Flipped!: David Welsh On The Status Of Various Manga Properties In Limbo



By David P. Welsh

With so many recent shifts in manga publishing (Tokyopop losing its Kodansha properties, the dissolution of AD Vision), I thought it might be useful to run through the status of some admirable manga properties that are either in transition or in limbo.

We'll start with the good news. Yen Press released six volumes of Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! this week, including new translations of the five volumes previously published by ADV, along with the sixth. While this is Yen's most notable rescue of a manga property, it's hardly its first. One of the publisher's first moves was to absorb ICEkunion's catalog of Korean comics, including such admirable works as Park SoHee's Goong: The Royal Palace and Uhm JungHyun's Forest of the Gray City. This is small consolation to those who wonder if the English-reading audience will ever see additional volumes of Eiji Nonaka's absurdist comedy, Cromartie High School. ADV managed 13 of the series' 17 volumes, last releasing one in February of 2008.

About.Com lists the Kodansha properties left unfinished at the time of their reclamation from Tokyopop. It's been some time since most of them saw new volumes hit the shelves, but each will certainly leave some size of audience disappointed. Of them, I know of many critics who will miss Harold Sakuishi's BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, an indie-friendly tale of teen-aged rockers. Whodunit fans will miss their intermittent dose of locked-room murder mystery provided by The Kindaichi Case Files.

It's worth noting that Tokyopop, in spite of its troubles, has executed a few manga rescues of its own, plucking two ADV properties from obscurity. First is Kozue Amano's absorbing, otherworldly travelogue Aria. Tokyopop earned bonus points for publishing Amano's Aqua, the first two volumes of the series released before it switched Japanese publishers from Enix to Mag Garden. ADV released a single volume of Ai Morinaga's sneaky, gender-bending romantic comedy, Your and My Secret, before letting publication lapse. Tokyopop picked it up and has scheduled the fifth volume for release in December.

While it's not a rescue per se, the best news that emerged from Tokyopop's rather damaging news was that they would resume publication of Mari Okazaki's office-lady drama, Suppli. Over the years, Tokyopop has displayed an intermittent commitment to the josei category, comics targeted at grown-up women. Perhaps the promised resumption of Suppli indicates that this commitment is waxing again.

Some of the Kodansha properties in Tokyopop's back catalog had migrated prior to the bombshell, of course. Del Rey (which initially had a first-look agreement with Kodansha and was the Japanese publisher's primary licensing partner) rescued Hitoshi Iwaaki's wonderful Parasyte from out-of-print obscurity and recently completed the series' eight-volume run. Del Rey will also pick up publication of Akimine Kamijyo's Samurai Deeper Kyo in November with an omnibus collection of the 35th and 3th volumes. (Tokyopop released the first 34, which are now effectively out of print.)



Three titles from CLAMP, the hit-machine, four-woman cooperative, formerly among Tokyopop's Kodansha holdings, have already found new homes in omnibus form. Dark Horse has already released its collection of the four-volume Clover, which is a gorgeous steampunk fantasy marred by oft-repeated, painfully sentimental song lyrics. Coming up on Dark Horse's CLAMP catalog are new omnibus editions of Chobits, that old standard about a love robot and the nerd who cherishes her, and Cardcaptor Sakura, much-loved magic-girl shojo.

With Dark Horse, Kodansha has given, and Kodansha has taken away. The Japanese publisher recently solicited new editions of two bedrock manga titles long held by Dark Horse. The first volumes of new printings of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira and Shirow Masamune's Ghost in the Shell are due in October from Kodansha Comics. It's easy to see why Kodansha would want to reclaim those, as they're perennial sellers. Of course, Dark Horse always provided good stewardship of the properties, so it has to sting at least a bit.

Whether Kodansha Comics rescues any of its interrupted or out-of-print series is anyone's guess, to be completely honest. Aside from the aforementioned solicitations, the company has maintained a positively monastic silence in terms of communicating with manga journalists. They don't even have a rudimentary English-language web site, and they've entirely abdicated this year's comic convention season. Why they've made such a subdued entry into a competitive market is beyond me; I apparently haven't phrased the question properly to my Ouija board.

Of course, other publishers have danced the limbo. Digital Manga Publishing only released two of six volumes of Atsushi Kaneko's deranged action satire, Bambi and Her Pink Gun, and three of 21 of Hiroshi Takahashi's saga of brawling morons, Worst. Range Murata's Robot anthology was picked up by Udon after three volumes at DMP.

And Dark Horse is not without sin in terms of incomplete release. The publisher serialized all of Makoto Kobayashi's charming Club 9 in its defunct Super Manga Blast, but they've yet to collect the final volume of stories. And it's been some time since readers have seen a new volume of Kazuhiro Okamoto's charming and sensitive Translucent about a girl with a disease that leaves her partly or entirely invisible. Even powerhouse Viz has left readers dangling. Translating and publishing only one of three available volumes of Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga seems positively sadistic.

But the thing is, you never know when a seemingly lost series might make an unexpected reappearance. Just recently, online manhwa specialist Netcomics started releasing chapters of Sooyeon Won's beloved soap opera, Full House, whose fans were left dangling by the now-defunct Central Park Media. The limbo saga is like a multi-generational soap opera, with shifting relationships and unexpected, credibility straining returns from the dead. Stay tuned.

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David P. Welsh has loved comics since his parents first used Archie and Casper to sedate him during long trips in the family station wagon.

He's worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, and later sold out for the glamorous world of public relations. Prior to relocating to The Comics Reporter, he wrote his Flipped column for Comic World News for just over three years. He's written articles on comics for print outlets and a variety of other web sites.

He lives in West Virginia, which he says has gotten a lot easier since the Starbucks and Barnes & Noble opened up.

You may e-mail David with questions or commentary You can write to this site about David's columns

Please bookmark his site, Precocious Curmudgeon.

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* cover to Yotsuba&!, Vol. 6
* from Goong, selected by David Welsh
* from Aria, selected by David Welsh
* from Chobits, selected by David Welsh
* from Akira, selected by David Welsh
* cover to Cromartie High School, Vol. 9

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