Authors: Dave Roman, Alison Wilgus
Artist: Nina Matsumoto
Publisher: DelRey
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: May 2010

Synopsis: “When Prince Zuko dared to question authority, his father Fire Lord Ozai, banished him from the Fire Nation. Horribly scarred and stripped of everything he held dear, Zuko has wandered the earth for almost three years in search of his only chance of redemption: the Avatar, a mystical being who once kept the four nations in balance. Everyone he encounters believes that this is an impossible task, as the Avatar disappearance a century ago. But Zuko stubbornly continues the search. He must regain his honor, so his question is all he has left.”

Scarred by his Father and scorned by his people, Prince Zuko embarks on a quest to capture the now near-mythicized Avatar to regain his honour and be once again allowed home. Little here will trend new ground for those well-versed in Nickelodeon’s original animated series but superb writing and classy artwork combine to make this book a short but sweet one-shot that any fan of the series should keep an eye out for. Zuko’s Story takes a huge leap forward from the Avatar movie-verse (from where it garnered its inception) by taking a step back to Zuko’s past and doing so with more reminiscent style.

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Writers: M. Night Shyamalan/Dave Roman/Alison Wilgus
Artist: Joon Choi
Publisher: Del Rey
Rating: Teen (10+)
Release Date: June 2010

Synopsis: “Waging a devastating war, the Fire Nation destroyed the harmonious balance among the four nations. The Air Nation isNomads are no more, and the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom are on the verge of collapse. In such dire times, the Avatar, master of the all four elements, is expected to return bring balance to the world. But the Avatar has been missing for a hundred years. When teenagers Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe rescue a young boy frozen in an iceberg sphere, their lives—and his—are changed forever.”

Word is out and it isn’t pretty – M. Night Shyamalan’s live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is a big whopping flop. A rushed plot, inaccurate details and beyond lacklustre acting has left both fans of the show and lovers of movies leaving the theatre in disarray. While the movie may’ve been a spirited stinker, it did at least inspire a few graphic novel adaptations that could yet make a little good of the enterprise. This book, The Last Airbender, is a direct take on the film’s version of the story and cast. Despite being bound by the screenplay of the film, could there yet be hope for this 128 page spin of the fan-favourite series? Eh… not so much.

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A little change of pace today with a post about something near and dear to my fan-girl heart – fun, colourful comics and Avatar: The Last Airbender! And with so many great Avatar goodies out both recently and on the horizon, expect more ATLA here on Kuriousity coming up!

But today it’s about the comics – or lack there of.

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Some technical difficulties over the weekend put a bump in my final update regarding Anime North but while I await the retrieval of some material, I notice it’s been a while since we’ve had a news snippet post. Time for some boys’ love loving with news today.!There’s been a few tidbits the past while so here’s a quick round-up of each:

AnimeNewsNetwork is reporting the next Gakuen Heaven manga has been listed on Amazon by BLU (the boys’ love imprint of Tokyopop). The book was also listed in this month’s Preview catalog from Diamond Comics. The company has already released the first two of the Gakuen Heaven books. Based on a boys ‘ love sim game, each book follows the lead character being involved with a different character. The title of this third volume is Gakuen Heaven: Endo ~Calling You~. BLUManga has also posted on their Twitter account that the third volume of Voice or Noise has gone to the printers (yay!).

Yaoi Con has updated its website with a whole look and a bunch of new announcements. This year’s Yaoi Con, North America’s largest convention dedicated to boys’ love, is celebrating its ten year anniversary. They’ve updated their website with guest information – including Hinako Takanaga, Ayane Yamano, Jo Chen and Kano Miyamoto – as well as information regarding returning events such as their AMV contest.

Over at The Yaoi Review, blogger Jennifer LeBlanc has proclaimed June to be Global Boys’ Love Month. Over the month she’ll be covering boys’ love works from creators around the world. Should be lots of interesting stuff to come!

On the note of global boys’ love, there’s some related news to check out on that front as well:

Artist Jo Chen, whose gorgeous painted works can often be seen on the cover of Marvel comics and Buffy issues, has some new independently released books that are definitely worth a look. Firstly she’s completed her first doujin (noted by Yaoi Con) – In These Words. The work is 52 pages altogether and was sold at the recent Fanime, plus will be available at Yaoi Con. Secondly she’s also releasing an art book of her cover illustrations, restricted to only 1500 copies, that she’s selling through e-mail. The book is in Chinese, has 140 pages and costs $45.

