The Aughts

Founded in 1997, TokyoPop was one of the most influential publishers of the Aughts, driving the manga boom in the US as the first publisher to print manga in its original right-to-left format, a move that helped cement its authenticity among young readers. Later on their "original English language manga" line developed an entire generation of young creators working in a manga style, including Becky Cloonan and Amy Reeder Hadley. But it all came to an end in 2011 when the company shut down except for the German office. Owner and founder Stuart Levy went on to make a documentary about the Tohoku earthquake, even amidst continuing controversy about the reversion of rights to creators However there have been flickers of life since then, with some new digital publishing, licensing OEL books like King City to Image, and a TokyoPop-branded newsletter that was part of Nerdist's adventures in that area. Since TokyoPop never went bankrupt, it's entirely possible that Levy can bring it back, as promised on the company's about page:

This May Fantagraphics is releasing OTHER STUFF, a compilation of various strips by Peter Bagge and his friends like Dan Clowes, Gilbert Hernandez, and R. Crumb. The stories in the book are mostly outside the famed Buddy Bradley saga, but no less hilarious.

If you've ever wanted to own the definitive version of Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise saga, it's available once again in Omnibus form. ...

Listen to Heidi MacDonald, The Beat herself, discuss 2011 in comics on a special year-end edition of More To Come, the PW Comics World podcast! As you may or may not know, Heidi has been one of the hosts of our bi-weekly comics news podcast for the past several months. In this episode, Heidi MacDonald and her co-hosts PW Comics World editor Calvin Reid and I discuss the biggest trends and events of the past year, including...

Bryan Hitch, the king of widescreen comics, is announcing the end of his Marvel run of nearly ten years -- or at least that's what he's tweet hinting:

In two days time, an amazing decade at Marvel closes for me. What a wonderful time to have joined the party. Very proud and honoured.

For the last month, Hitch has been counting down to a purported huge announcement -- he has only five days to go, so January 3 will be the big day -- coincidentally, the day that Hitch's frequent -- Ultimates, Authority-- collaborator Mark Millar also has an announcement planned. Hm.

Artist Ashley Wood ruminates on the occasion of a collected edition of Automatic Kafka, his surreal but energizing collaboration with writer Joe Casey, most recently lauded as part of the WildStorm heritage. What Thrillerwas the the '80s this was to the Aughts, and it's fantastic that it's finally been collected. Only one catch...it's in Spanish.

Funnybook Babylon has an interesting charticle looking at the runs of various Vertigo ongoing series over the years, following some speculation that books were being canceled there because of increased scrutiny from DC's new management. Chris Eckert suggests this is not the case, or at least not the only factor, by showing that the lowest selling titles are always canceled, although nowadays the best selling title is something that would have been canceled a decade ago. Eckert also runs a chart showing relative Amazon rankings for various Vertigo trades, a weak metric but all we have to go on.

Over the recent holiday weekend, we had occasion to spend a fair bit of time going through posts from the Old Beat, clearing out some spam and trying to clean up the database for various purposes. Along the way we were forced to violently relive the last few years of the last decade. It all seemed so simple once. So many news stories that never went anywhere -- a few we jotted down for future investigation, but there were also things like this fellow who spent money in 2007 to announce his new blog. Now it's only a reseller placeholder. They had such big dreams, but those big dreams crawled under a rock to die.

Blogger Hunter Phillips has assembled a "Definitive" Best of the '00s comics list by toting up the published "Best of" lists: THE DETAILS: • Compiled...

WOW, lots of reading to do to get yourself ready for the new year! § You will be dumbfounded with amazement at Douglas Wolk's...

Graeme McMillan rounds up 100 Amazing Comic Covers From The Last Ten Years. Was this the Greatest Decade in Comics History or not?...

Star Trek: The Mad Generation via Derek Kirk Kim. This could sum up either the '00s, the '80s, the '60s, or the 24th century....