Known for such bestselling manga series as Del Rey’s xxxHolic and Tsubasa and Tokyopop’s Chobits, CLAMP, Japan’s superstar all-female manga team, has signed a groundbreaking deal with Dark Horse Books to produce an original manga series beginning in 2009. The deal gives Dark Horse something it has lacked—a powerful shojo manga property in a U.S. market dominated by licensed shojo manga. In addition, for the first time, a major manga will be simultaneously published in three countries: the U.S., South Korea and Japan.
Dark Horse founder and publisher Mike Richardson said that the deal took two years to come to fruition, and is the company’s entry into the shojo manga category. “We didn’t just want to jump into it,” he said, emphasizing Dark Horse’s tradition of working with famed Japanese storytellers like Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf and Cub). “If you look at manga in Japan and the huge pool of creative talent, CLAMP comes to mind. We wanted to be in business with them.”
The publisher will also pioneer a new form of publication that it calls “mangettes,” 80-page novellas of the CLAMP story in a digest form that will be released on a monthly schedule. “We’re always experimenting with format,” said Richardson. “We wanted to come up with a pleasant reading format, something fun that can be released in a form that’s similar to the way [manga] is read in Japan. Like serialized comics, the mangettes will then be bundled and released in the familiar graphic novel/tankoubon format.” Richardson expects to bundle three mangettes per tankoubon (or volume).
Michael Gombos, Dark Horse director of Asian licensing, said the simultaneous publication will benefit English-speaking manga fans, who learn about popular Japanese titles, thanks to the Web, and complain about having to wait for licensing and translation. Gombos said simultaneous publication will bring readers “closer to the Japanese experience [of reading manga], but in America.”
