Shiu S. in Texas, whose palindrome was “Murder for a jar of red rum”.
Please Save My Earth goes to Amanda S. in South Carolina, with the palindrome “No evil I did, I live on.”
And now for the Super-Secret-Fantastic-Surprise-Ultra-Bonus-Manga Giveaway!
After I announced the initial titles I was giving away, I started rummaging around for some back-up titles to send to people. I really wanted to get some manga in the hands of some people who hadn’t read much manga before.
So, Crisis/Boring Change gets Samurai Executioner #1. It sounded like Chris hasn’t read any manga, and Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima are so influential, I thought this would be a starting point. He’s also getting a volume of Tokyopop Sneaks.
Raphe runs Thirty-Two Pages of Love, a romance comic blog. I’m sending him a galley copy of Times Two, a manga with a series of short romance stories.
Joel H from Manitoba, Canada reads The Comics Journal, and was intrigued by the fact that manga has a genre of “modern student is transported to ancient/magical land”. That’s one of my favorite storylines in manga! He wanted Red River, but I didn’t draw his name from the hat so I’m sending him the first volume of the manwha Threads of Time, about a student in modern Korea who keeps having strange historic flashbacks. I think Joel should also check out Fushigi Yugi though!
Mark F from Utah is another manga newbie. He’s getting volume 1 of Musashi #9 and a Viz sneak peaks book.
The Uber Mega Giveaway goes to Alvin W. from Nebraska, whose name was picked out of the hat for Gals. Alvin works at a combined Tribal College and public library, and wrote in to ask for Gals because his library has recently purchased a few volumes of manga, but all of the titles they have now are aimed at boys. I wanted to do something to build his library’s manga collection! So in addition to Gals, he’s going to get a box of shojo goodness containing:
W Juliet volumes 1-4
From Far Away volumes 1 and 2
Fushigi Yugi (the older flipped editions, I hope this is ok) volumes 1-3
That’s it! Thanks to everyone who promoted the giveaway on their blogs, and everyone who e-mailed to request some manga! Based on the response I’m sure I’ll try to do this again in the future, although it may take some time for me to build up a box of titles that I’m willing to part with. I won’t get to the post office before Saturday to send these out, but I’ll be packaging everything up ASAP.