Tina Anderson, GlobBL creator whose work include Only Words and the web comic, Whore of Turfan, has a new independently published work coming out with the pre-order date closing in. Loud Snow is  a story of “romantic ice-age hilarity” with art by Amelie Belcher. A digital edition is already available via Kindle with a version soon to be available on eManga. The print edition is coming out this July with pre-orders available for only $8.00.

Manga-ka: MTCopyright
Publisher: Radially Spoof
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: April 2010

Synopsis: “Always up to her nose in manga and eager to share her opinion, it was no surprise to her friends when Kuri decided to tackle the word of reviewing. But with too many books and not enough hours in the day, she soon realized she’d need some major help to tackle them all. It doesn’t take long for her to gather together an amazing assortment of individuals and each with their own unique charms- but now Kuri’s suddenly got more than books on her desk! Anime conventions, forum trolls, scanlation scourges and more – but with deadlines looming, book stacks towering and a million distractions out to thwart them, can the manga crew keep up with their workload or will they need more than luck to help them fulfil their kuriousity?”

A book about manga reviewing, convention planning, manga fans just hanging out and talking about what they love… what madness is this? Brilliant madness – or at least a highly entertaining kind.

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Author: Stephanie Meyer
Manhwa-ga: Young Kim
Publisher: Yen Press
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: March 2010

Synopsis: “When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret…”

Twilight: a multi-million dollar investment in the frothing hearts of fan girls around the world. Many have read the original novel series and infinitely more have at least heard of it. With the live-action films already taking their crack at adapting these popular novels, it’s now the comic world’s time to have a go with Stephanie Meyer holding tight on the reigns.

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Webcomic of interest alert – Christy Lijweski, creator of the recently concluded RePlay (published by Tokyopop) has put up the first few pages of her new webcomic, Samurai Host Club.

“Assassins, Mafia wars, gunfights, massive bleeding, hookers and hosts. Maybe a samurai or two thrown in for good measure. Mature content for violence, language, sex and other hot sh–.”

Not much there so far in its infancy but still well worth a look-see for those who enjoyed her gritty characters, sharp art style and well dressed guys with guns in past works. While I don’t personally read many web comics, I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this one. You can also see more of Lijewski’s artwork on her DeviantArt page, including promotional images for Samurai Host Club.

Yen Press has had submission guidelines on their website for some time now but in their most recent issue of Yen+, they’ve published a more specific call for proposals from artists:

“Are you a professional artist working in a style heavily influenced by manga? Then YEN PLUS wants to talk to you! One of the primary aims of a manga anthology is to help to develop talent at a professional level, and YEN PLUS is no different. Going forward, we are going to be featuring short stories commissioned from professional artists and developed with the YEN PLUS editorial staff in the magazine. The goal is to give creators a feel for working with us (and vice versa), a sense of the experience of serialization in a monthly anthology, as well as exposure to a broad reading audience.

It’s worth pointing out that this is not intended to be a “pitch” for a long-running manga series. This is simply an exercise. YEN PLUS would likely request, among other things, first serial rights for inclusion in the magazine, the rights to display the work on our website promotionally as well as the first option to develop the concept with you into a longer project in the event of an enthusiastic response to the work. (It may not be a pitch, but you never know…SOUL EATER started out as a short story just like this!

Interested? Here’s what you need to do: Send a proposal for a 30 page manga story along with 5 to 10 completed sequential renderings of that story to the editorial staff of Yen Press.”

Karen already sums up what makes this sound like a pretty sweet deal for up-and-coming artists over at Japanator. Though there isn’t a lot mentioned here contract-wise, it does sound like Yen Press is more open to allowing creators to maintain rights to their work plus the proposal length sounds great – a perfect size for the editors at Yen to get an idea of what you’re proposing without the artist needing to spend months of their life putting an entire finished piece together. Amen to that!

Yen Press is currently publishing Canadian-creator Svetlana Chmakova’s Nightschool in their Yen+ anthology alongside their continuously growing library of books from around the world.

