http://grotesqueanatomy.blogspot.com/2004/06/details-on-dcs-cmx-manga-imprint.html
Tenjo Tenje finally liscenced, heh...
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
DC announce Manga lineup
- Thread starter Dead
- Start date
- Status
Wellington
BAAAALLLINNN'
In before nomoment suicide. :0
fennec fox
ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!
Wow, DC comics are for girls
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Reading GALS, Tenjo Tenge and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeane at the same time...
That should do fun things to my head.
That should do fun things to my head.
fennec fox
ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!
nomoment said:
Spike Spiegel
Member
I guess this means no more Tenjo Tenge scanslations... 
Oh well. Here's hoping DC does a halfway decent job, at least!
And please... NO F*CKING CENSORSHIP, YOU @$$HOLES!
Oh well. Here's hoping DC does a halfway decent job, at least!
And please... NO F*CKING CENSORSHIP, YOU @$$HOLES!
nomoment said:
1. Most of them are shoujo crap (who in their right minds would be caught reading stuff like Super GALS! in public besides 10 year old girls?), so you might be right in that respect.
2. Maybe DC should consider putting their big stuff on backburner for a while and trying something new. Consistency leads to stagnancy.
Spike Spiegel
Member
Here's the bit of the press release that left me completely flabergasted:
Eroika yori Ai wo Komete Volume 1 was originally serialized in PRINCESS magazine from 1977 to the present. Eroika yori Ai wo Komete follows the adventures of a British aristocrat and international art thief who taunts his nemesis, Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, by leaving notes behind at the scene of his crimes, signed From Eroica with Love.
What they aren't emphasizing here is the shounen ai aspect - the catch is that Eroica is hot for Klaus, who spends most of the series being heavily flustered and trying to deny any attraction he has for another man. I'm amused to note that the DC press release avoids any mention of this whatsoever, instead noting the role it had in popularizing European art history.
On an amusing side note, the Eroica manga-ka was apparently a huge Led Zeppelin fan; the main character, Dorien/Eroica, and his loyal assistant James, are modelled after Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, respectively:
Okay, so that's not the best comparison pic ever, but it's all I could find off-hand. Apparently the manga is loaded with other Led Zep references, such as a servent named Bonham, Eroica's private sub the Aqua Zep, etc, etc.
Having flipped through some Eroica in the past, I can vouch that it's pretty amusing stuff. Think Lupin with bishounen in love. There's nothing explicit and it won't infect you with "teh gay"; if you're into manga, Eroica is worth checking out when it hits retail.
FnordChan
Eroika yori Ai wo Komete Volume 1 was originally serialized in PRINCESS magazine from 1977 to the present. Eroika yori Ai wo Komete follows the adventures of a British aristocrat and international art thief who taunts his nemesis, Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, by leaving notes behind at the scene of his crimes, signed From Eroica with Love.
What they aren't emphasizing here is the shounen ai aspect - the catch is that Eroica is hot for Klaus, who spends most of the series being heavily flustered and trying to deny any attraction he has for another man. I'm amused to note that the DC press release avoids any mention of this whatsoever, instead noting the role it had in popularizing European art history.
On an amusing side note, the Eroica manga-ka was apparently a huge Led Zeppelin fan; the main character, Dorien/Eroica, and his loyal assistant James, are modelled after Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, respectively:
Okay, so that's not the best comparison pic ever, but it's all I could find off-hand. Apparently the manga is loaded with other Led Zep references, such as a servent named Bonham, Eroica's private sub the Aqua Zep, etc, etc.
Having flipped through some Eroica in the past, I can vouch that it's pretty amusing stuff. Think Lupin with bishounen in love. There's nothing explicit and it won't infect you with "teh gay"; if you're into manga, Eroica is worth checking out when it hits retail.
FnordChan
Spike Spiegel
Member
So it's a "pretty boy" Lupin knock-off with just a pinch of homoeroticism?
Spike Spiegel said:So it's a "pretty boy" Lupin knock-off with just a pinch of homoeroticism?
More or less. Replace Fujiko with a studly, somewhat repressed NATO agent and render everything in a sharp, stylish late-70s shoujo style and you've got the idea. This is one of the last titles I expected to see released in the US, let alone one of the flagships of the CMX line. Even if you aren't interested in the title itself, it's a bold choice and bodes well for the future of DC's manga line-up.
belgurdo, heaven forbid that more comics that appeal to girls (10 years old or otherwise) are published in the US. That said, the anime adaptations of both Gals! and KKJ were delightful, goofy fun, so I'm sure the original manga source material is just as entertaining.
FnordChan
sp0rsk said:
At this point, the licensing of major titles such as Monster is inevitable; it's just a matter of time. That said, yes, I want my Monster, my Yawara, and my Master Keaton, and I want them now.
FnordChan, who has a bunch of old Pineapple Army comics at home somewhere
Escape Goat
Member
Wellington said:
lol
evil solrac v3.0
Member
HAM!!!! GET ME SOME VALIUM!!!!! AND MY LIGHTNING SCEPTER!!!!! I HAVE TO PAY A VISIT TO DAN DIDIO'S OFFICE...and he had been doing so good lately.....
