First Look: Yen Plus Manga Anthology Magazine's Debut Issue

Yen Press posted the cover artwork for their first issue of their new manga anthology magazine Yen Plus, featuring artwork from Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo and the manga version of James Patterson's Maximum Ride by Narae Lee. The August 2008 issue, will make its newsstand debut on July 29, 2008, with a cover price of $8.99.

Why two covers? Well, Yen Plus is a two-sided magazine! Half of the magazine will consist of right-to-left Japanese manga from Square Enix, and the other half will feature left-to-right Korean manhwa and original English language global manga. The first issue looks to be chock-full of interesting stories, including:

• Nightschool by Svetlana Chmakova
• Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo
• Maximum Ride by James Patterson and Narae Lee
• Higurashi: When They Cry by Ryukishi07
• Bamboo Blade by Masahiro Totsuka and Aguri Igarashi
• Sumomomo Momomo by Shinobu Ohtaka
• Jack Frost by JinHo Ko
• Pig Bride by KookHwa Huh and SuJin Kim
• Nabari no Ou by Yuhki Kamatani

Besides its mix of Japanese, Korean and American-made comics, Yen Plus is also taking a different approach by mixing up shojo and shonen stories in one magazine. As Yen Press Editorial Director Kurt Hassler put in his 2007 interview:

We're targeting this to the US market, and the US market is not big enough to approach it like you would in the Japanese market. The Japanese market is so huge and well-developed, so it makes total sense to target a magazine to a specific demographic.

But when you're looking at a nascent market like the US, where so much of the readership crosses over to read books targeting different demographics, then you really have to take a broader perspective on it. So we're really not looking to limit it like, 'this is a boys magazine' or 'this is a girls magazine' – this is a magazine for anyone interested in manga.

Look for Yen Plus to make its debut this month at San Diego Comic-Con and for more news about this recent addition to the manga publishing landscape in the U.S.

Image credit: © Atsushi Ohkubo / SQUARE ENIX, © James Patterson, Narae Lee; Yen Press