Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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16.5.06 FCBD: The Fallout

Apologies for my silence. It's been a bit manic, prepping for Cannes, and OSX 10.4.6 is refusing to talk to Blogger for some reason. But enough about my tech catastophies, let's talk comics! Various reviews of the Kat & Mouse Tokyopop sneak preview released on Free Comic Book Day last Saturday:

Johanna Draper Carlson liked it: "Saving my favorite for last, Tokyopop collects three lengthy samples of upcoming OEL all-ages books. Kat & Mouse features a girl detective at private school, which provides a number of hooks — this could easily be promoted to fans of Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, or even the OC, if they wanted a younger version. It’s got terrific writing and art, touching family drama, an intriguing mystery, and plenty of interesting suspects."

So does Dorian at PostModernBarney: "Tokyopop Sneaks: This book contains excerpts from three books from Tokyopop’s line of original titles, Kat and Mouse, Sea Princess Azuri and Mail Order Ninja. Of the three, Kat and Mouse was the most entertaining. It follows the story structure of a high-school set shojo comic fairly closely, but it doesn’t all out ape the look and feel of a Japanese comic. It has a nice blend of American and Japanese styles. If more of Tokyopop’s original line was like this I’d be more favorably inclined to their efforts."

But Graeme MacMillan isn't so keen: "TOKYOPOP SNEAKS: A nice little freebie trade, this one has the first chapter of three new OEL books that they’re putting out… which is kind of its downfall. The first two previews have exactly the same set-up (Kid in new school, doesn’t fit in) and stop before getting to what would presumably differentiate them from each other, giving the book a feeling of “Oh, Tokyopop has a generic house plot for new series” (The third preview, however, is for Sea Princess Azuri which unsurprisingly is about a Sea Princess and doesn’t have any new school horror whatsoever). Being a dirty Westerner, Alex DeCampi’s Kat and Mouse is the story that worked best for me, but even that felt uncertain and a bit forced – Definitely different from her Smoke series from IDW, so she should be applauded for her versatility, but not as good as Smoke, either."

Kat & Mouse Book 1 is out on 1st July, but we're hard at work on Book 2. Here's a pretty little teaser image:

Also, the ever-charming Chris Arrant pens an exclusive about the new Tokyopop Manga Readers line (and Manga Chapters) at industry bible Publishers' Weekly. Scroll down (waaay down) and click on Comics Weekly under PW Newsletters. Tolle, legge - this is the future of comics, sneaking graphic novels into the normal Prose / Young Readers section of bookstores, rather than leaving them in the ghetto of the Graphic Novel section or only in comic book shops. Think of it like Bookstore Risk. Tokyopop just captured Kamchatka, and everyone else is toast.

( 11:32 AM )

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