SDCC: VIZ Shonen Jump
Hokay, still fail Internets, but phoneposting ftw!
The Shonen Jump panel is starting now, with Marc Weidenbaum, Pancha Diaz, Mark Chang, and a Kon plushie presiding. To no one’s surprise– Ultimo will be talked about, according to the first slide. And of course, Tite Kubo.
The September issue of SJ will have the first chapter (or maybe it’s just a preview?) of Stan Lee and Takei-sensei’s Ultimo, it looks like…yadda yadda Bleach character book and posterzine…fifth anniversary Shonen Jump collector’s edition…40th anniversary of weekly shounen jump in japan…
Dragon Ball Illustrations in October, Slam Dunk in February, and 10 winners from Japan were given trips here– and VIZ is sending one Shonen Jump reader (plus a friend or parent) to Japan for Jump Festa. The Japanese contest was an essay contest; ours will be a contest running August to October…and in one million VIZ manga and dvds will include a sticker– three manga, three dvd, which can be put on a poster in the August Shonen Jump.
Send the poster in to enter to get to Japan. Also, each of those big stickers comes with a small sticker, so get three of those and mail it in and you get a gift. Whew.
New titles: Waq Waq by Ryu Fujisaki, previewed in the August issue, and Nora by Kazunari Kakei, preview in the October issue. They’re both coming out in the same respective months in tankobon form.
Bleach box set for Seepptember 2008…Death Note box set in October. And now they’re talking about Jump Sq., which we’ll hear more of in the near future– Weidenbaum notes that Jump Sq. has been sending in baka para: two pages created in Japanese by VIZ for this Japanese mangabon. Did not know that! This has been going on since Jump Sq.’s first issue, too.
Leading up to an announcement here…the next issue of jump sq. will feature comic con. And a new shonen jump title: Tegami Bachi, or Letter Bee, a favorite of mine for the beautiful art by Hiroyuki Asada. It’s a supernatural futuristic fantasy tale kinda thing.
They changed printers so they can do all the color pages that are done in Japan.
Laker Girls at VIZ booth at noon, and passes for the Bleach movie..wait, no, they’re out of tickets. Ah well.
And now, q&a! Wait, no, surprisee guest– Stan Lee himself. Heh, glad that wan’t announced. Once again five feet from Stan Lee!
Stan Lee has one hell of an entourage, and he knocked Kon over. Aww.
Lee is still learning how to read right to left, and heh, he’s got a drawing of himself for Ultimo…Shonen Jump cover, Lee wants to know why his picture is so small…he’s talking about how manga’s pacing and art are different, and he’s still learning about manga so maybe in a few years he’ll know what he’s doing, he says.
As for Ultimo, he liked the name and thought it suited a robot. And if you’ve got a good Ultimo, you need a bad Ultimo. And that’s all about robots. .Does he start with a title usually? Sometimes yes, sometimes it’s hard to come up with a title.
I asked about Heroman, the Bones animation project, no new details but Lee lets slip that he has a tird Japan-related project in the works! The end of Lee, whois a veeery busy man this weekend.
Back to q&a, though I missed the first one and something very noisy is happening in the back–they’re hopeful about getting YuGiOh R and they’re considering guests for next year, including the Naruto mangaka, Kishimoto-sensei.
Let’s see…someone asked about something that’s being announced at the general VIZ panel later but I didn’t catch it. How do you get into Shonen Jump? Win a contest. Kubo signings are tomorrow.
Live-action Naruto? Nothing to announce at this time. Huge Naruto dvd box set? An amazon exclusive includes the first ten box sets. YuYuHakusho? Manga’s still running from Viz. Shaman King products: more please! No announcements, but send in letters. 4kids has the merch rights for that.
Sounds like Viz is going to announce the Vampire Knight anime in the shojo beat panel, tomorrow I think…Funi dub helping One Piece manga? It’s super popular is the only answer given there. Are they going to do (some Jump Sq. title I missed the name of– a shounen ai one?). The answer: maybe, sit tight for more jump sq. stuff.
Bleach box for those who bought the dvds separately? they’ll consider it.
The end!
July 25th, 2008 at 11:17 am
*jealous* I’m really interested to see how Stan Lee’s experience in manga and anime goes.
Colored paper for Shonen Jump? That’ll be pretty cool. I liked that uniqueness in the Japanese one, and it’ll be cool to see here. Wonder if it’ll cause a price jump.
I wish companies would release the box for people who bought volumes separately. Just the box. It would be nice if I could get the box for my Genshiken DVDs
July 25th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I hate Stan Lee. Some old guy with Alzheimers who doesn’t have any real talent, and is famous just because he created some characters that have been made popular by OTHER people’s writing…he embodies everything that’s wrong with super hero comics and the American comics industry in general.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
No he doesn’t. Lee made those characters popular in the first place. Obviously, new writers came in and expanded the popularity, but they wouldn’t have even done that if Lee didn’t make them popular enough in the first place. Plus, he was a pretty good editor in chief, as opposed to some other editor in chiefs *cough*quesada*cough* who let their fanboyishness affect their decisions and use devil magic to get out of actually trying to write new material for an aging character.
Yes, Lee now may be overrated, but back in the day, he earned the praise he gets.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I really do hope One Piece starts getting a bi-monthly release next year if it really is “super popular” now. They’re not releasing a single thing for the series for their 5th Anniversary, not even a Collector’s Edition Hardcover of Volume 1.
July 26th, 2008 at 7:53 am
[...] like a winner! Once again, Gia liveblogs and gets lots of extra [...]
August 11th, 2008 at 6:08 am
[...] this all pretty (gotta pack up and ship out from Otakon), but! Some of you may remember that during VIZ’s Shonen Jump panel at San Diego Comic Con, Stan Lee appeared, and I managed to ask him about Hero-Man (his upcoming anime project with BONES, [...]
November 5th, 2008 at 10:52 am
shonen jump is so cool and this is comming from a true geek from the heart and mine.Plus i am gay so i canda have a chrush no Kazama from Nora kk
Christian Greene