Comic-Con: Manga!

In the podcast where I vented my frothing fanboy rage over the “hiatus” that Hiroki Endo’s excellent “Eden: It’s An Endless World!” was put on, I put the onus of my hate on Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson. I figured that being the publisher meant it was his call as to whether or not the series would continue. As it turns out, I was partly wrong.

At the Dark Horse Presents panel today, I got the chance to ask Richardson about the series’ future past the forthcoming vol. 13. Specifically, were there concrete plans to publish the final five volumes, or would their appearance be contingent on strong sales for this volume? While the latter part of that sentence turned out to be true, Richardson was quick to add that the series was a favorite of his and its hiatus was just that. The plan was to bring it back after it had recouped it’s printing costs, much in the same way that Fanfare operates on the margins with it’s titles.

While my cynical side doesn’t want to take that at face value, it’s hard to doubt his word after I’ve sat through a panel where he has discussed his passion for the medium, and the people on the panel (Eric Powell, Carla Speed-McNeil, Dave Gibbons, and Jim Steranko) have extolled his commitment to creator rights. So I threatened the crowd to buy a copy of vol. 13 or else I’d come find them next year. We’ll see how that works out.

I also attended the annual “Year’s Best & Worst Manga” panel featuring critics like Chris Butcher, David Brothers, Carlo Santos, and Deb Aoki gabbing about what they liked and disliked regarding manga released over the past year. Even without the presence of regular panelist Jason Thompson, they were still an entertaining bunch to listen to, and the panel still felt too short by an hour. One thing — Brothers picked “High School of the Dead” as his choice for worst of the year. Interestingly, the few reasons he gave were also some of the ones for why I think it’s glorious trash. Different strokes, people…