So how big has Manga gotten in the West?
Jul. 25th, 2004 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Tom and I went down to Wonderworld Comics today. I would have gone yesterday, but it was too hot to leave the house. Our apartment, being a basement apartment, can be kept pretty cool if you leave most of the lights off and the shades drawn. I mean it was still hot, but not hot hot.
So we walk into Wonderword, and there is about a BAZILLION new manga titles out, most of which I've never heard of. My main comic store doesn't even try to order most of these titles, so I don't always know what's coming out. But Wonderworld has most if not all of it on display.
It's impressive. Everyone wants to publish manga these days. AD Vision, an anime company, has started their own manga line. TokyoPop has been churning out literally everything they can possibly get their hands on. What's cool about this is that they mostly do shoujo (girl's) comics, cute and romantic type stuff, a lot of which is more interesting to read than the shonen (boy's) comics are, due to deeper characterization and plotting.
And it didn't even strike me at first, the girl behind the counter had a half dozen of her friends, mostly girls, hanging out with her, talking about manga and checking out what had come out that was new, and my first thought was that they were annoying me by being in the way. But later it occured to me how unusual it is for girls to be hanging out in a comic shop. I mean, it's not actually unusual today, but it certainly would have been just a few years ago.
So anyway, my goal was to pick up Neotopia manga volume #1. You see, this is published by Antartic Press, a company that by all rights should have died off a long time ago, but for some reason they haven't, and they publish everything that Rod Espinoza puts out (he also did Courageous Princess) and this would be why he is not a millionaire today because he certainly deserves to be rich, or at least well-read. And this being an Antarctic Press comic, I was never able to get all of the first issues that came out, because they probably have a publishing run of 13 or so.
So anyway they've collected the comic into manga volumes. Which I want. So I can actually read the whole story from the begining, like. And when I visited my comic shop earlier in the week I remembered to mention that I wanted these whenever they came out, and the guy walked over to the shelf and picked up volume 2 and said, "You mean this?" So, it was already out, I hadn't even realized it, and they only had volume 2.
Sooo... I finally found volume 1 at Wonderworld. And I spent a lot of time looking at all the otehr manga. I avoided picking up a manga that I really want to read now, largely because I'd ordered it a week and a half ago from Amazon and in theory it will finally arrive in the mail one of these years.
But I did pick up a few other things. One of these was a new hardbound volume of a new Elfquest story that was actually by Wendy Pini and not some other schmuck. Still not sure I needed to pick that up, but whatever. I picked up a manga called Battle Girlz, which I would have never touched with a ten foot pole except it's by Rod Espinoza, so it's probably actually pretty good.
And then I picked up two other new mangas by familiar names... Tsubasa, by CLAMP, and Negima! by Ken Akamatsu.
Tsubasa is a sort of alternative-reality Card Captor Sakura story, in which Sakura and Tomoyo and Syaoran Li are grown up and living some other life somewhere else where they meet other CLAMP characters from other series like X/1999 and Chobits and xxxHolic (which happens to be another new CLAMP manga). It sounds like CLAMP are doing the senile Robert Heinlien thing I guess. Anyway, it sounds like fun. :)
Negima! is about a ten-year old boy prodigy who has graduated magical academy and gets sent to teach at an all-girls school. One boy, lots of girls. Ken Akamatsu is the same guy who did Love Hina so as you can imagine the setup here is no big surprise, but he's a funny writer so I expect to like the series a lot.
Anyway, how big has manga become? Like I said, everyone is jumping into the pool. I was surprised that ADV was in the manga business now, but not half as surprised as I was to find out who was the publisher on these new CLAMP and Akamatsu titles.
Del Ray.
Del Ray has formed a manga division. In fact, you can check out their web site at delray.manga.com (except that I just checked it out, and there's nothing really there just yet,lol). It shouldn't surprise anyone that their first three titles are by two of the biggest names in manga at the moment... I have no doubt that a company like Del Ray can be the 800-lb gorilla in the manga publishing world if they want to be.
