At last, a quiet week! Most of the Viz stuff I’m mentioning actually shipped this week to comic shops, and as always Midtown Comics is getting it a week later. But a week where 30-40 books aren’t all coming out at once is a GOOD week.
Oh yes, we also have Kodansha’s Western arm, who are putting out Ghost in the Shell 2. I presume this will be a simple reprint of the Dark Horse version, like Kodansha’s other releases to date. I will admit they did announce a new title for January of next year that seems to be a non-reprint, a manga version of Hagakure: The Code of the Samurai. I’d still like to see Sailor Moon, though. :)
As for Viz, this week is traditionally the week when they release their ‘Signature’ titles, the ones with good reviews and bad sales. Or maybe not, as Vagabond 32 is coming out, and Matt Blind’s excellent post here shows that it sells OK. We also get new 20th Century Boys for you Urasawa fans, and more Ooku for those who like to rage against the adaptation.
Gestalt, the fantasy manga that came out in the 1990s from Square Enix’s GFantasy magazine, is ending after 8 volumes.
The two I’m most interested in this week are Dorohedoro Volume 2, as I found Volume 1 to be far more interesting than I’d expected from a grim, gritty, ultraviolence title, and Volume 1 of Gente, the ‘prequel’ to Ristorante Paradiso that goes into how the restaurant came to be. Both are titles that I very much consider ‘subsidized by Naruto’, i.e. they’d never be licensed were it not for Viz’s success with the ninja boy allowing them to take more risks. At the same time, I always love when titles like this come out. These two especially have art that’s fascinating and great to analyze, albeit in totally different ways.
Hey Sean, just want to point out that Hagakura is not from Kodansha USA the manga publisher but from Kodansha International the literary arm. Two different companies.