Tokyopop will launch a full-color line of graphic novels in February 2009 showcasing creators from around the world.

For the Tokyopop Graphic Novels imprint, Tokyopop will license works from French publishers Delcourt and Soleil, and Chinese publisher Xiao Pan.

The line will lead off in February with Orange, by Chinese creator Benjamin, and Pixie, by French creators Mathieu Mariolle and Aurore. Those will be followed in March by Luuna, by French creators Didier Crisse and Nicolas Keramidas.

Publishers Weekly has more information from Tokyopop publisher Mike Kiley.

The press release, with title details, can be found after the break:

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On his LiveJournal, Brandon Graham posts art from the second King City — specifically a really cool board game spread complete with cut-out pieces (shown above). If you haven’t read the first one, it’s totally worth seeking out.

Via

It’s a sad week for Sugar Sugar Rune fans. Manga-ka Moyoco Anno has announced she will be halting her manga work due to poor health. Anime News Network has the story:

[Anno's current manga work] includes her recent Ochibisan manga in the Asahi Shimbun paper and Hataraki Man (pictured at right) in Kodansha‘s Morning magazine. Anno apologized to her readers and said she thinks the current break will be a long one. She also said that she still wants to draw manga eventually and hopes her readers will follow her work if she returns.

In addition to Rune, Anno’s Flowers and Bees and Happy Mania have been published in the U.S.

Tokyopop has opened the voting for the eighth annual Rising Stars of Manga competition’s People’s Choice Award.

Registered users on Tokyopop.com may vote for one of 21 entries selected from among the RSoM submissions. The People’s Choice winner will be published in the forthcoming anthology, and receive a $500 cash prize.

Voting continues through 6 p.m. PST March 21.

At Dan Hipp’s blog, “Gyakushu! Week!!” continues unfettered as he rolls out even more behind-the-scenes material. Marvel at his cover-creation process! Learn how to make your own bloody sword epic in five easy steps! (“To illustrate the seriousness of my claim, I WILL PROCEED IN ALL CAPS!!! CAN YOU SEE THAT I AM SERIOUS?!!”) Discover the appeal of using exclamation points!

Gyakushu! Vol. 2 is out this week from Tokyopop.

New York magazine’s Vulture blog runs Jo Chen’s complete 24-page short story “99 Roses,” which is included in The Other Side of the Mirror, Vol. 1, out now from Tokyopop.

Marvel may have a new Captain America, but Publisher’s Week Comics Week knows what the big news of last week was judging by their interview with Brian K. Vaughn:

PW Comics Week: You’ve talked about how Y is the story of the last boy becoming the last man. What do you know now that you wish you’d known six years ago, when you started writing it?

Brian K. Vaughan: I like to think I’ve grown a lot as a writer and as a human being, but… have you ever read “Twilight,” that Alan Moore proposal that he wrote for DC? There’s a very clever bit in there about young John Constantine [the magician from the Hellblazer series] battling with old John Constantine, and young Constantine is taunting his future self. That’s kind of what this series has been like—the ending is largely what I came up with when I was a dopey kid who first pitched the idea to Vertigo. I’ve always wondered: “Shouldn’t I come up with a better ending? Why do I have such allegiance to this younger kid?” But he was the one who was smart enough to get this story off the ground. So if I could go back in time and tell myself something, I think I’d just say, “go, fuck up, and it’ll turn out when I pick up the pieces down the line.”

Also in this week’s newsletter: A look at Japan’s (and by extension America’s) lolita subculture; Amy Reeder Hadley talks about her Fool’s Gold series for Tokyopop (not to be confused with the Kate Hudson movie opening Friday); a new book uncovers comics trailblazer Jackie Ormes; Archaia debuts the “Mayan cyberpunk” book The Long Count; and the best-seller list for February (Naruto, Naruto, Naruto and Diary of A Wimpy Kid).

On his blog, Dan Hipp walks through his process for writing and drawing Gyakushu, from plotting and thumbnails to inks and grayscaling.

He also provides an update on The Amazing Joy Buzzards: May will see an omnibus edition collecting the first two volumes of the series, followed by a new volume in July, named Monster Love.

Gyakushu, Vol. 2, hits shelves this week.

In a move that shouldn’t surprise too many people, Verizon and Tokyopop have teamed up to offer downloadable manga, anime and other items of interest.

