October, 2009

It's been a while since something new came out of this site... are we dead? Not really, we're just on a really long hiatus... but taking a look around, the manga news-reporting scene has changed a lot in the past few years, and the (hopefully unique) service that we once provided is a lot more common now, so much so that perhaps our service is no longer required. We thought it'd be a good time to announce that we're going on an super-extended break/hiatus.

So what to do before we go into hibernation mode? ComiPress is not only known for its news and articles, but also for the various projects we've worked on, such as Backstage, ComiPedia, and so on. So we thought, perhaps we should present one final feature for the manga community.

Did you know ComiPress used to be a part of Manga Jouhou? That's right, we were once a sub-site of MangaNews.net until MJ's chief news editor at the time decided to turn CP into a full-fledged news site. Having our roots in a site known for its news and scanlation release-tracking, we thought our final feature should pay homage to that root.

This is actually a project that was started waaaaay back when we were still a part of MJ, when we wanted to do a History of MangaNews as part of the then-Backstage feature. Things fell apart and nothing was done, and the project remained one of our more ambitious projects that was never finished... until today.

Without further ado, we present to you, The History of Scanlation.

First things first, this is NOT INTENDED TO BE A COMIPRESS PROJECT, at least not in the same way as ComiPedia and Backstage. Some of those who worked on the project are involved with us, but the site is really intended to be more of an independent site, something standalone by itself, not affiliated with any site or organization. Keep this in mind as you read the below comments, which are from those who worked on this project.

Scanlation is a pretty big part of the online manga scene, if you use the Internet and read manga, more likely than not you've heard about scanlation... but how much do you REALLY know about scanlation? Since scanlation isn't something that anyone would consider legal in any reasonable way, not many sites actively discuss the topic, so unless you're in the scanlation scene, you're likely oblivious to a lot of the inside happenings and history of this activity.

This feature aims to provide a (again, hopefully) objective view of the topic, we hope both fans and people from the industry will find this feature some what interesting. We do not intend to use it to promote scanlation, nor do we intend to specifically criticize any individual, we simply try to provide some information that someone might find useful or interesting.

Once again, we thank all those who have helped out. Check back later for a more detailed "Good night" post before ComiPress goes into hibernation.