This interview with Hikaru Sasahara, president of Digital Manga, the company struggling with how to publish more works by Osamu Tezuka after their massive Kickstarter failed, has some new information I found surprising and troubling. Near the end come these paragraphs: The failure of DMP’s ambitious Kickstarter does not mean the end of DMP’s Tezuka program. Sasahara has planned all along to publish some Tezuka titles digitally via DMP’s Digital Manga Guild. In that system, the publisher, licensor, and localizing […]

I’m not a big fan of horror comics, but I’ve been tempted by Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, because that surreal story of a town overtaken by spirals is less gory, more suspenseful and creepy. So I’m excited to hear that Viz will be bringing out a short story collection from Ito next summer. Fragments of Horror will be published as a deluxe hardcover under the Viz Signature imprint (and I’m glad to see that’s continuing as well). Here’s the publisher’s description: […]

After the massive failure of their overly ambitious Kickstarter to publish 31 books by Osamu Tezuka, Digital Manga is back with another try, one they’re calling “Smaller, Quicker, and Affordable”. It’s faster than I expected, frankly, but I suspect that Digital Manga started replanning long before the previous effort finished, given the amount of feedback they got from potential customers. This time, they’re asking for a more reasonable $21,600 to publish two volumes of Ludwig B, Tezuka’s unfinished Beethoven story […]

Last month, on October 21, Digital Manga launched a Kickstarter to publish in print many of Osamu Tezuka’s lesser-known works (since the best-known, like Phoenix, Black Jack, Princess Knight, and Message to Adolf have already been handled by other publishers, mostly Vertical). It was incredibly aggressive, seeking $380,000 in a month, to put out 31 books in six series. (Those titles are The Three-Eyed One Volume 1-13, Rainbow Parakeet Volume 1-7, Wonder 3 Volume 1-3, Alabaster Volume 1-2, The Vampires […]

This was announced last month at the New York Comic Con, I think, but the book is now available for pre-order. I’m thrilled to hear that the manga Emma is coming back into print from Yen Press. They currently release A Bride’s Story by the same author, Kaoru Mori, as well as a one-shot of her shorter pieces, Anything and Something. Emma was previously published in the US from 2006-2009 by CMX, the now-defunct manga imprint of DC Comics. It’s […]

Over at the Diagonal, the Vertical Tumblr, Ed Chavez, the Marketing Director for the notable manga publisher, has put out some insight into how manga volumes are priced. (I’m assuming that Ed handles the Tumblr. It’s not credited.) First, in relation to an announcement of two upcoming titles, a fan complains that the seinen titles (those manga aimed at adult males) are priced at $13 instead of $10. The response includes some key facts about Vertical’s pricing: All seinen releases […]

Out today in comic book stores is the Legal Drug Omnibus, a manga license rescue collection. CLAMP’s Legal Drug originally was published in three volumes in English by Tokyopop. (You can get the three books cheaply used, possibly because the story wasn’t concluded… but see below.) Dark Horse has now reprinted the series in one big volume, complete with color pages. It’s a hard-to-describe tale, about two boys who are drawn to each other while working at a drugstore. One […]

Viz Media has launched “Jump Start”, bringing the first three chapters of every brand-new manga series appearing in the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump to English. The digital translated Weekly Shonen Jump will feature these chapters, one per week, on same-day release as the parent country. The first three titles are Judos by Shinsuke Kondo, a martial arts series about a 15-year-old village kid who wants to be the best judo practitioner in his village full of the world’s most powerful […]