The American Library Association has released its list of Great Graphic Novels for 2008, and ADV, TOKYOPOP, Del Rey, Go! Comi, CMX, VIZ, Dark Horse, Vertical, and Digital Manga Publishing all took home prizes this year.

For Del Rey it was Pumpkin Scissors 1, Alive 1 and 2, and Mushishi 1 and 2 (natch).

TOKYOPOP got honors for King of Thorn 1 and 2, VIZ’s Love*Com 1 and Kekkaishi 7 and 8 are mentioned, and ADV’s Yotsuba& volume 4.

CMX wins for Emma, of course, volumes 1-5. Dark Horse took home one for the well-received shoujo manga Translucent, and Vertical’s prize is for To Terra 1-3. Digital Manga Publishing got awards for Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga (who is an amazing mangaka, best known for her BL– unfortunately for her non-BL titles like Flower or Antique Bakery, which are phenomenal).

I think Go! Comi wins for the actual number of books mentioned: Train+Train 1-3 and After School Nightmare 1-5, a total of 8 books (versus Del Rey and CMX who got 5 each).

And finally, the well-regarded manga Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fuyimo Kouno also made the list.

Also of note: Mark Crilley’s extremely manga-inspired graphic novel series Miki made the list for three volumes, and the first volume of SoHee Park’s manhwa Goong gives some last-second acclaim to the defunct ICE Kunion.

Original source: ALA
Secondary source: Blog@Newsarama

Alrighty folks, here’s a manga item I thoroughly missed out on: yaoi publisher Drama Queen, who also publishes some shoujo titles (mostly manhwa), apparently declared at Otakon that they’d be branching out to offer an action line, starting with the manhwa title Spam Mail Hunter.

Now look. I love Drama Queen. I know several of their staffers and they love what they do and they do it really damn well. But it does seem a little odd to branch out at a time when they’ve had trouble getting books out on-schedule. Though they’ve always been worth the wait, which I guess is really the more important part.

Those of you who were aO readers might remember that I reported on ICE Kunion, whose website recently started forwarding to FreeManhwa.com. Today PWCW has an update, and it looks like the new manga publisher Yen Press has sucked up ICE Kunion’s licenses and will start spitting them back out starting May 2008.

They say they have ALL the licenses, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t prioritize some over others…but for the moment it sounds like they plan to continue releasing all of them. Which means I better get my One Thousand and One Nights volumes QUICK, damnit.