Yep, it was true, Marvel and Del Rey announced a small — four book — but brainy venture. A shojo manga version of the X-men written by Raina Telegemeier and Dave Roman with art by Anzu, and a Wolverine shonen manga written by Antony Johnston. Both series are planned for Spring 2009 and will run for two volumes. Both will reimagine the characters for a YA manga audience, while keeping the elements that have made them so popular.

Below are some of Anzu’s VERY preliminary character sketches for the X-men. Wolverine is positively bishonen — it’s our understanding that he won’t be appearing in the shojo X-men book, however we missed the very start of the panel so we may be wrong on this.

Official PR in the jump.

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We’ll have our own detailed anthropological observations when we’re not feeling under the weather. However here are facts and figures.

§ ICv2 interviews the showrunner John McGeary who estimates attendance at 15,000.

§ IGN reports on Stuart Levy’s amusing activites:

Have the Tokyopop convention planners lost their minds? Not really. Rather than do a typical presentation, Levy wanted to film a “documentary” chronicling a fake Van Von Hunter’s journey from “rags to riches”. But Levy wanted audience participation and guided them to create the footage he wanted. Attendees were prompted to boo on cue, shout lines, throw giveaway armbands and, finally, rush the door as Hunter, Levy and panelist Steven Calcote ran outside, using chairs as “riot shields.” The entire ordeal was filmed through two cameras and, oddly enough, featured relatively little about the manga itself (which is very real). The final Hunter documentary is due to be released in 2008. The manga series, first released in 2005, follows the humorous action-adventures of a hero who hunts evil monsters across the Kingdom of Dikay.

§ The Del Rey crew has a detailed blog.

§ The winner of the World Cosplay Summit US Division blogs.

§ Who attended the show? This LJ post really says it all:

So. Yesterday morning I took the ACT again. When I was done, my parents and I spent an hour stuck in NYC traffic in order to go to the con. When we finally got there (and found a place to park, and cursed out all the people who came in buses) I made a beeline for the nearest manga booth (Emma vol.5, +Anima vol. 6, Apothecarius Argentum vol. 3, Sugar Sugar Rune vol. 7). And then I found shadow_maw, ditched my parents, and we set off to explore the con.

Brigid and various folks have been going to panels and gathering news. Brigid has GO! Comi’s new licenses, ComiPress has Del Rey’s early announcements. Deb Aoki at About.Com has Viz’’s news, which includes new maga by the ceators of Rurouni Kenshin and Death Note. ANN has complete team coverage as well as Media Blaster’s plans for Genshiken. ANN also has breaking news of parental complaints about a bookstore’s manga section, and a US House proposal to limit the import of child pr0n:

The United States House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would expand the online enforcement against “any image of any apparent child pornography.” In Japan, a government research panel on the unification of telecommunications and broadcast laws called for legislation to regulate “harmful materials” on the Internet on Thursday. Both efforts could affect manga and anime that depict fictional, explicit content.

We’ll have more of a wrap-up of the show tomorrow. Saturday was quite busy, but a big question remains dealer sales, as one poster alluded to. Del Rey and Marvel are announcing whatever it is they are doing later today and we’ll tell you what it is if it’s of any interest.

[Top photo nicked from LJinto’s Flickr sgtream.]

The first day of the inaugural New York Anime Festival was a busy one. Crowds were good for a brand new show on a cold, snowy day, which was, in the end, competing against Christmas shopping. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but there were people throughout the hall all day–all in all, one of the better showings for a new show we’ve seen in New York. Total attendance for the weekend is expected to be about 12-14,000, and everyone expects to be slammed today (Saturday.)

No real news we heard all day, The real experience of an anime show is for the fans, and shows generally have a “by fans for fans” feeling. Although this is a “commercial” show, as it is being run by Reed Exhibitions, the kids were in their crazy costumes (above) and seemed enthusiastic. We had to leave before the big masquerade, alas. A few more pictures in the jump.

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The day began with a tediously long crosstown jaunt over to the Javits Center that took 30 minutes to go 10 blocks. WHY do taxi drivers INSIST on going crosstown on 31st St.? Even a bus moves faster on 34th. I asked my driver and he said 34th was the worst because you can’t make a left hand turn. We don’t understand what that has to do with being stuck behind a truck delivering gladiolas for 15 minutes…but…we disgress.

