PW Comics Week
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Not Your Daddy's Seinen; Violent Gantz Comes to the U.S.
 It’s got blood and guts, guns and ammo and a naked girl and a bike. It’s taken two years of negotiations with the Japanese manga publisher Shueisha, but this month, Dark Horse will publish Gantz, the manga series that American fans thought would never be licensed for the U.S. Hiroya Oku’s Gantz, a hyperviolent, sexually explicit, surreal manga series about a very different kind of afterlife, will be published quarterly until volume 4 after which it will publish on a bimonthly schedule.
"Gantz is one of the biggest seinen [manga for young men] properties out now,” said Michael Gombos, Dark Horse director of Asian licensing, who actively pursued Japanese publisher Shueisha for the license. "American fans have been asking for this for a long time, and the licensing culture in manga wasn't going to get in the way."
Gantz has also been developed into an anime series and is distributed in the U.S. by ADV, for whom it was a bestseller in 2006.
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 Secret Acres: Not So Secret Any More
Secret Acres is a new comics imprint featuring indie comics by cartoonists including Samuel C. Gaskin and Eamon Espey.
 Crime and Comic Books: Gary Phillips's High Roller
Mystery novelist Gary Phillips enters the crime comics ring with High Rollers, a new four-issue comic series detailing the rise of a Los Angeles gangster.
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In Berlin Book Two: City of Smoke, the sequel to his critically-acclaimed Berlin: City of Stones, Jason Lutes explores the aftermath of the deadly May Day demonstrations of 1929 and the shifting political tides of pre-Nazi Germany. The book will be published by Drawn and Quarterly on August 19.
Click above for the full preview. |
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Creator Rights and Small Publishers
There are topics in the comics community that are always present, waiting for a trigger to become the thing to talk and blog about. There will be months at a time when no one engages in heated bulletin board posting about a particular subject, but a tidbit of new, a passing comment or a bizarre business move, will unleash a torrent of opinions. Last month, the topic was contracts and creator rights, and the discussion is still going strong. The trigger was the curiously worded "pact" that Tokyopop released for its Manga Pilots program.
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All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, Vol. 1
FRANK MILLER, JIM LEE AND SCOTT WILLIAMS. DC, $24.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-4012-1681-8
 Miller, the man who kicked off the grim and gritty era of superhero comics with the 1986 Batman tale The Dark Knight Returns, returns to write the iconic character once again in a series that takes the tropes of superhero excess and explodes them into satire. Miller casts Batman as an obsessive lunatic who enlists traumatized children into his war on crime, calls himself "the goddamn Batman" and is prone to cackling maniacally. Sex and violence are constant preoccupations, but even during sex scenes, Miller can hardly keep a straight face. After a shared rampage against corrupt cops that includes the interjection, "Eat glass, lawman!" Batman and heroine Black Canary celebrate
with an intimate encounter on a burning pier during a lightning storm. Although the bombastic, repetitive narration and decompressed storytelling (two and a half issues pass before Batman and Robin leave the Batmobile) often borders on hilarious, Miller aims for more obvious jokes later in the series. It's an over the top in-joke for the superhero crowd, though its irreverence may not have the most zealous and "serious" superhero fans laughing. (June)
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Brian K. Vaughan in a New York State of Mind
It almost seems as though comics writer Brian K. Vaughan, the writer-creator of such critically acclaimed comics series as Ex Machina, Y The Last Man and Runaways, can do no wrong. He's also the author of Pride of Baghdad, an equally praised original graphic novel published by Vertigo. Ex Machina (created with artist Tony Harris) is published as a monthly periodical comic in addition to being collected in several trade paperback volumes and the comics series will come to an end this year.
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July 2, 2008
- Complete K Chronicles (Dark Horse)
- Superman: Last Son (DC)
- Water Baby (DC/ Minx)
- Lore (IDW Publishing)
- After the Cape II: All Falls Down
- Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Guilty Pleasures Vol. 2 (Marvel)
- Cola Madness (Picturebox)
- Coraline (Harper Collins)
- Warriors: Rise of Scourge (Harper Collins)
- Fairy Tail Vol. 3 (Del Ray Manga)
- Mamoru: The Shadow Protector Vol. 1 (DR Masters Publications)
- Romance Papa Vol. 3 (Netcomics)
- COWA (Viz Media)
- Kannazuki No Miko Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
- Time Stranger Kyoko Vol. 1 (Viz Media)
- Guardian Hearts Vol. 1 (Tokyopop)
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- Fairy Tail Creator at SDCC
- Kodansha To Set Up in U.S.
- PW The Beat: Frank Miller, Paul Pope and More
- Dabel Bros., Del Rey To Publish Wheel of Time
- Papercutz on Cell Phones
- Abel and Madden on NPR
- Wendy Pini Live Podcast
- Rutu Modan in the New York Times
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