Del Rey, Marvel Reveal New X-Men Manga Projects

At the New York Anime Festival, the panel with a lot of pre-con buzz was Sunday's Del Rey Manga and Marvel Comics panel. After a joke reveal of "Iron Man vs Gundam," the real project was revealed to be new manga versions of Marvel's mutant superheroes, The X-Men and Wolverine.

Now in development and scheduled for release in Spring 2009, the first Del Rey Manga / Marvel Comics co-productions will be:

• X-Men, Shojo Manga-Style - Written by Raina Telgemeier (The Babysitter's Club) and Dave Roman (Jax Epoch), with art by Anzu (The Reformed). This will be a two-volume series, with each in Del Rey's standard graphic novel format and $10.95 cover price.
• Wolverine, Shonen Manga-Style - Written by Antony Johnston, the author of Wasteland, and the Point Blanc graphic novels. Artist for this project is not confirmed yet, but will be announced soon. This story will also be a two-volume series.

According to Del Rey Manga Associate Publisher Dallas Middaugh and Vice-President of Development at Marvel Comics, Ruwan Jayatilleke, these projects came about as Del Rey was in talks to publish the novelizations of the upcoming Iron Man movie.

"It came together surprisingly quickly, as these things go," said Middaugh. "At Marvel, we're always looking to grow our audience base," Jayatilleke added. "Over the years, Marvel has had some success and more failures in the manga market, so we decided to work together as two leaders in the market and blow people away from both sides."

While these new stories are firmly based in the original Marvel universe, Roman and Telgemeier were encouraged to explore new directions with these characters. As Del Rey Manga Editor Trisha Narwani explained it, "Manga fans know it's more than an art style, manga is also a story style. So when we thought about bringing the X-Men story to teen girls, we wanted to be able to take the story in radical new directions." Like what, you ask? Well, Xavier's School for Gifted Children is now an exclusive all-boys school with Kitty Pryde as its sole female student.

Here's the synopsis from the Del Rey Manga Press release:

"It's the X-Men as you've never seen them before, with the storyline fashioned as a private school shojo comedy. As the only girl in the all-boys School for Gifted Youngsters, Kitty Pryde, a mutant with phasing abilities, is torn between the popular Hellfire Club, led by flame-throwing mutant Pyro, and the school misfits, whom she eventually bands together as the X-Men."

Panel attendees were treated to preliminary character sketches by Anzu of Jean Grey, Magneto, Mystique and a very bishonen (beautiful boy) Wolverine.

While the X-Men project is aimed at a teen female audience, the Wolverine books will be squarely aimed at male shonen manga readers. With an artist yet to be named, this project isn't quite as far along, but when more is announced it's sure to get the fanboy blogosphere buzzing.

I'll be posting a shot of the Jean Grey artwork by Anzu when I post the New York Anime Photo Gallery tomorrow, so there's more to come! In the meantime, visit the Del Rey Manga blog for Dallas and crew's take on this weekend's events.

UPDATE: Here's that Jean Grey sketch by Anzu.

What do you think about these new Marvel manga projects? Sound off in the manga forums.