From John Wiley's manga adaptations of Shakespeare to the Tokyopop/HarperCollins transformation of Erin Hunter's Warriors series, American publishers are looking to Japanese comics—manga—in hopes of attracting a young, hip readership. This fall, Digital Manga Publishing, an independent manga publisher in Southern California, will release its first original manga, an adaptation of Japanese novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi's popular prose novel series, Vampire Hunter D, which will be published simultaneously in the U.S., Japan and Europe. DMP is working with Kikuchi and with Saiko Takaki, a young manga artist, to create the series.

Best known for translating licensed manga from Japan, DMP is responsible for bringing over such popular manga series as Hellsing, Trigun and Berserk, which they co-publish with Dark Horse, as well as manga published under its own imprint. DMP also co-publishes The Vampire Hunter D prose novel series with Dark Horse Press, a venture that began in 2005. So far, eight of the 17 novels in the series have been published in the U.S. and have sold more than 100,000 copies.

Set in a future where humans fight against a vampire race, the prose series is wildly popular in Japan. Vampire Hunter D novels have an international fan base, have sold more than 17 million copies around the world and have been adapted into an anime, an audio drama and a video game. A manga adaptation was the next logical step. “We’re working on the overall expansion of the property,” said DMP sales and distribution manager Eric Rosenberg, “17 novels can be intimidating. The manga series is a way to increase popularity of the property across the world.”

“Having [Vampire Hunter D] translated was a 20-year dream,” novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi told PW in an e-mail interview from Japan. “But I hadn't even dreamed of a comic adaptation. The impact [of the work] can be transmitted to the reader far more directly in a comic than a novel, so I'm hoping the number of D fans around the world will increase,” Kikuchi said.

Volume one of the Vampire Hunter D manga series debuts in November and DMP plans to adapt all 17 volumes of the prose series into the manga format. While the prose novels are a joint venture with Dark Horse, the manga adaptation is the sole property of DMP.

DMP publisher Hikaru Sasahara also sees the manga as a way to shop the series to Hollywood—pointing to a connection between film and manga's origins as a substitute for cinema in impoverished postwar Japan. Sasahara describes manga as “very similar to a storyboard. Manga was created after WWII, when Japan was so poor. Artists were creating something similar to theatrical movies—but without spending thousands of dollars.”

Kikuchi chose Saiko Takaki, an amateur manga artist and a big fan of Vampire Hunter D, who had previously only self-published her work in Japan. “I wanted someone new who really loved D,” said Kikuchi. “The first person to come to mind was Takaki-san.”

Kikuchi (l.) and Takaki hold vol. 1

A digital illustrator, Takaki had little experience in the Japanese manner of creating print comics. DMP general manager Fred Lui admits that it was “a rough ride for the first book.” Typically, in Japan, a creator hired to develop a manga series will share housing with an editor who provides constant creative guidance—as well as relentless encouragement to meet deadlines. But with an ocean separating editor from artist, that wasn't possible. “Some of the early pages were done really well,” said Lui. “But with pressures to get the book produced in a timely manner, a lot of things started to fall apart.”

Nevertheless, Lui was impressed with Takaki: “For a first-time artist making a worldwide debut—imagine the pressure,” he said. Takaki also had to fuse Eastern and Western aesthetic sensibilities in order to accommodate the simultaneous international release. DMP is already hard at work on volume two of the Vampire Hunter D manga which is scheduled to appear in May, 2008.

“We don't want to just cater to the [Vampire D] fanatics,” said Sasahara, pointing out the series' wide appeal. “This is a big title for us. It bridges the manga and anime audience and goes way beyond them into the mainstream.”