Publishing | Viz Media announced that Ken Sasaki, formerly the senior vice president and general manager of the manga and anime publisher, will take over from Hidemi Fukuhara as president and CEO. Fukuhara is being promoted to vice chairman, which apparently involves little of the day-to-day management of the company. [Crunchyroll]

Publishing | Johanna Draper Carlson counts the pages in some recent DC and Marvel comics and finds lots of house ads — and very few paying ones. This raises the chicken-and-egg question of whether the comics publishers are losing interest in selling ads or the advertisers are losing interest in buying them. [Comics Worth Reading]

Digital | Nerdist Industries’ CEO Peter Levin has joined comiXology’s advisory board. [comiXology]

Creators | Shannon Wheeler discusses his work on Too Much Coffee Man. [The Daily Texan]

Creators | Brian Wood talks about his work on The Massive, Conan and more. [Suicide Girls]

Manga | Here's a treat for fans of Naoki Urasawa (20th Century Boys, Monster, Pluto): Jason Thompson takes a look at Pineapple Army, which was written by Kazuya Kudô and drawn by Urasawa and tells the story of an instructor who teaches his students how to kill: "Goshi doesn't save you from the bad guys, he teaches YOU to save yourself … although when the chips are down and you need that extra bit of help, he may mysteriously show up and save you anyway." [Anime News Network]

Retailing | Unsurprisingly, a number of retailers interviewed about digital comics pooh-pooh the idea, saying their customers prefer "real" books. This is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy—why else would the customers be in their stores? More telling is the fact that sales haven't dropped, which bolsters the current thinking that digital comics sales supplement, rather than supplant, print sales. [YourPennHills.com]

Manga | Christian Sager approaches manga as an outsider and discusses some of the differences between manga and American comics, talking about different storytelling styles, panel placement, and how Japanese culture is reflected in the content of the stories. [ABC2news.com]

Retrospectives | The Wall Street Journal takes note of the exhibit "Art Spiegelman: Co-Mix," which is currently at the Pomidou Center in Paris and will be moving on to Vancouver, Cologne and New York. [The Wall Street Journal]