We started the day with a strategy session with the All-Star team we have assembled to cover this show: Kai Ming Cha! Calvin Reid! Brigid Alverson! Ed Chavez! Erin Finnegan! Laurel Maury! Laura Hudson! (We aren’t really manga experts, so we’re not part of the all-star team.) At 1ish the manga troops started assembling, from Tpop, Viz, Del Rey, Yen and near and far.

Milton Griepp kicked things off with a “white paper.”
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Here’s that manga publishing pact we were talking about yesterday, as scooped by PW’s Calvin Reid: Tor Books has signed up Seven Seas to produce a line of 6-8 manga a month:

Science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books announced plans to enter the U.S manga market by creating a new manga imprint with Seven Seas Entertainment, an independent publisher of original and licensed manga, manga-inspired prose titles and illustrated juvenile fiction based in Los Angeles. The new venture will release original manga titles, but also plans to compete for top Japanese manga licenses such as the first volume of the Takashi Okzaki’s popular Afro Samurai manga series which it will release in August 2008. The Afro Samurai manga is the basis for the popular Spike TV anime series that premiered in 2007 and features the voices of actors Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Perlman and Kelly Hu.

Lots of connections on this deal which was put together by “Tor publisher Tom Doherty, Macmillan v-p of merchandise and sales Steve Kleckner and Seven Seas founder and president Jason DeAngelis.” Kleckner was ones the sales guy at Tokyopop so he knows manga. Macmillan (which owns Tor)also distributes Hill & Wangs non fiction GN line, and First Second; they also distribute D&Q and NBM’s ya Papercuts line — so this gives them a full range of graphic novel genres, soup to nuts.

Yet another best selling author James Patterson, is setting up his own toon/graphic novelly/manga deal. Patterson has sold some 140 million books, so that is a lot of books. One deal is with Yen Press (PR in the jump) which will serialize his “Maximum Ride” YA series in their manga anthology, Yen Plus.

He’s also pacted with with Curious Pictures:

…the Gotham animation studio known for Disney’s “Little Einsteins,” is teaming with James Patterson Entertainment to produce longform animated media based on the author’s books, graphic novels and original concepts.

The pair’s first project is the film “Beer Belly and Fat Boy,” about a slacker who is secretly an assassin controlled by evil corporations. Like “300,” the pic will blend human actors with all-digital backgrounds, aiming squarely at the vidgame-and-comedy-inclined young male demo.

As interesting as all that is, the article also contains this little nugget:

[Curious] is doing animation work for a toon Michel Gondry is co-directing with his son, Paul, an up-and-coming artist.

Michel Gondry ‘toon! We are there.
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You think it was spring the way folks are pacting up. A very big manga business deal is being announced today, but you’ll have to read Publishers Weekly daily for the scoop. In the meantime, a close reading of the NYAF programming schedule reveals….this:

Del Rey & Marvel Comics
Join Del Rey Manga and Marvel Comics for a special announcement!
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Sunday, Dec 9
Manga Panel Room

Are they announcing a new Hulk-flavored onigiri? What!

We’re going to spend much of the next four days at the Javits center for the inaugural New York Anime Fest, kicking off today with Milton Griepp’s ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga. This is a major event from Reed Exhibitions, which also puts on NY Comic-Con (and a sister company of PW, which hosts this blog.) Big anime events in New York have had a spotty track record in the last few years, but all of the big publishers and producers are in for this one, there are lots of guests, and a wide array of events, including the American leg of the World Cosplay Summit!

You can see the HUGE lineup of programming here. Guests are here.

To be candid, we’re not too well prepared for this show. All signs point to a big success, but since it’s a new show on the calendar, we didn’t prep for it much. We were all “Oh, it’s baby Max;s first birthday!” and “Oo, Elisa and George are having a holiday party!” and now it’s “Panel panel panel and then drinks with soanso and dinner with soanso!” But that’s okay. We will be bringing you extensive coverage from the floor. ANN, Brigid Alverson, Kai-Ming Cha and the other top manga journos will all be there as well, and we’ll link to their sure-to-be excellent coverage.

