Exciting news for all CLAMP fans! Seems that Dark Horse will be producing a new CLAMP manga series that will be released simultaneously in Japan, the US and South Korea starting in 2009!

Taken from the Dark Horse website:

Last year Dark Horse celebrated its twentieth anniversary of publishing original graphic works by some of the world's greatest creators. Next year, Dark Horse celebrates their twentieth anniversary of publishing manga in English. This year, at San Diego Comic-Con Dark Horse is proud to announce that these two commitments held for so long have come together. Dark Horse will have the honor of publishing a new original manga created by Satsuki Igarashi, Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi and Ageha Ohkawa--the manga-ka all-female supergroup known to their millions of fans worldwide as CLAMP. These four brilliant writers and artists work together to produce award-winning, best-selling manga, including RG VEDA, X, Chobits, Tsubasa, and xxxHOLiC.

CLAMP's original manga with Dark Horse will be launched simultaneously in the United States, Japan, and Korea. The story will come out in a small digest consisting of about eighty pages each, which will then be collected into trade paperbacks with bonus material. CLAMP and Dark Horse are coining the bilingual term Mangettes to describe this innovative new format for manga distribution. This digest format, or Mangette, signifies CLAMP's personal wish to reach their large international readership by now speaking to them directly as artists through Dark Horse, and on a basis of equality with their Japanese fans.

CLAMP and Dark Horse chose the term Mangettes to describe this revolutionary format, whose Japanese pronunciation, mangetsu, means "the full moon." The two kanji in mangetsu also have the individual meanings of "fulfilled" and "monthly," reflecting what will be a monthly appearance of each CLAMP Mangette.

According to CLAMP, "Mangettes are a completely brand new experience for us, too, and we're really happy to be working on this. And we're really looking forward to the day when we can bring you this new story from CLAMP, and the day when we can meet our fans face-to-face to hear what you think about Mangettes!"

"Dark Horse has made original comics for over twenty years; our editors have seen the hard work of individual Japanese creators in every manga we've ever brought over. Now we're going to work just as hard to meet the trust CLAMP has placed in Dark Horse to publish their original work," explains Mike Richardson, president and founder of Dark Horse. "Thanks to CLAMP, Dark Horse is today a manga publisher in a complete sense. After two decades of experience in adapting licensed editions of manga released previously by Japanese publishers, we will now become the original publisher of CLAMP, creators at the top of the manga world."

Soon to come, details on CLAMP's exciting new story.

Also from Publisher's Weekly:

Known for such bestselling manga series as Del Rey’s xxxHolic and Tsubasa and Tokyopop’s Chobits, CLAMP, Japan’s superstar all-female manga team, has signed a groundbreaking deal with Dark Horse Books to produce an original manga series beginning in 2009. The deal gives Dark Horse something it has lacked—a powerful shojo manga property in a U.S. market dominated by licensed shojo manga. In addition, for the first time, a major manga will be simultaneously published in three countries: the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

Dark Horse founder and publisher Mike Richardson said that the deal took two years to come to fruition, and is the company’s entry into the shojo manga category. “We didn’t just want to jump into it,” he said, emphasizing Dark Horse’s tradition of working with famed Japanese storytellers like Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf and Cub). “If you look at manga in Japan and the huge pool of creative talent, CLAMP comes to mind. We wanted to be in business with them.”

The publisher will also pioneer a new form of publication that it calls “mangettes,” 80-page novellas of the CLAMP story in a digest form that will be released on a monthly schedule. “We’re always experimenting with format,” said Richardson. “We wanted to come up with a pleasant reading format, something fun that can be released in a form that’s similar to the way [manga] is read in Japan. Like serialized comics, the mangettes will then be bundled and released in the familiar graphic novel/tankoubon format.” Richardson expects to bundle three mangettes per tankoubon (or volume).

Michael Gombos, Dark Horse director of Asian licensing, said the simultaneous publication will benefit English-speaking manga fans, who learn about popular Japanese titles, thanks to the Web, and complain about having to wait for licensing and translation. Gombos said simultaneous publication will bring readers “closer to the Japanese experience [of reading manga], but in America.”

Exciting, huh? Possibly Tsubasa and xxxHolic may be finished by 2009 so they may have plenty of time to put into this series (.Kobato could still be going though). I wonder what it will be about? Completely new series or a continuation of existing characters?

The best thing about this is that English readers will not get spoiled by people who have been reading the Japanese version! Tsubasa has been ruined for me on several occasions due to such "fans" and it's annoyed the Hell out of me. Spoiler Warnings people!

What do you think? Leave a comment below and help spread the word! A new CLAMP manga! Puh!

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Labels: CLAMP manga

ChibiYuuto has found several cool pics from the upcoming CLAMP in Wonderland 2 well worth a look!

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Labels: CLAMP in Wonderland