I hate the Internet at the Javits. I pay a bunch of money for it and I have to reboot my computer twice every time I have to reconnect to it. What a pain in the butt.
Complaints aside, I’m in and on with Vertical, probably best known to most of you for publishing Osamu Tezuka works like Dororo and now Black Jack– which looks like it will be AWESOME. They’re also giving away an early hard-bound copy of the first volume of the manga, which everyone here totally wants (myself included).
The manga will come out bi-monthly and there will be limited-run hardcover editions as well as the regular paperback editions. They’re Diamond exclusives, with covers by the same guy who did the Dororo covers (though a very different style). They look really nice, though I wasn’t able to get a shot of it. They’ve got a promotional comic that is a standalone one-shot from Black Jack, and they’ll have another one for Free Comic Book Day as well.
Moving along to the Aranzi Aronzo books, starting with The Complete Aranzi Hour on October 21. They’re sort of cutesy gag comics that were released in Japan although the creators are very multi-national: Aranzi is Mexican-Japanese and Aronzo is Norwegian-Vietnamese-Indian. It looks kind of neat, honestly, although probably cutesier than most of you like. Also by Aranzi Aronzo is the craft book Baby Stuff, which is actually a to-do craft book that also looks pretty fun.
Moving right along to their horror books…Bødy by Asa Nonami, the sci-fi horror short story anthology Biogenesis by Tatsuaki Ishiguro (apparently a real doctor, and who may visit the States in the early spring), The Summer of the Ubume by Natsuhiko Kyogoku about a ghost hunter who sees ghosts as manifestations of people’s internal problems, which he exorcises to the great benefit of his clients. Not technically a horror book, but Death and the Flower by Koji Suzuki is a suspense-tension kind of story.
Um, I think he said this is now historical fiction? Starting with The Blade of the Courtesans , set in the Edo era, featuring geisha with swords. Sounds really interesting to me, actually. The Poison Ape, a Shinjuku Shark series novel, by Arimasa Osawa, in which a man tries to stop a pending battle between the Japanese and Taiwanese mafia organizations. Moving along to Mariko Koike’s The Cat in the Coffin, a suspense-mystery about a widower, his daughter, her cat, and a woman who tries to separate the daughter and the cat. Then there’s Fallout by Tetsuo Takashima…have I made it clear enough yet that these are novels, not manga, btw? Just in case I didn’t, there it is.
Takeshi Kitano’s A Guru is Born is about a man who loses his job and girlfriend and he gets involved with a cult, but as he realizes that the cult is a sham he somehow becomes their leader. Oops! Masayuki Suo, creator of Shall We Dance (the original, not the US remake, of course), has another book called Shall We Sumo (seriously). The Toyota Leaders: An Executive Guide by Masaaki Sato is actually a book about the history of Toyota told in novel format, interestingly…Sayonara, Mr. Fatty! A Geek’s Diet Memoir by Toshio Okada– yes, the OtaKing himself, co-founder of Gainax, and now, weight-loss guru.
North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter: A Memoir by Sakie Yokota, which is a true story told by the mother of one of the people kidnapped by North Korea to be trained as a spy. The book will include photos, including one of Dubya holding a galley of the book while standing next to the now-former prime minister Yasuo Fukuda.
Puzzle books…Sudou Hell and O’ekaki Heaven, which is basically a paint by numbers but with only two colors.
A new line: cookbooks! Starting with Easy Japanese Cooking: Donburi Mania by Kentaro Kobayashi, due in April. Donburi, of course, are rice bowls. There’ll be five volumes, with the second being Noodle Comfort, and I already want all of them. There’s another called Bento Love too. And then there’s Iron Chef Chen’s Knockout Chinese, who was the only chef to be on the show for the entire series (and had 14 consecutive wins!).
Mikhail just asked if they’re still looking at moving into more mainstream manga as they indicated a couple of years back. That hasn’t really been put on the backburner so to speak, but apparently it’s been difficult to get the licenses to the more mainstream teen-oriented manga. They’ve talked to some publishers, like Square-Enix (who have now pretty much gone with Yen), so nothing really for now.
For their prose works, Vertical actually works directly with authors, whereas in the manga world you generally work with the publisher and editor and generally not as much the actual creator. That makes it difficult for a smaller publisher like Vertical to have the funds to go for the mainstream stuff, the exception being Tezuka Productions, who doesn’t want to be dealing with any of the US publishers who have deals with different big Japanese publishers.
Apparently there’s a live-action adaptation of Tezuka’s Mw in the works. Actually I think I knew that, but there it is.
