Hello readers! How was your weekend? Have you been binging on the Olympics like I’ve been? If you have, it’s time to take a break and check out the week in comics headlines.
I thought this day would never come, but it has apparently arrived. Bleach is ending at the end of August. It looks like the era of the Big 3 Manga is well and truly over with Naruto ending in 2014 and now Bleach. I won’t lie and say I’ve been the biggest Bleach fan. Not for a long time anyway. That said, there are still many loyal fans and saying goodbye to a beloved title is hard. Keeping my fingers crossed that the ending will satisfy everyone. Real talk: that seems like a tall order.
In cool accessibility news, a project is currently under development to give the blind their own comic books. While there have been advances in making more media formats accessible to the visually impaired, the visual component of comics have proven to be a challenge. That changes with Shapereader, which utilizes tactigrams to evoke certain story elements. Here’s hoping it gains traction and takes off!
Stories that feature shifting between the real world and alternate comic book/animated realities aren’t new, but this may be the first time such a concept has been explored in a Korean drama. W is a romance thriller that tells the story of a doctor who falls into the world of a webtoon (as comics are called in Korea) and meets a media mogul and Olympic gold medalist. How timely! Even more interesting, the series has topped viewer ratings, suggesting that Kdrama fans are hungry for something different. All of you Kdrama fans out there, have you seen this series? What do you think?
It’s safe to say that we all want comic creators to get paid, right? A new partnership between LINE Webtoon and Patreon is geared toward making that happen. I haven’t fully explored the LINE platform–I downloaded the app to read Noblesse–but this sounds great. Anyone have recommendations for titles currently participating in the Discover platform?
Other interesting bits of news
- George Lucas has requested to buy all of the art originals from the first two issues of the Han Solo comic. And you thought you were a dedicated fan!
- All of you late 90s shoujo manga readers out there, remember a title called Peach Girl? Guess what? It’s getting a sequel!
- Happy Harbor Comics is hosting a summer camp where budding artists can create their own comic and see it published in an anthology.
That’s all for now. See you next week!
