Tokyopop Webinar: The return of Suppli!
September 3rd, 2009
The Tokyopop Webinars are a great idea. Not such a great idea: Trying to listen in while babysitting my nieces and nephew. Due to background noise, I missed a lot of the audio for the first part of the presentation, which is too bad, as it sounded like everyone was having a lot of fun. Senior Editor Lilllian Diaz-Pryzbyl emceed and presented most of the news, and I’m afraid that the NOISE LEVEL in my living room was such that I didn’t catch any of the names of the guests.
But I did catch the new title announcements, as well as some good news about some existing series.
First, of all, the series that I, Kate Dacey, and Robin Brenner have been lobbying shamelessly for for a year is going to live again: vol. 4 of Suppli is back on the list. I didn’t catch the date, but other new volumes that are due out soon include vol. 5 of Pick of the Litter, vol. 5 of Monochrome Factor, vol. 9 of Never Give Up, vol. 7 of Nosatsu Junkie, vol. 8 of Satisfaction Guaranteed, and vol. 23 of King of Hell. And vol. 5 of I.N.V.U. is due out in November, which I think we already knew.
They also made some new announcements, although word has gotten out about a few of these already. The first is Deadman Wonderland (link is to the Wikipedia page, so beware of spoilers), by Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou.
Next is Hanako and the Teller of Allegory, by Sakae Esuno, creator of Future Diary. This is a four-volume series, and vol. 1 is out in March. I did catch that this is based on a traditional Japanese ghost story.
Then a whole lot of .hack stuff: .hack//Alcor, which was noted in their latest press release, is coming in November, but watch out as well for the two-volume novel .hack//Cell and, inevitably, .hack//4Koma. Oh, and there’s a .hack//Legend of the Twilight omnibus coming in December.
The other books that were mentioned seem to be already out there: This Ugly Yet Beautiful World was also announced in the press release, and ICv2 posted recently that they had Remember, by Benjamin (the creator of Orange).
Lillian also highlighted a few of Tokyopop’s licensed properties, Warcraft: Death Knight, due out in December, and StarCraft: Ghost Academy.
Other news… Vol. 3 of Vampire Kisses is coming out, and the art will be by someone other than rem, which is a shame as I really like her style.
There were a lot of questions about manhwa titles, which Lillian found amusing as apparently it doesn’t sell that well for Tokyopop. With regard to Queen’s Knight, she said, “We’ll have to see how the market develops. It’s tough for long series, and it’s tough for Korean series.”
(By this time the kids had left and I could hear.)
Demon Sacred, by Jyu-Oh-Sei creator Natsumi Itsuki, is still on the schedule and will be officially announced later this year.
Finally, with regard to losing the Kodansha licenses, Lillian said what we have pretty much heard all along: It wasn’t a surprise, Del Rey was getting all the good licenses anyway (due to their closer relationship with Kodansha, and Tokyopop has been preparing for this moment for over a year.
Johanna Draper Carlson posts her summary of the conversation, and she has screen grabs!
Related posts:
Posted in Manga Blog