In lieu of a big preview, here are two links from Pop Culture Shock: Five things to do at New York Anime Fest and Erin Finnegan’s New Manga Map of NYC

In the world of manga, Takehiko Inoue is a mega-superstar. His basketball manga SLAM DUNK was so successful it made he sport itself more popular in Japan. It’s sold over 100 million copies worldwide and has been voted the #1 all-time manga. VAGABOND, telling the legend of swordman Miyamoto Musashi has also been a smash hit. He’s even been listed among Japan’s top tax-payers.

Mangaka of his level rarely come to America and it’s even more rare for them to do press with American outlets (or usually, any press at all.) Thus when Inoue-sensei came to New York to paint a mural for the new Kinokuniya Books on 6th Avenue, and Viz made him available for interviews, it was a singular chance to talk to one of the world’s most successful cartoonsits. This opportuniy was so unusual that The Beat decided to team up with PW Comics Week’s Kai-Ming Cha for a tag team interview! You can read the first part of the interview here.

The occasion was also to announce the launch of a major initiative to publish Inoue’s work here in the states. SLAM DUNK will soon appear in tankubon format; VAGABOND has finished its 25 book run, but will have a new omnibus edition next year; and Viz has announced an American edition of REAL, a manga about wheelchair basketball players.

Inoue’s website even has a section in English where you can read his blog (his latest posting takis about his trip to New York), and the complete run of BUZZER BEATER, another basketball comic, is also online.

The interview time was brief, and due to the constraints of translation, the interview itself is short, but Inoue-sensei was very engaged and engaging, and the entire event definitely opened doors — both ways.

PWCW: You’ve also done work for Shiseido cosmetics - commercials where you paint large scale pictures on huge swaths of paper.  Can you talk about your development as an artist?  How did you go from drawing for something so compact like a comic, to something so large like in the Shiseido commercials?

Takehiko Inoue: I’m an artist so it’s basically the same.  It’s all drawing.  But when it’s so large scale like in the Shiseido commercials, it’s like a sport.  I have to think ‘how do I move this brush to draw a straight line?’  It becomes more physical.


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[citation needed] However, in loan auto connecticut commercial airlines have prevented the use of cell phones and laptops, due to the fact that the frequencies emitted from these devices may disturb the radio waves contact of the airplane.

We missed this the other day, but a Dragonball Z movie has been confirmed with Stephen Chow to produce and James Wong (The One)to direct. Justin Chatwin (War of the Worlds) stars as Goku, and James Marsters (Spike on Buffy) plays bad guy Piccolo.

Based on the manga by Akira Toriyama, Dragonball Z has been a multi platform sensation in books, video games, toys and cartoons. We’ve never been able to make sense of it, but that must mean it’s good! According to the THR piece, it’s generated some $4 billion in worldwide licensing. We’re happy to hear of Chow’s involvement, since he’s one of the finest moviemakers on the planet for this kind of action genre romp.

Our advice to Chatwin? Stock up on the hair gel!

The New York Anime Festival is fast approaching (December 7-9) and the programming  schedule has just been posted.

Even if you’re not a manga or anime fan there’s lot of interest here, including Milton Griepp’s ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga on the 6th, and panels on Gekiga and other types of manga during the show.

The New York Anime
Festival is sponsored by ADV Films, Anime Innovation Tokyo, Anime Insider, Anime Network, Anime News
Network, AnimeNEXT, BookExpo America, Diamond Book Distributors,
Entertainment Consumers Association, FUNimation Entertainment, ICv2,
ImaginAsian, Kinokuniya Bookstores, License! Global, Manga Video, New York
Comic Con, NEW YORK - TOKYO, Newtype
USA, Publishers Weekly, Starz
Media, THINK Corp, TOKYOPOP, Video
Business, VIZ Media, Wedge Holdings, Wizards of the Coast, and the World
Cosplay Summit.
 

The New York Anime
Festival’s Guests of Honor include Peter Fernandez, Corinne Orr, Kobun Shizuno,
and Aimee Major Steinberger.  The
New York Anime Festival’s musical guests include HAPPYFUNSMILE, UNICORN TABLE,
and Voltaire.

