NYAF08: Del Rey Manga
Hokay, getting started on the Del Rey Manga panel, with Ali Kokmen presiding of course. (No bow tie this time around, nor a Dallas Middaugh– he’s on his honeymoon!) Cue me acting all jealous.
Moving on…Del Rey is doing comics based on Bakugan Battle Brawlers and Ben 10 as part of a new partnership with Cartoon Network. Bakugan is apparently a huge phenomenon (how’d I miss that?), and they’ll be doing two full-color film comics, one in December and the second in March, plus an original manga in summer ‘09.
Everyone’s giggling about how bad the theme music is. It’s pretty hilarious, I gotta say. Ben 10 will also have a full-color film comic in April ‘09, with an original b/w manga in fall ‘09.
I’m pretty sure these are original OEL-type comics, not licensed manga, but I’ll double-check later when I can.
Moving on to new acquisitions from Kodansha: Moyasimon Tales of Agriculture (aka Moyashimon– they’re dropping the h –which someone had just asked Dark Horse about at Anime Weekend Atlanta…so there it is!). I’m really excited about this; I didn’t really finish the anime but I wanted to!
TSUBASA Character Guide 2 is due out in Summer ‘09, which will have sketches and full-color art and whatnot, exclusive to this book.
Amefurashi, which means rain goddess, is a comedy about a temperamental young rain goddess who “holds the fate of a village in her hands.” It’s by Atsushi Suzumi, creator of Venus vs Virus and Haridama: Magic Cram School.
The Maid War Chronicles by RAN, illustrator of Mao-Chan, is a “hard-hiting action, maid style!” type manga about “fighting maids [who] work to win back their master’s kingdom.” That looks pretty cute.
That’s it for new acquisitions, they’re talking about upcoming stuff like the Phoenix Wright manga, whose first volume follows Phoenix but the second covers Miles Edgeworth. Then there’s Gankutsuou, the Count of Monte Cristo in space story (it’s not as silly as it sounds, trust me), and of course Mao-chan coming out on October 28.
Next up, Papillon by Peach Girl creator Miwa Ueda, already on sale now, plus Yokaiden by Nina Matsumoto, an original title from Del Rey.
Last title…xxxHOLiC: Another Holic, NISIOISIN’s novel, due out October 28th.
Yes, the manga for Bakugan and Ben 10 are being developed by Del Rey in conjunction with Cartoon Network.
Will there be more volumes of Faust in the future? Yes, the next one will be out in May 2009. Amefurashi is due out in July 2009. Moyashimon will be on a quarterly schedule, and Maid War Chronicles will be in May 2009.
How is the novel line doing? It continues, in spring we’ll have Case of the Dragon Slayer, and there are new titles coming soon too.
Are they going to recreate the special edition Moyashimon volumes? So far we’ve determined that they’d sell at least six copies to this room! But it’s unlikely for economic reasons. We’ll see.
Seriously people, before you ask a question about a company’s history or relationship to other companies (like parent company Del Rey/Random House) and whatnot…at least CHECK the Wikipedia page?
We have just informed Ali that when they put out Moyashimon they MUST have microbe stress balls as promo items, unless they come up with something even cooler.
Deb asked if they would consider GeGeGe no Kitaro and apparently it’s on their radar. Somebody else begs for them to snatch Yotsuba&, and Ali says they’ll try, but that he feels bad ganging up on ADV because they’ve literally been flooded out.
“Why is Del Rey Manga so gosh-darn successful?” Diet and excercise! And Ali. And Dallas has nothing to do with it. OH GOD THEY’RE KIDDING! A lot. We love you, Dallas. Mutsumi also takes a lot of the credit for being the person who gets their licenses, and she puts a lot of effort into deciding what to get and everything.
Other Capcom stuff– like Megaman? Hmmmmm!, say Ali and the audience. Mutsumi says they’ve been considering it and that’s all she can say for now. Release date for Kara no Kyoukai novel? Fall 2009. Any other Warner Bros. properties, maybe TV shows?…(For some reason that makes me want a House manga.) This guy wants to see Pushing Daisies, but no plans yet. More and other Cartoon Network properties, maybe Samurai Jack? No new plans to talk about yet! Manga version of Rune Factory? Um…haven’t considered it but sounds intriguing.
More Marvel manga? I’m guessing it’ll depend on how well the current ones do; Ali quotes Spock as saying that there are always possibilities but they’re not announcing anything else for the time being…natch. Stay tuned. What kind of people are reading the Dean Koontz In Odd We Trust graphic novel? Um…groovy people’d be my guess. Actually I haven’t read it yet. But Ali says everyone’s reading it. Everyone who has a command of the English language…oops. But yes, it’s definitely crossing over from Koontz’s fans to artist Queenie-chan’s fans, they’re all coming together to read it.
Do they plan to do more of that kind of thing?… Stay tuned!
Suuuuuubmissions! The guidelines are all up on the website.
Tags: del-rey-manga, nyaf08
September 27th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I said it before (around various places on the net), and I’ll say it again…Del Rey has some of the best production quality. Thanks for the live blogging, gia. :)
September 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Did they give a reason as to why they decided to romanize it as Moyasimon instead of Moyashimon?