Two Fairy Tails Launch at Once
Posted in Manga News on March 18, 2008 by Johanna
It appears that other companies are learning from the success of Viz’s accelerated Naruto release program — Del Rey is launching their new Fairy Tail series at the end of the month with simultaneous release of the first two books.
Fairy Tail is by Hiro Mashima, the creator of Rave Master, and it’s a top ten manga bestseller in Japan (according to the publicity materials). It’s described as the story of a “cute girl wizard” (not witch?) who has wacky friends, including a talking cat, and fights pirates. It sounds and looks to me like manga-by-the-cliches, but Chris Mautner at the Newsarama blog liked it.
The plan makes sense to me. If customers are interested, the publisher gets double the money and shelf space with no more marketing costs. But it’ll only work so long as it’s still a rare occurrence; once everyone does it, stores and customers will get swamped and publishers will have to figure out a new approach.
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03/19/2008 at 6:48 am
[...] quick reviews. David Welsh has his list up as well. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson notes that Del Rey is releasing vols. 1 and 2 of Fairy Tail simultaneously. And at Icarus Comics, Simon [...]
03/20/2008 at 11:19 pm
I’m excited to check Fairy Tail out. Rave Master was a series that started out painfully cliche, but then, it was the work of a 21 year old first time artist. By the time he got to the second story arc, Mashima had found his voice and mastered his style, and it became every bit as good as a Shonen Jump adventure story. Mashima’s style of visual humor sort of fuses One Piece with GTO with Dr. Slump to excellent effect, and his character designs are lots of fun. He even experiments with a choose-your-own-adventure comic that is both a clever game and a hilarious story.
03/21/2008 at 7:12 am
Yes, One Piece, that’s what it reminded me of. Where does the CYOA comic appear? Those are cool!
03/21/2008 at 10:21 pm
It’s one of the late teen volumes, I think (17?). I gave my copies to my little cousin and can’t look it up – sorry. :(