This year’s San Diego Comic-con continued to be a platform for important news about manga. Dark Horse announced a groundbreaking deal with CLAMP, the all-female, superstar manga team, to produce an original series to be published simultaneously in the U.S., Japan and South Korea. Viz Media announced the acquisition of Japan’s all-time favorite manga, Takehiko Inoue’s teen crush, basketball manga, SlamDunk! Viz also had copies of the much-anticipated giant omnibus collection of Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White by Taiyo Matsumoto, which had sold out by the end of the convention.
DC Comics’ manga imprint CMX announced its new manga license, Crayon Shin-chan, which has an anime adaptation airing on Adult Swim. CMX’s Jim Chadwick said that rather than follow anime producer Funimation’s translation of Crayon Shin-chan, the publisher will create a new translation to localize the series.
Representatives from Flex Comix, a Japanese manga and digital comics producer and DC Comics partner, were also on hand for DC’s CMX panel. The startup publisher showed previews of the material that CMX has licensed and will be translating to make available online as well as in digest form.
Hachette’s Yen Press made its debut at SDCC and announced a handful of new manga titles, including Kazuto Okada’s Sundome, a high school sex comedy (apparently with an emphasis on masturbation), and Y Square, a one-shot title with boys’ love overtones by German-based Korean creator Judith Park that also won the 2005 Sondermann prize for Best German Manga.
Del Rey Manga announced several new titles including Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima, a fantasy and adventure series, Miyuki Eto’s supernatural thriller Hell Girl and a Capcom video-game tie-in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. Del Rey also plans to release Me and the Devil Blues, a fictionalized account of the life of blues singer Robert Johnson by Akiro Hiromoto; as well as the Genshiken Fan Book, a collection of everything the fans want to know about the popular Kio Shimoku series.
Tokyopop had a slew of new titles to add to its catalogue. The publisher is releasing three series by Korean manhwa artist Hee-Jung Park. Fever will hit stores in March, Hotel Africa in April, and the boys’ love-inspired Martin & John will come out in July. Tokyopop will also publish a how-to manga book entitled Selena’s Comic School by Taiwanese artist Selena Lin, as well as her girls’ comic, White Night Melody. Tokyopop has also licensed Devil’s Bride by Korea’s Se-Young Kim, creator of the popular manga series Boy Princess.
For its BLU line of explicit yaoi, the imprint has licensed Koicha no Osaho by Yaya Sakuragi, a high school romance between a roughneck student and his opposite, and the pretty-boys-with-wings series, Fallen Moon by Toui Hasumi.
Manga also had a strong presence at the Eisner Awards this year thanks to the establishment of a new category, Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan. Nominations included Go! Comi’s After School Nightmare, DMP’s Antique Bakery, Viz Media’s Monster and Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s Walking Man, with the Eisner for the category going to Dark Horse for Old Boy by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi. Nouvelle manga house Fanfare/Ponent Mon also garnered a nomination for Best Anthology for the much acclaimed travel anthology, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators. Meanwhile, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo from Drawn & Quarterly, and Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (from Vertical) each received nominations for Best Archival Collection/Project-Comic Books.
Manga-ka Arina Tanemura, creator of the manga series Gentlemen’s Alliance, was on hand at Comic-con for a panel and a book signing. Yasuhiro Nightow, author of Trigun, was signing at the Dark Horse booth, as was Yoshitaka Amano, illustrator of the epic Vampire Hunter D series. Both manga creators were happy to meet fans, but came to San Diego to enjoy Comic-con as much as the fans.
