For a weekend, the news has been unusually busy. I open up Thunderbird, and find that 2 Tokyopop titles are not going to be printed. Rivkah has announced on her Livejournal blog that her series Steady Beat Volume 3 will not get a published book release, but will be put up as a web comic. Bettina Kurkoski has reported on her Deviant Art page the same for her series My Cat Loki, except she’s not even getting online publishing (Wah! I liked MCL! 🙁 ). So, what does this mean for Tokyopop’s Global manga?
Jumping on the bandwagon once again, I’ll throw in another 2 cents about Tokyopop. No ranting this time though. I think this is a good move for Tokyopop. Attention can be divided up properly, and well as investment. Tokyopop has alway tried to be on the cutting end of bring manga to new technologies, something I wholeheartedly believe in. But, I think these new digital mediums may have been distracting to the publishing side, and the publishing may even have been at odds with the digital side. Separating the two may help both grow without having to worry what the other is thinking or may do to stop them. I think the reduction of releases is also a good idea. Quality is always better than quantity, and Tokyopop seemed to be doing the latter. I did some number crunching of TP titles at the end of 2007, and in just a 5 month period, they had 212 releases, with 37 new titles and 34 titles ending. About 1/6th of their titles monthly were either starting or ending. A lot of these titles were mediocre and short. As has been mentioned elsewhere, TP doesn’t have access to the super hot titles….
Project D.O.A. Volume 1 By Jeffrey Nodelman & Wagner Fukuhara Publisher: Tokyopop Genre: Action Rating: 13+ RRP: $9.99 Rating: Reviewed by Brian Henderson I’ll do this review, even though I don’t really consider Project D.O.A. to be a manga. To me, and some may disagree, it needs to be written and published initially in Japan in order to be a manga. Graphic novels that come from Korea or China or France or the United States, while they may be generally modeled after the manga artform, are not manga, any more than animation that comes from anywhere but Japan is not anime. That said though, Project D.O.A. is from one of the minds that brought you the wonderful Cartoon Network show Venture Bros.and in a lot of ways has that kind of vibe. In other ways, it strikes me as similar in feel to Buckaroo Banzai and maybe a little bit like Crusher Joe although officially, Jeff Nodelman attributes his inspirations to films like Indiana Jones, Flash Gordon and the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. In any case, it’s a not-quite-serious romp around the world, adventure-style. Meet Dr. Dylan Oliver (also the name of Jeff Nodelman’s real life son)…
“On the Eighth day of Christmas, Tokyopop gave to me…Pantheon High vol 1!” Yeah! More manga! I read the first chapter of this, and have been wanting to read the whole thing! Now I can! And you can too. But just until 5pm PST. Check it out, and then check out vol 2 which comes out in January. Something to spend your Christmas money on! Check back here or at Tokyopop.com for the next gift.
“On the Fifth day of Christmas, Tokyopop gave to me, Biiiiizenghast Vol 1!” For the whole weekend you can read Bizenghast vol 1. I’d really encourage people to check out this series. It’s very good, involving riddles that must be solved to put spirits to rest. I enjoyed it anyway. And it also goes over the usual 3 volume model of most Tokyopop OEL! Check back here Sunday night/Monday or go to Tokyopop.com for the next gift!
“On the first day of Christmas, Tokyopop gave to me…Fools Gold Vol. 1!” For the holidays and in honors of it 10 year anniversary, Tokyopop is making available full volumes of their original manga through their manga reader. Starting today until 5PM PST, you can read the first volume of Fools Gold by Amy Reeder Haley, a previous RSoM winner. Every weekday after, a new volume will be available to read. This is a good time to check out some of the OEL manga that Tokyopop’s been doing without risking your pocketbook. The manga reader is easy to use, and works in both IE and Firefox. And how can you say no to free manga? I know I can’t! And you never know, you might actually find yourself liking a title! So keep checking here or the Tokyopop website for updates!