New York City-based publisher Yen Press recently announced that they'll be featuring a new monthly manga series based on the popular Gossip Girl novels by Cecily von Ziegesar in the pages of Yen Plus magazine.
The Gossip Girl novels focus on the lives, loves and drama of a group of rich kids who attend an exclusive New York City private school. But rather than adapting one of the bestselling Gossip Girl novels or stories from the CW Network TV series, these new stories called Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only will be an "original re-imagination of the girls' senior year focusing on the lives of Blair and Vanessa."
These new stories will be written and drawn by Korean manhwa talent HyeKyung Baek, creator of another Yen Press / Ice Kunion series, Bring It On!. The first installment of Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only will appear in the January 2010 issue of Yen Plus magazine.
Some of the fans commenting on the impending arrival of the Gossip Girl manga fretted over it displacing one of the current manga / manhwa series running in Yen Plus (it will not). Others complained that it's "not their cup of tea." But as was true with the Maximum Ride graphic novels, the Gossip Girl comics are a savvy move that's geared to introduce new readers to manga more than it is designed to please hardcore otaku.
The announcement of the Gossip Girl manga is just the latest of Yen Press' forays into the development of original manga / manhwa adaptations of popular young adult novels published by their sister Hachette company, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
The Maximum Ride graphic novels by James Patterson and NaRae Lee have already proven to be a sales success, with the first two volumes making appearances in the New York Times manga bestseller list several times.
While not developed by the Yen Press editorial staff, the Cirque du Freak manga are based on Darren Shan's bestselling novel series from the Little, Brown imprint.
Other graphic novel adaptations in the works include a manga version of Lisi Harrison's The Clique novels, to be drawn by YiShan Li (author of The Adventures of CG! for Cosmo Girl magazine, and the Shoujo Manga Studio art book). Similar to Gossip Girl, The Clique focuses on a group of rich private school kids, albeit at an exclusive girls' middle school in Westchester County in suburban New York. The Clique manga is due out in July 2010.
As of Summer 2009, Yen Press also announced that a manga adaptation of the Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyers is currently in development. An official release date has not been announced for the first volume of the Twilight graphic novels, but there are likely legions of fans eager to find out when these books will be showing up at their local bookshop.
So what do you think of these new manga adaptations of bestselling Western novels? Are you looking forward to picking them up, or are they not quite your thing? Take this quick poll about these upcoming Yen Press titles, or add your comments below.
Comments