CMX Forum

CMX, DC Comics' imprint, had their panel late in the evening-- 6:45. I don't know why they always get these so-so schedule slots; doesn't DC have pull at comic cons?

We're going through popular upcoming manga titles like Ken Saito's The Name of the Flower, whose first volume just hit stores in January. Then there's Fire Investigator Nanase, also just released; The Flat Earth/Exchange's Toshimi Nigoshi's Jihai, Mikase Hayashi...(some giggling throughout the room; we can hear the Lucky Star OP Motteke! Sailor Fuku playing next door), March on Earth, Venus Capriccio, Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea, the King of Debris, The Lapis Laluzi Crown, which is by an assistant of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne creator Arina Tanemura...

Ooh, here's a cool license: the Ballad of a Shinigami manga! If you're not familiar with the series, it's a very melancholy moe-ish series-- very sweet and cool. Last new announcement: Broken Blade by Yunosuke Yoshinaga, which is a cool-looking mech/action series, for those of you looking for that kind of thing.

More questions about Rose of Versailles, which came up in the Vertical panel as well-- it's hard to find a sizable market for older titles, though, and that makes the Japanese companies balk. (Hey, Japan-- maybe make a new Rose of Versailles anime to drum up interest again? With modern animation that could also just be really awesome. Oooh, or a live-action flick!)

Might CMX release omnibus versions of some of its longer series, like Tenjho Tenge? The answer is..."yes!" and to twitter them and let them know what you want to see. Their twitter account is here. Get to it!

Is DC considering doing manga of DC manga? They did one-- Batman Death Mask, and they're talking about ideas for more, but no specific plans at the moment. Any  titles for kids1 later this year? Yup, and it sounds like they'll be mostly rated T for Teen. But it's tough to do that with ongoing series in Japan, because so many series mature after the first few volumes, which is really hard on marketing in the US.

And that's the end of the story. Keep an eye out for more features as the week progresses and I get them online, plus tomorrow: VIZ's liveblog!

Its a shame that CMX is not going to publish From Eroica with Love series on a regular basis.  Its one of my favorite series and it simply irritates me that I have to wait long time for the next volume to be published. 

I would love to read Rose of Versailles~ I'm interested in doing studies in shoujo manga, and it has influence in later shoujo titles (like After School Nightmare which I love and did a paper on ^^;) , so I'd love to read it for myself and see these ties for myself, rather then just reading about it from other people's perspective. And with a slow building of manga research recently, it would be popular with people starting off in this sector who can't read Japanese. Another way they could drum up interest would be if the mangaka would redraw and re-release the series. Though there seems to be a movie in the works so that could very well re-new interest in the series. Another tactic they could use (either CMX or Vertical) would be to release the series on a limited run. Maybe if there was only so many copies of them, that would get more interest for it.