Manga New Manhwa

[Remadi]

For those of you who like manhwa (Korean manga,) Netcomics (the American branch of Korea's Ecomix Media Company) plans on releasing nine new manhwa titles starting in the first quarter of 2006 and bringing the number up to 12 in total by June. They plan on releasing 10 titles a month in 2007. The story where I found this information from can be read at [url]http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6289260.html[/url] and the website of Netcomics is fairly simple - [url]http://www.netcomics.com/[/url]. They have a number of different genres they are taking titles from and have summaries and sample pages from 15 titles, including an artbook and webcomic.

I think their plan for access to chapters online for $.25 each is interesting and I think it's a good idea. As they wrote in the article: "Jung [Netcomics director of operations Soyoung Jung] has found that unlike Korean culture, where comics are commonly read online and rarely purchased in book form, American consumer culture translates into sales regardless of what is available for free. So long as they like it, even after they've read it, Americans "still want to have it," Jung says." I think that's very true of us. At least the people I know, including myself.

[Dagger]

[quote name='Remadi']I think their plan for access to chapters online for $.25 each is interesting and I think it's a good idea.[/quote]
It really is. And like you, I think they're spot-on in their assessment of American consumer culture. I don't know much about the manwha scene myself, but I'm definitely interested in exploring it more. It does seem as though a lot of fans still don't make any distinction between manga and manwha... I imagine that if anything could remedy that, it would be a large-scale effort like this one.

(And props to them for including some BL titles in the mix.)

~Dagger~