Manga

You heard it folks - the creator of the sensational Berserk series, Kentaro Miura, is bringing his first new work in 20 years to Dark Horse (and the US) in 2016. No word on how long this story will be, but going by Miura's track record, you may want to reserve a shelf or 3 for this one.

In the past year or so, I've become quite the fan of Studio Ghibli (of course, just in time for the whole thing to shutter around me), and while I recognize most fans find...

Masashi Kishimoto, creator of the 205,000,000 copies in print Naruto comic, will be making an extremely rare appearance at this year's New York Comic Con with two special signings—one at Books Kinokuniya and one at the Tribeca outpost of Barnes and Noble. It's not only Kishimoto-sensei's first appearance in the US, it's also his first con appearance ever. And probably one of the few times he's left his house during the 18-year run of the international smash hit. We're kidding a little about the leaving the house bit, but as we've mentioned here many times in the past, manga creators can lead a pretty monastic lifestyle, even with the help of assistants. Since Naruto ended last year, he's been busy with various manga about Boruto, Naruto's son, and also writing the Naruto movie, but hopefully he's been enjoying some time off.

As we all know, Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan has been the shock trooper in the recent manga bounce back here in the US and Japan. A story from the Japanese language Eiga.com reported...

As I'm probably too fond of saying, each year's San Diego Comic-Con represents the end of comics' fiscal year, and we're now in a new cycle of sales, renewal and looking forward to the next thing. Although the con was not that memorable on its own, it did mark a new plateau in the direct sales era for comics penetration into the mass media, and for having a variety of voices and genres that the medium has probably has never been seen before. This situation, while far from ideal, still represents a dream come true for a lot of us who have been toiling in the comics industry for a while. I remember as if it were yesterday sitting in various comics industry think tanks in the 90s wondering WHAT could be done to expand the audience for comics, how to bring in genres that weren't superheroes, and how to overcome the tyranny of the "32 page pamphlet" as it was dubbed by either Kurt Busiek or Marv Wolfman, depending on who you ask. These tasks seemed daunting at the time, and it actually took 25 years to get to a place where it could be argued that its true, and everyone at those meetings is a certified old timer now.

As I noted a few weeks back, Tokyopop, the company that came in changed comics and then crashed and burned, suspending publication for the most part back in 2011, is coming back as announced on a panel at Anime Expo with plans to begin publishing again in 2016" announced by founder Stu Levy.

This has been alluded to over the last few days on social media, but the Houston Press sums up charges against Anime Matsuri head John Leigh, who, from multiple accounts, seems to be a...

I received this email from John Shableski, the recently hired Vice President of Sales at UDON Entertainment.  In a bit of brilliance, instead of shipping their display titles back to Toronto, or dealing with the ravenous...

Not only are these tiny Yotsuba&! figures from Kotobukiya adorable as the dickens, they got me thinking about the place of merchandising in a creator's business plan.

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:

Picture it. 2008. I was a bored twenty-something who hadn't touched a console game in years. Through random internet searching, as these bored young adults are prone to do, I found out about Persona...

The Japan News announced this morning that the long running manga series One Piece is the Guinness World Record winner for having “the most copies published for the same comic book series by one...