Featuring TOKYOPOP manga entertainment, the availability of the TOKYOPOP V CAST Video channel from Verizon Wireless marks the first time manga movies, anime clips and Asian entertainment have been available in one package to mobile customers.

TOKYOPOP on V CAST offers 15 to 20 four- to six-minute videos each week from TOKYOPOP’s popular manga entertainment, including manga videos known as imanga, anime clips, and other popular Asian-influenced entertainment.

Available titles include Bizenghast, Rave Master and PiNMeN. I’ll refrain from being a jerk and asking if Bizenghast’s creator M. Alice LeGrow’s contract with Tokyopop allows her to see any of this cell phone money.
You can read the full press release after the jump. (more…)

Tokypop and DC Comics lead the final nominations for the Young Adult Library Services Association’s annual list of Great Graphic Novels For Teens with 23 nods each.

DC’s nominations include titles from its CMX, Minx and Vertigo imprints.

Tokyopop and DC are followed by Del Rey with 11 nominations, Viz Media with 10, Go! Comi with eight, and First Second and Marvel with seven each.

YALSA is part of the American Library Association.

The full list of nominees can be found here.

(Link via David Welsh)

Dan Hipp posted this preview of his forthcoming GYAKUSHU! Vol. 2 last week, but I was out of town and missed it. So, um … here it is. The tale of bloody swords and revenge is due from Tokyopop in February.

JK already caught the big Publisher’s Weekly story this week, regarding Francoise Mouly’s plans to launch a children’s graphic novel line.

But, naturally, the folks at PW had plenty of other goodies to share, including an interview with Fred Hembeck about his upcoming Image Omnibus:

PWCW: What can readers expect to see in the Omnibus?

FH: Besides all the Dateline:@#$! strips that appeared in The Buyer’s Guide in the late ’70s and into the early ’80s, nearly two hundred strips from the feature’s mid-’90s revival are included, as is all the material from seven Fantaco books from the ’80s—now all are long out of print. But it was Erik who suggested I open the flood gates and include all sorts of other stuff, so I included a number of my own characters like The Dog and Mr. Mumbo Jumbo in the mix. A fair amount of the material has either never seen the light of day, or only shown up in the most obscure of places (for instance, there’s a whole section of strips done for an apa [amateur publishing association], an original audience of roughly forty). Cover redos, Christmas cards, Internet illos, commissions–even two page of nature art! It’s all here—heaven help us, it’s all here…

PWCW: How does it feel to look back on your career through this 900 page book?

FH: It’s a bit sobering—where did those thirty years go anyway? And to be totally honest with you, I couldn’t help but notice a few definite ebbs in my flow—by the time I was finishing up my first run on Dateline:@#$! circa 1983, I was clearly losing interest. But Al and Erik wanted all of those strips included, so there are a few grimace inducing pages in the book (but, I’d like to think, only a few. Really.). Otherwise, it might be fun for readers to see how often I repeat the same gags over and over during a three decade span—my sense of humor hasn’t changed all that much, it would seem.

Also this week: A profile of Malaysian cartoonist Lat; Mike Richardson talks about his upcoming horror miniseries; and Tokyopop picks up some titles from ADV.

Variety‘s Tom McLean turns the spotlight on Tokyopop with a profile of founder Stu Levy and an overview of the company’s recent expansion into animation and digital media:

In bringing manga to America, Tokyopop has adapted its dominant role in Japanese pop culture into the “manga lifestyle.” Defined by Levy as “an appreciation for things that are from that East-West connection,” the manga lifestyle has evolved from traditional anime fans to a wide array of people the company reaches out to through original manga, animation and fan-created content on its website and MySpace page as well as cell phones.

“You have some people that are really serious about manga as literature; other people that are really into the look and style, the visual element of it; you have people that like something that’s different; and then you have people who are appreciating the storytelling and the risk-taking aspects of manga as an entertainment form,” says Levy, who spearheaded original manga format comics by Western artists in 2003 and co-created the company’s signature character, Princess Ai, with rocker Courtney Love.

The coverage also includes a Tokyopop photo gallery.

I’ve pointed to the ever-growing wave of manga in previous installments — including a time when the number of titles from Tokyopop outnumbered those from Marvel — but this week retailer/blogger Christopher Butcher notes what may be a watershed moment in the “manga/comics” divide: When you remove variant covers from the equation, there are more new manga released this week than new Western comics.

