Off*Beat on Indefinite Hiatus

I wasn’t crazy about the OEL manga/GN series Off*Beat, but I thought it had promise, and I really liked the characters. When I looked at what was going on with Tokyopop’s OEL manga titles at the end of June, no one knew what its future was. Now, the author has spoken:

all i can say still at this moment is that i have expressed deep concern to my former editor that i wanted a means to finish the story and give my readers closure. i’m trying not to say too much because i want to keep my options and relations as good as possible. i was given a kind of vague response quite some time ago that things were still being re-organized on their end and they were looking in to options for allowing their creators to finish their stories. in short, tokyopop put the freeze on off*beat and there’s nothing i can do about it until i hear otherwise…which maybe never.

On the bright side, she’s learning from this experience and moving to self-publishing shorter, more self-contained comics more frequently.

I do hope Tokyopop works in a more friendly fashion with these creators that want to finish their stories. It’s good business to do so. I know that they need to find a cost-effective way to put out these conclusions, but if they don’t, what reader is going to purchase the next set of continuing stories they publish, knowing there’s a good chance they’ll be frustrated by an unfinished tale whenever Tokyopop changes its mind again?