Disclaimer: NYAF is put on by the same folks as the New York Comic-Con and BEA, who we’ve worked with in the past and they are owned by the same parent company as PW.

Via Same Hat!

The Times Online (UK) looks at Hataraki Man, a controversial manga by Moyoco Anno that examines gender roles:

For decades the Japanese comic industry has done a roaring trade in cartoons that chronicle the miseries and triumphs of the salaryman. Anno’s comic is a deliberate role reversal. The mould-breaking comic, Hataraki Man (Working Man), tracks the agonising day-to-day trials of a woman trying to balance the modern desire for a career with the dead weight of traditional Japanese social values. It has become so popular that it has been made into an animated cartoon for girls and a prime-time television drama for women.

Hiroko’s adventures have also become the basis of a bestselling lifestyle guide for the modern working woman, teaching the art of remaining feminine during the fight for equality and showing how to cope with truculent bosses, difficult coworkers and unsupportive partners.

Speaking of Japanese society, Simon over at Icarus quoted a rather interesting stat the other day:

I can’t quite remember how I came about this link, but condom maker Durex has released the results of its global survey on how frequently people are having sex. 87% of respondents in Greece say they have sex at least once a week, making them the busiest country in the survey. The least active country? Japan, at 34%.

Svetlana Chmakova announces that Volume 3 of DRAMACON is in the can and coming out in about a month.

A couple of announcements from the upcoming New York Anime Festival. First the announcement of a number of web guests, and also an ICv2 conference:

Pop culture publishing and consulting company ICv2 has announced its first ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga: “Inside the Otaku Generation” at New York Anime Festival (NYAF), the new event being launched by the organizers of New York Comic Con.

NYAF will bring together more than 120 exhibitors, and will feature the latest in anime, manga, Japanese cinema, music, and games, as well as the best of anime-influenced comics, animation, and film from around the world. NYAF will be held on December 7-9, 2007 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City.

The ICv2 Conference on Anime and Manga: “Inside the Otaku Generation” will be held on Thursday afternoon, December 6, 2007 at the Javits Center, on the eve of NYAF.

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The manga onslaught continues, as PW reports that the 800-900 outlet strong Trans World Entertainment chain had contracted with wholesaler Bookazine to add manga to such places as F.Y.E, , Coconuts, Sam Goody, Suncoast and Planet Music.

Bookazine established its separate pop culture program, Popazine, two years ago and hired John Davis, former director of book sales at Central Park Media, to head it. Since then Bookazine’s sales of pop culture-related titles, including manga and graphic novels, have jumped, according to Bookazine executive v-p Richard Kallman. In 2006, pop culture/graphic novels were 5% of the company’s overall business. This year, Davis projects, Popazine will grow to 7% or 8%.

In some ways the story is a reminder of how far we’ve come in five or six years — in the olden days the idea of ANY mass market retailer carrying comics, manga or Bazooka Joe bubble gum comics would have been clutched at by every comcis true believer as the straw that showed there was life outside the world of longboxes. Now, the story comes with its own history of ups and downs — you may recall that Suncoast/Musicland went bankrupt in 2006, causing all sorts of problems for anime and manga companies. TWE eventually acquired Suncoast, and now they are back in the manga business.

It’s this cycle of bust and boom in the retail market that really shows how entrenched comics, manga and graphic novels really are now. There is no one setback that will hold us back, only a continuing march.

Manga for the rest of us: IDW previews Umezu’s REPTILIA. Much more in link.

One more manga post! Over at Sporadic Sequentialcultural anthropologist and Japan-based manga expert Matt Thorn explains why manga is so exacting:

Sure, there’s a wide variety of subject matter in manga, and more variety of drawing styles than many people realize, but there are countless structural details that most readers (both Japanese and non-Japanese) are completely unconscious of, and yet which are necessary to make a manga “feel right.”

Much more of great interest in the link, including concrete examples.

UPDATE: Even more in this follow up!