Author/Artist: Nina Matsumoto
Publisher: Del Rey
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: November 2009

Synopsis: “Yokai are Japanese spirits, and young Hamachi is fascinated by them. Now he continues his quest deep into the Yokai realm in the hopes of finding Madkap, the kappa he believes has killed his grandmother. Armed with nothing but a sacred rope and a lucky kappa’s foot, Hamachi has made two friends to help him on his journey: Lumi the talking lantern, and newly awakened, the umbrella that once belonged to his grandfather! Their first stop is the home of the legendary fox spirit the Ninetails, who promises to help in Hamachi’s quest if Hamachi can retrieve three lost items. But can Hamachi really find them, or does the Ninetails just want Hamachi to fail so he can keep the human boy as a pet?”

This book of Yokaiden opens with a handy exposition for those who may be picking up this second volume prior to the first; told via a short comic. Though perhaps a little taxing to those already familiar with the story, it shows the artist’s attention to audiences of both sorts and does so in a manner more entertaining than a simple paragraph recap. Regrettably the new material doesn’t feel nearly as ingenious.

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Since the earthquake that struck Haiti quickly nabbed media attention around the world, support has been flooding in from every corner of the globe. The internet is certainly no exception and many artists have opened commissions and auctions to sell their services and work for charitable donations in support of Haiti.

Two well known manga-style artists have also done just that. Christy Lijewski (artist of RePlay!, published by Tokyopop) and KOSEN (artist of Saihoshi, published by Yaoi Press) have each put up a piece of their original artwork on eBay with all proceeds going to a Haiti support charity. Great art for a great cause!

Christy Lijewski is selling the original copic-coloured artwork commissioned by Tokyopop for the cover of the third and final volume of RePlay. The auction ends January 23, 2010.

KOSEN is selling an original copic-coloured drawing of the character Yinn from their boys’ love fantasy series, Saihoshi. The auction ends January 19, 2010.

Two new contest calls are out for artists so sharpen your pencils and dust off those tablets (though may you artists out there keep your tablet much better dusted than mine!).

First off Viz Media is looking for fan art submissions for upcoming volumes of St. Dragon Girl. Via Twitter (@viz_media): “AM: Calling All Artists! Fan Art needed for future volumes of St. Dragon Girl manga.” The most recent volume of St. Dragon Girl is volume five and it’s available on store shelves this week.

Meanwhile over on her DeviantArt journal, Svetlana Chmkova is holding a contest for fan art to potentially appear in the next volume of her currently running series, Nightschool. Winners will be published in the third volume of Nightschool, due out from Yen Press in April 2010, and will be sent signed copies of the book when it’s released. All entries must be submitted to Yen Press by the fast-approaching deadline of December 28th along with a fanart consent form available on their webpage.

A press release out today revealed that Yen Press will be releasing a manhwa version of James Patterson’s Daniel X.

Readers will likely recognize the author as the creator of Maximum Ride, which Yen Press is currently releasing an adaptation of with artist NaRa Lee. The artist for Daniel X will be Seung-Hui Kye whose series Recast was published by Tokyopop. Hachette, Yen Press’s parent company, is releasing the original Daniel X novels, which are science fiction aimed at older teens.

“Fifteen-year-old alien hunter Daniel X is on a mission to finish the job that killed his parents to wipe out the world’s most bloodthirsty aliens on The List. At the number-one spot, The Prayer is Daniel’s ultimate target. With mind-blowing skills like telepathy and the ability to transform and create, Daniel’s got more than a few tricks up his sleeve. Along with his friends Willy, Joe-Joe, Emma and Dana, Daniel hunts down the aliens on The List one by one. But as he battles towards his top target he can’t forget one thing: he’s got a host of aliens to fight, but on their lists there’s only one name at the top… and that’s his.”

The Daniel X manhwa will originally be serialized in Yen Press’s Yen Plus anthology with the first volume to be released in summer 2010.

So what do you think? Personally I was more happy to hear in the press release that Maximum Ride has proven so successful for Yen Press – the excitement of another James Patterson series is lost on me since I’d never heard of the author before Yen Press announced Maximum Ride. Still, I’ve heard a lot of good things about Seung-Hui Kye’s Recast, and having never had the chance to read it, will be vaguely interested to see how Daniel X turns out, even if it is being built out of what sounds like a mountain of cheese (see plot synopsis above).

