The team behind the Mangasplaining podcast announced today that they are launching a new manga imprint, MSX: Mangasplaining Extra, which will serialize newly licensed manga on Substack followed by, in many cases, a print edition. The first two titles they have licensed are Okinawa, by Susumu Higa, in partnership with Fantagraphics Books, and These Days, a previously unpublished short manga by two-time Eisner Award winner Taiyo Matsumoto that will be a digital exclusive. Other publishers, including Udon Entertainment, are expected to sign on for future projects.
Okinawa started out as two separate manga, Sword of Sand, which examines the impact of World War II and the presence of American forces on the people of Okinawa, and Mabui, which looks at how those factors continue to play out in people’s lives. Fantagraphics will publish the print edition in Winter 2022.
These Days is a short piece about a former manga editor who is not sure what to do once manga is no longer part of his life. This is an early version of the story that Matsumoto developed into Tokyo Higoro, which is now serialized in Japan, and it has never been published in any form in Japan or elsewhere. The newsletter will publish both the penciled version and the final, inked comic as a digital exclusive that will be available in the MSX archive for one year.
The program grew from the Mangasplaining podcast, in which manga experts Deb Aoki, Christopher Woodrow-Butcher, and David Brothers discuss manga with comics creator Chip Zdarsky. Aoki and Woodrow-Butcher will take the lead with the Substack newsletter, which will feature both a paid subscription for the manga and a free version with non-manga content, including show notes from the podcast and original articles about manga. While Substack launched a number of comics newsletters last year (see “James Tynion IV Leaves Batman for Substack”), this is their first manga-focused newsletter.
The MSX: Mangasplaining Extra newsletter launches today, with a schedule that includes podcast links and show notes on Tuesdays, new manga chapters on Fridays, and bonus content every other Sunday.
Click Gallery for previews!
Source: ICv2
