Fanime 2008 - Dark Horse Shares 20th Anniversary News

On Saturday at FanimeCon 2008 in San Jose, Dark Horse Manga Editor Carl Horn shared a few sneak peeks at a few summer manga releases, shared some news about Dark Horse Manga's 20th Anniversary and dropped a few more tidbits about the long-awaited CLAMP Mangettes project.

As Horn reminded panel attendees of Dark Horse's numerous trail-blazing and long-running titles (including Oh My Goddess and Blade of the Immortal, which are the first and second-longest running manga series in English respectively), he also unveiled the artwork for the commemorative poster for Dark Horse Manga's 20th anniversary. The poster features a calligraphic depiction of Dark Horse's logo by Yoshitaka Amano (Vampire Hunter D). Horn revealed that this poster will be available as a limited edition print on Japanese mulberry paper, and that Amano's artwork will be featured on all of Dark Horse's manga releases in during their 20th anniversary celebrations.

Meanwhile, Horn didn't have much new to share about the CLAMP Mangettes project, other than reiterate its scheduled 2009 debut and its simultaneous release in Japan, U.S. and Korea. He also reminded us that "mangettes" is not the title of the project, but is CLAMP's name for the format, which will be a monthly 80-page digest format, with the equivalent of four chapters per volume.

"We have not revealed the title, the plot or the characters yet, but we might be able to reveal it at San Diego Comic-Con," said Horn. "We might feature it on our preview magazine or we might be able to show some artwork at that time."

Other short tidbits from Dark Horse:

• Clover by CLAMP - Horn mentioned that Dark Horse is working on a "digitally remastered" edition of Clover, a series originally released in the U.S. by TokyoPop in 2001. Described by Horn as a "very sensitively-done cyberpunk story," Clover was originally presented in four volumes but the Dark Horse edition will be a single volume omnibus. Look for this one to appear in stores in late Fall '08.
• Vampire Hunter D Author Hideyuki Kikuchi at New York Anime Festival - Horn also mentioned that Hideyuki Kikuchi, the author of the popular Vampire Hunter D manga, anime and light novel series will be Dark Horse's special guest at New York Anime Festival in September.
• Domo in every color of the rainbow - Domo-kun, NHK's quirky mascot will be available as collectible flocked figures in a variety of colors to suit your ever mood, including polar white, fuschia, royal blue and a special yellow version just for San Diego Comic-Con. Dark Horse will also be releasing smaller versions in the near future too. Not quite sure what the hype is all about? Check out the Domo Nation website to check out short video clips of Domo-kun in action.

Image credit: © Deb Aoki, © CLAMP