NYAF: Del Rey panel

Posted on September 26, 2009 by Brigid Alverson

Del Rey had a few new titles to announce, all from established creators who have done well from them in the past:

Here I Am (Koko ni iru yo!), by Pixie Pop creator Ema Toyama. (Thanks to Emily for twittering the Japanese title!).

Yokai Navi Runa, by Michiyo Kukata, creator of Mamotte! Lollipop.

Arisa, by Kitchen Princess creator Natsumi Ando. Parenthetically, Del Rey editor Tricia Narwani said that they get more fan mail for Kitchen Princess than any other manga—and it’s the cutest fan mail, too. This one is a little more serious: It’s the story of twin sisters who are separated when their parents are divorced; they reunite years later, and one of them finds a mysterious letter that causes her to attempt suicide.

Marketing director Ali T. Kokmen also announced that Del Rey is picking up the Rave Master license, which was originally held by Tokyopop. If I heard this right, they will be releasing the last three volumes as a single omnibus edition.

I’m not sure if this is a new license or not (I think not), but people seemed to be pretty excited about the Code Breaker manga.

Also, I was interested to hear about a new direction for their licensed manga based on Cartoon Network properties: Instead of screencaps, they will have original stories and art from experienced artists and writers. The next Ben 10 manga will be written by Peter David (he does superhero stuff, and he actually asked to work on this property) and illustrated by Dan Hipp, whose somewhat more mature manga Gyakushu got lots of good word-of-blog (Warren Ellis is a fan). The Bakugan manga will be written by Nunzio DeFillippis and Christina Weir, the team who wrote Amazing Agent Luna.

A few more details: In response to questions from the audience, Ali and the other panelists revealed that all the volumes of the American edition of Moyashimon will have new covers, that their prices are unlikely to change in the near future but may eventually, and that yes, now that you mention it, they would consider licensing Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad.

About Brigid Alverson

Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Comic Book Resources, the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and Robot 6. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
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2 Responses to NYAF: Del Rey panel

  1. Nia says:
    September 26, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    I hope that Del Rey also considers licensing, Love Attack!, by Shizuru Seino, as well maybe, Getbackers, by Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine. Their both awesome! ^_^

  2. Michelle Smith says:
    September 27, 2009 at 10:28 am

    I’d love to see them finish off GetBackers, too. It only had about a dozen volumes left, which could be chopped neatly into omnibi.

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