I heard rumblings about this last week but thought it must be a mistake. This is pretty crazy... DC getting GALS! over Tokyopop? They probably had to pay a pretty penny for that license. The same can be said for Kaitou Jeanne which seemed like a surefire license by Tokyopop or VIZ some day down the road.
DC finally licensing some manga comes as no surprise though as the tradtional American comic is clearly on its way out and being replaced by the manga market. Manga graphic novels have become much too large a market to ignore -- and its clear American imitations are not what the audience is looking for, so going right to the source is their best choice. Outside of established franchises such as Batman, Superman, etc., the American comics market is dwindling and will likely die off down the road I'm fairly certain. There just isnt a market for this stuff any more outside of major geeks and the audience is NOT growing.
Tenjo Tenge has a chance at being uncensored like Berserk if it comes shrink-wrapped.. here's to hoping as the manga is actually pretty decent/fun.
DC finally licensing some manga comes as no surprise though as the tradtional American comic is clearly on its way out and being replaced by the manga market. Manga graphic novels have become much too large a market to ignore -- and its clear American imitations are not what the audience is looking for, so going right to the source is their best choice. Outside of established franchises such as Batman, Superman, etc., the American comics market is dwindling and will likely die off down the road I'm fairly certain. There just isnt a market for this stuff any more outside of major geeks and the audience is NOT growing.
Tenjo Tenge has a chance at being uncensored like Berserk if it comes shrink-wrapped.. here's to hoping as the manga is actually pretty decent/fun.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
i was actually surprised GALS wasn't licenced by ADV, since they seem to like getting everything for all their shows these days.
Crazymoogle
Member
Even if it comes shrinkwrapped, Tenjou Tenge uncensored would still be a surprise to me. I don't think DC's Vertigo imprint would go with something that extreme. Mind you, censoring TT is not going to help out DC's image right off the bat, but still...
Oh, it's going to be a terrible day when manga is basically all/the dominant force in the industry. I mean, I like some manga, but can you imagine it being even that much more popular? Having so many superheroes is bad enough as it is, but I'll take that poison over manga.Meier said:
I really don't know what the industry itself is headed to. I mean, I've heard some say that the success of movies like Spiderman 1/2, etc. is good for comics, but I don't think it helps beyond a superficial point. These movies and others making hundreds of millions of dollars, is the industry really growing as a result? The only difference I see is that with every movie released, Marvel more and more just makes its comics about Spidey and the X-Men to the detriment of other things, which in turn leads to sameness which in turn leads to dissatisfaction and further downturn. If a significant number of the people who see the Spiderman, etc. movies were actually compelled to buy comics on anything like a regular basis, comic sales for Spidey, etc. would be going through the hundred thousands, perhaps into the millions, but that's not happening. Heck, comics like Ultimate Spiderman are going down. It used to regularly sell over 100,000. Now I see it into the 90,000's.
Just think, in the 1950's, do you know what the print run for a comic needed to be just to break even(not make any kind of money)? 300,000 copies. In the 1980's it was down to 50,000. Now I believe it's somewhere around 20-25,000(for the big publishers, naturally for the independents, it's smaller). Comics have just collapsed, while movies, music, etc. have grown greatly. In the early 1950's, the biggest selling comic was Uncle Scrooge (or Walt Disney's Comics and Stories depending on the month) selling 3 million copies a month. I daresay that's more than what Marvel's entire lineup combined sees in sales in a month. And those were the top comics, no telling how many others below them sold millions and hundreds of thousands as well.
And back then, there were all sorts of popular comics: Superheroes of course, but also funny animal comics, westerns, romance, horror, etc., etc. Nowadays it's almost all about superheroes(ignoring manga for a moment). It seems like once funny animal, etc. comics went out for good in the 1960's, the comics industry has retrenched and retrenched constantly ever since, never really growing. The industry needs more variety, like the past, but I doubt that will ever happen. The reason being that anything new(funny animal, western, horror, etc.) would need current day comic book fans to buy them to keep them afloat initially. But most of your regular comic fans would never buy those comics, hence nothing new lasts for very long or gets made at all, therefore not attracting the potential new comics fan who isn't interested in spandex, but would be willing to try something else.
But I guess, in a way, it's certain comics will remain and become even more a niche, if only for the reason that Americans tend to read less than they used to. One sure way to tell how much a country reads, is to look at its comics industry. In Europe, people tend to read more, so comics are still selling at levels that we would consider a miracle in the US. The Donald Duck weekly in Norway(a country with like 1/50th the population of the US) sells more in a week than the US' top selling title does in a month. Course, Europeans are also starting to read less nowadays, so sales are off their peaks from 10-15 years ago, but still vastly ahead of us.
Besides the reading factor, I think European comics do so well because there's variety. I believe they still sell Western comics among other genres. And funny animals(or rather Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge) are still king in Europe, echoing the golden age of comic sales in the US. I mean, in Scandanavia, 1/3 of the population reads Donald Duck comics, and that's not counting superheroes, etc. In the US, based on sales, maybe 1-2% of the population reads comics.
I don't know the outcome of this ranting, except maybe I'm saying some definite things could be done to help the US comic book industry, but for a variety of reasons, they can't and/or won't be pursued and the industry will slowly, but surely, become more and more of a niche.
BTW, while I'm on the subject
, you guys know of any western comics being made today? (besides Rawhide or whatever the comic was starring our gay roughrider).
- Status