After all of that, Tom and I stopped at Red Mill Burgers on the way home. I've always heard that they're the best burgers in town, and you know what? They really are!
So we walk into Wonderword, and there is about a BAZILLION new manga titles out, most of which I've never heard of. My main comic store doesn't even try to order most of these titles, so I don't always know what's coming out. But Wonderworld has most if not all of it on display.
It's impressive. Everyone wants to publish manga these days. AD Vision, an anime company, has started their own manga line. TokyoPop has been churning out literally everything they can possibly get their hands on. What's cool about this is that they mostly do shoujo (girl's) comics, cute and romantic type stuff, a lot of which is more interesting to read than the shonen (boy's) comics are, due to deeper characterization and plotting.
And it didn't even strike me at first, the girl behind the counter had a half dozen of her friends, mostly girls, hanging out with her, talking about manga and checking out what had come out that was new, and my first thought was that they were annoying me by being in the way. But later it occured to me how unusual it is for girls to be hanging out in a comic shop. I mean, it's not actually unusual today, but it certainly would have been just a few years ago.
So anyway, my goal was to pick up Neotopia manga volume #1. You see, this is published by Antartic Press, a company that by all rights should have died off a long time ago, but for some reason they haven't, and they publish everything that Rod Espinoza puts out (he also did Courageous Princess) and this would be why he is not a millionaire today because he certainly deserves to be rich, or at least well-read. And this being an Antarctic Press comic, I was never able to get all of the first issues that came out, because they probably have a publishing run of 13 or so.
So anyway they've collected the comic into manga volumes. Which I want. So I can actually read the whole story from the begining, like. And when I visited my comic shop earlier in the week I remembered to mention that I wanted these whenever they came out, and the guy walked over to the shelf and picked up volume 2 and said, "You mean this?" So, it was already out, I hadn't even realized it, and they only had volume 2.
Sooo... I finally found volume 1 at Wonderworld. And I spent a lot of time looking at all the otehr manga. I avoided picking up a manga that I really want to read now, largely because I'd ordered it a week and a half ago from Amazon and in theory it will finally arrive in the mail one of these years.
But I did pick up a few other things. One of these was a new hardbound volume of a new Elfquest story that was actually by Wendy Pini and not some other schmuck. Still not sure I needed to pick that up, but whatever. I picked up a manga called Battle Girlz, which I would have never touched with a ten foot pole except it's by Rod Espinoza, so it's probably actually pretty good.
And then I picked up two other new mangas by familiar names... Tsubasa, by CLAMP, and Negima! by Ken Akamatsu.
Tsubasa is a sort of alternative-reality Card Captor Sakura story, in which Sakura and Tomoyo and Syaoran Li are grown up and living some other life somewhere else where they meet other CLAMP characters from other series like X/1999 and Chobits and xxxHolic (which happens to be another new CLAMP manga). It sounds like CLAMP are doing the senile Robert Heinlien thing I guess. Anyway, it sounds like fun. :)
Negima! is about a ten-year old boy prodigy who has graduated magical academy and gets sent to teach at an all-girls school. One boy, lots of girls. Ken Akamatsu is the same guy who did Love Hina so as you can imagine the setup here is no big surprise, but he's a funny writer so I expect to like the series a lot.
Anyway, how big has manga become? Like I said, everyone is jumping into the pool. I was surprised that ADV was in the manga business now, but not half as surprised as I was to find out who was the publisher on these new CLAMP and Akamatsu titles.
Del Ray.
Del Ray has formed a manga division. In fact, you can check out their web site at delray.manga.com (except that I just checked it out, and there's nothing really there just yet,lol). It shouldn't surprise anyone that their first three titles are by two of the biggest names in manga at the moment... I have no doubt that a company like Del Ray can be the 800-lb gorilla in the manga publishing world if they want to be.
After all of that, Tom and I stopped at Red Mill Burgers on the way home. I've always heard that they're the best burgers in town, and you know what? They really are!