It’s a difference of just one book — 63 to 62, by Butcher’s count — but it’s still pretty remarkable. First, the American dollar and the Canadian dollar reach parity, and now this. Will wonders never cease?

So, yeah, that’s a lot of manga.

To see what comics — manga and otherwise — Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Rachelle Goguen talks with writer Joshua Elder about Tokyopop’s Mail Order Ninja and DC’s The Batman Strikes!

Goguen: One of the criticisms I read somewhere of Mail Order Ninja (and I don’t know if this is a common criticism) is that the premise is ridiculous, or at least poorly explained. It struck me that there is something tragic about the modern comic reader’s inability to embrace absurdity. In the silver age a story about a kid ordering a ninja out of a catalog would have been downright sensible. Do you feel that there are limits on what a comic writer can get away with these days ? Are you as sad as I am that everyone needs their comics to make sense all the time?

Elder: To puree a metaphor: People in spandex houses shouldn’t throw stones. At least the premise (Boy orders ninja from catalogue, ninjinx ensue.) of “Mail Order Ninja” doesn’t ask anyone to actually take it seriously. Unlike, say, the straight-faced assertion that the Hulk’s many, many rampages never generated a single fatality, or that ultra-dense material from a white dwarf star can somehow be engineered into a shrinking device. These critics are encountering my out-there premise as adults rather than children and judging it accordingly while giving equally outrageous superhero conceits a pass because that’s what they grew up with. I speak from experience on that one.

Elder’s first issue of The Batman Strikes! was August’s Issue 36. According to the interview, he’ll be writing more early next year.

Ah, the seesaw that is New Comics Day: Two weeks ago, there was a barrage of “big” comics, followed by a fairly low-key week. This go-around is light on major releases, but filled with plenty of solid comics.

Like what, you ask? Another issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, another installment of the popular Sinestro War in Green Lantern Corps, the first issues of Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple’s Omega the Unknown and Ty Templeton and Juan Bobillo’s Howard the Duck.

Oh, and manga. Lots and lots of manga. Katherine Dacey-Tsuei counts 77 new releases this week; I’ll take her word on that.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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Becky Cloonan posts the final cover art for the second volume of East Coast Rising. You can see some of her earlier cover sketches here.

The big revelation in this week’s PWCW is that HarperCollins will be releasing a massive once-volume collection of Scott McCloud’s classic Zot! series next summer:

Hope Innelli, associate publisher of Harper Paperbacks, said the new 576-page edition of Zot! will collect the entire black & white series in one volume. While early issues of the series, which was originally published by Eclipse Comics, ran in color, the new edition will include only the black & white material. “That’s a creative decision by Scott,” said Innelli, explaining that McCloud believes the series really came together when he focused on working in black and white.

The new edition will have a trim size of 6”x9” with French flaps and will be priced at $22.95. The book will include extensive commentary by McCloud on its creation, as well as much never-before-seen material. The book will also include “the Earth Stories,’ the last nine stories in the series, which have never been reprinted. “Zot! is the origin of Scott’s comics,” said Innelli. “It’s where he defined his style. We’re so used to Scott explaining comics, but now we get a chance to experience his comics.”

Also in this week’s edition: A look at the Mice Templar series; Bollywood will come to Riverdale; a review of Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings; and an interview with editor Rob Tokar about Tokyopop’s upcoming Battle Royale Ultimate Edition repackaging.

After what was a fairly big week for releases, we shift back into low-key mode this Wednesday.

Like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, this week brings another issue of All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (the seventh issue since July 2005!). It also sees the first full and official issues of Dwayne McDuffie and Sean McKeever’s tenures on Justice League of America and Teen Titans, a hardcover collection for Archaia Studios Press’ edition of The Killer, and a couple of annuals from Marvel.

To see what other titles Chris Mautner and I think are worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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This is the 22nd week Chris Mautner and I have written “Can’t Wait for Wednesday.” I feel like there should be a prize or something.

In lieu of cash, we get a handful of notable releases, headed by the much-anticipated debut of The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite #1, My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s heralded foray into comics.

That’s not all, though. This week also sees the wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary in DC’s Wedding Special, the end of Marvel’s Irredeemable Ant-Man, the penultimate installment of the hit World War Hulk, another expansion of the 30 Days of Night franchise, and the Darwyn Cooke issue of The Comics Journal.

To see what other titles we think our worth mentioning, just keep reading. As always, let us know your choices in the comments below.

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