PR: CLAMP signs with Dark Horse

Below the cut, a press release from Dark Horse giving more details about the new manga that CLAMP will be creating for them. It’s an interesting new format: The manga will be released in monthly 80-page digests that will then be collected into tankoubon. And it will appear simultaneously in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. They have even coined a new word for the manga digests: “mangette.” Let’s see if that one sticks.

Dark Horse joins with world-renowned creators CLAMP to welcome fans into a new era of manga

Last year Dark Horse celebrated its twentieth anniversary of publishing original graphic works by some of the world’s greatest creators. Next year, Dark Horse celebrates their twentieth anniversary of publishing manga in English. This year, at San Diego Comic-Con Dark Horse is proud to announce that these two commitments held for so long have come together. Dark Horse will have the honor of publishing a new original manga created by Satsuki Igarashi, Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi and Ageha Ohkawa.—the manga-ka all-female supergroup known to their millions of fans worldwide as CLAMP. These four brilliant writers and artists work together to produce award-winning, best-selling manga, including RG VEDA, X, Chobits, Tsubasa, and xxxHOLiC.

CLAMP’s original manga with Dark Horse will be launched simultaneously in the United States, Japan, and Korea. The story will come out in a small digest consisting of about eighty pages each, which will then be collected into trade paperbacks with bonus material. CLAMP and Dark Horse are coining the bilingual term Mangettes to describe this innovative new format for manga distribution. This digest format, or Mangette, signifies CLAMP’s personal wish to reach their large international readership by now speaking to them directly as artists through Dark Horse, and on a basis of equality with their Japanese fans.

CLAMP and Dark Horse chose the term Mangettes to describe this revolutionary format, whose Japanese pronunciation, mangetsu, means “the full moon.” The two kanji in mangetsu also have the individual meanings of “fulfilled” and “monthly,” reflecting what will be a monthly appearance of each CLAMP Mangette.

According to CLAMP, “Mangettes are a completely brand new experience for us, too, and we’re really happy to be working on this. And we’re really looking forward to the day when we can bring you this new story from CLAMP, and the day when we can meet our fans face-to-face to hear what you think about Mangettes!”

“Dark Horse has made original comics for over twenty years; our editors have seen the hard work of individual Japanese creators in every manga we’ve ever brought over. Now we’re going to work just as hard to meet the trust CLAMP has placed in Dark Horse to publish their original work,” explains Mike Richardson, president and founder of Dark Horse. “Thanks to CLAMP, Dark Horse is today a manga publisher in a complete sense. After two decades of experience in adapting licensed editions of manga released previously by Japanese publishers, we will now become the original publisher of CLAMP, creators at the top of the manga world.”

Soon to come, details on CLAMP’s exciting new story.

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Comments

  1. Mangette…she was the other female smurf, right? The one without staples?

  2. girlontheleft says

    Very interesting… but this sounds a little bit like they’ve reinvented the monthly pamphlet/trade paperback format used by conventional American superhero comics. And it has a bit of the same problem: why bother with the monthlies at all, if you can just wait for the TPB?

  3. This is exciting news. I am real excited to see what they come up with. I wonder more how the Japanese readers will react. This format will be newer for them than for the American reader.

  4. girl: because they are CLAMP. CLAMP fans will want to read it as soon as it comes out and keep it for their collection.

    JohnT: most montly manga mag has stories that’s about 30-40 pages now. 80 is not that far off. What’s unique is that it’s all CLAMP, but only CLAMP could have pulled this off. All other less famous manga-ka will want/need to stick with the monthly or weekly magazines.

Trackbacks

  1. […] MangaBlog has the official press release   Posted by Kevin Melrose in Creators, Graphic Novels, Conventions, Dark Horse, Manga [ […]

  2. […] in July 2007, Dark Horse announced their plans for a joint project with the popular manga-group, CLAMP, to create a series of releases […]

  3. […] of CLAMP’s mangettes (mini-manga) on Amazon.jp; for those who have forgotten (the project was announced in July 2007), Dark Horse will be publishing the short manga simultaneously in Japan, Korea, and […]

  4. […] announced back in July 2007 (PR via MangaBlog), CLAMP was set to create a series of short manga stories (called ‘mangettes’) which […]