Creator: Svetlana Chmakova
Publisher: Yen Press
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: October 2009

Synopsis: “Schools may lock up for the night, but class is in session for an entirely different set of students. In the Nightschool, vampires, werewolves, and weirns  learn the fundamentals of everything from calculus to spell casting. Alex is a young weirn whose education has always been handled through home schooling, but circumstances seem to be drawing her closer to the Nightschool. Will Alex manage to weather the dark forces gathering?”

Alex begins her quest to discover what happened to her sister, a staff member at the city’s secret night school, who mysteriously vanished leaving not even a memory behind in the minds of most. Her sister’s place of employment is the first stop, but to wander the school halls, Alex must first become a student.

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Some boys’ love news snippets today with submission closures, convention schedules and an undead publisher still looking to make a return:

Yaoi Press has recently updated their info page to inform propestive creators that their submissions are currently closed. This is a uncommon state for Yaoi Press which has spent the majority of its time open to new stories by writers and artists. The page does however offer up an honest and open look at why their submissions are currently closed and assurance that they still have previously submitted works on file.

Word has been circulating for a while about Digital Manga’s big yaoi title announcement, promising many happy fans, and that they’ll be making said-announcement at the upcoming Yaoi Con. Today Digital Manga has posted their Yaoi Con schedule including their industry panel and signing times for special guest, Makoto Tateno (see art above).

Digital Manga has also sent out a press release about signed and framed Makoto Tateno artwork which will be available for sale both at Yaoi Con and on their online shop, Akadot.

And lastly, in an odder turn of events, DramaQueen has updated its online shop to showcase what they’re calling a “Rebirth Sale”, offering up several of their back issue books for cheaper prices along with a message that suggests they’re still working on the comeback that they’ve promised for so long. Hmm… sounds sort of familiar.

I won’t beat the proverbial horse on this one but suffice to say DramaQueen hasn’t done anything to win readers’ sympathy or support in the past two years but I suppose it’ll still be interesting to see if they ever do release another book. Still, as much as I’m all for supporting the industry, it’s my honest opinion that shoppers should stay away from ordering through DramaQueen’s online website. The risk is simply too high that prospective buyers will only join the line of people still waiting for DQ to pay their dues.

After almost a year’s silence, and a sudden though exciting mini-announcement to kick it off, Viz Media is now accepting proposals and submissions for original series. A posting on Viz Media’s blog offered just as few details as the Twitter posting that originally let me know, but at least the concept itself is pretty self explanatory. Have a story or series that you’ve been working on and believe is ready for publication? Put together a pitch package and submit to Viz for consideration!

Last we heard anything substantial about Viz’s original pitch project was back in February when news circulated that Viz Media was putting their original submission project on hold. It previously had a short run when Viz held portfolio reviews at SDCC 2008 and more recently when Viz Media editor Eric Searleman appeared alongside other comic industry folk for panels and portfolio reviews at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Creators and the curious can download their Pitch Submission Release (PDF) which is to accompany all submissions to Viz Media. It also includes the physical address of where to send your material.

What I’m curious about now, same as I was when they originally shared that they’d begin actively seeking this kind of original material, is what kind of stories we may see from this endeavour. Are they looking for any particular genres? Certain age targets? Minimum or maximum lengths? Straight to graphic novels or serializations? Things are pretty vague right now but if Viz recieves a good amount of submissions, it’ll be interesting to see if they put some suggestive guidelines in place.

Simon from Icarus Publishing brings up excellent points about the incredible circulation power that Viz’s Shonen Jump magazine has to offer and the likelihood that creators could retain their copyrights to the works submitted. With the growing popularity of Viz’s online manga reading websites, Shonen Sunday and IKKI, there’s also a great potential for original works to be offered to new readers in the digital format as well, offering Viz a chance to promote and ‘test the waters’ without immediately committing to print. This is similar to the benefits both Tokyopop and Digital Manga have recently begun to really dig into with their current online releases of material from creators around the world.

Personally I’m really eager to see what kind of stories and artists come out of the woodwork to submit. Hopefully we’ll see some returning faces along with some great new talent. Best of luck to those who submit – take your time, do your best, aim to impress and have fun!