And speaking of Manga, Fox Atomic has a movie based on the Japanese novel and manga GOTH in the works. JT Petty is slated to write the script. We like Anime News Network’s description of the plot best:

Itsuki Kamiyama, a student with normal look, who obsessed with death and murder around him, together with Yoru Morino, his female classmate, who has the same hobby with Itsuki, they solve the strange cases of murder. However, Itsuki also obsessed with something else of Morino

But see.

Forget about the US Open, the World Series, or the Westminster Dog Show — New York is about to get a new competition which will knock the world on its Goth-Lolita clad ass: The World Cosplay Summit’s USa Preliminary round is coming to the NY Anime festival this December!

The New York Anime Festival (NYAF) today announced a major partnership with the World Cosplay Summit, the leading international cosplay event which takes place annually in Japan and attracts an audience of cosplay enthusiasts and professionals from many countries all over the globe. The World Cosplay Summit features the very best cosplayers in the world competing before famed anime and manga creators. Previous notable judges have included Leiji Matsumoto (Galaxy Express 999) and Go Nagai (Cutie Honey). Countries which participated in the 2007 World Cosplay Summit included: Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, and Thailand.

“We are focused on making NYAF a broad cultural event which embraces the many aspects of anime and recognizes its influence around the world,” notes John McGeary, Show Manager for NYAF. “This partnership is perhaps one of our most significant steps on the road to doing that. The World Cosplay Summit is nothing less than the Super Bowl of all cosplay. We’re very proud to offer American cosplayers the chance to have their costumes and talent recognized on both a national and international stage.”

Festival organizers note that the partnership will provide NYAF with the opportunity to stage the World Cosplay Summit’s Official USA Preliminary Round. The winners of the convention’s Masquerade will receive a free trip to Japan to represent the USA in the World Cosplay Summit Finals in Summer 2008. The New York Anime Festival is the only American anime convention approved to be part of the World Cosplay Summit.

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Anime News Network picks up a story from a Belgian tabloid reporting that two identical messages linked to Death Note were left near severed body parts discovered Friday in the forest of Belgium’s Duden Park.

According to the newspaper, the two paper sheets both say “Watashi wa Kira dess,” an apparent misspelling of the Japanese phrase “Watashi wa Kira desu,” or “I am Kira (Killer).” This is a catchphrase from writer Tsugumi Ooba and artist Takeshi Obata’s Death Note suspense manga series, in which a high school boy discovers a notebook which allows him to kill people by writing their names in it.

It is unknown if the body parts belong to the same person.

Via PR, news of a new legit venture to allow fans to create their own scanlations:

Manganovel Corporation and Toshiba Corporation today announced that they will bring the universe of Japanese manga to the global market with the launch of “Manganovel,” an on-line service that allows readers not only to download and read manga in Japanese but to post and offer for sale their own translations of content. The service started beta testing in June this year, and is now officially ready to take manga characters to anime lovers around the world. The site can be accessed at: URL: https://www.manganovel.com .

“Manganovel” will serve as a distribution source for Japanese publishers, and go beyond that to create a community of readers. In a world-first for the comics industry, members will not only be able to download and read Japanese versions of manga, but, by making full use of the potential offered by Web 2.0, be free to upload and even sell their own translations of the comics. Potential readers can get advice on the quality of any individual translation offered on “Manganovel” by reading the comments of other readers on the site’s discussion boards. The whole operation will offer secure digital rights management with “MQbic” (Multi-cubic), digital copyright protection technology developed by Toshiba.

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Freaky manga-ka legend Kazuo Umezu is getting another shot in America via REPTILIA, due this October from IDW, which is making its first foray into manga publishing:

Just in time for Halloween, IDW Publishing brings Japanese horror legend Kazuo Umezu’s seminal manga work Reptilia to America next month, translating the 40-year-old terror classic into English for the very first time as IDW continues to expand its publishing line.

“This is our first manga project,” says Chris Ryall, publisher and editor-in-chief of IDW, which reinvented American horror comics several years ago with the blockbuster miniseries 30 Days of Night, to be released as a major motion picture from Sony in the same month that IDW unveils Reptilia. “We wanted to do something unique for our first effort to bring Japanese manga to the States, and considering our past success in creating horror hits, it made sense to publish something from the man who is considered the father of horror manga in Japan.”

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