Following news that Dark Horse’s Blade of the Immortal will end as a 32-page monthly with November’s Issue 131, ICv2.com talks with editor Philip Simon about the transition to a trade-only format.
Although the Q&A is light on details, Simon says the publisher is trying to work with the creative team on a new schedule: “Jumping from a month-to-month schedule, where they’ve been working on 30 pages at a time, to a schedule that involves many more pages at a time will take a little adjusting to.”
He also reveals that Dark Horse has tossed around ideas for omnibus and flopped editions. However, “we really want to keep moving ahead with the program as it is now.”
Dark Horse began publishing Hiroaki Samura’s hyper-violent samurai epic in June 1996, when manga entered the direct market in the more familiar form of American serialized monthlies.
Volume 18 of Blade of the Immortal is set to be released in February.
