Manga Maniac

Is ComiPress dead? No. ComiPress is simply taking an extended break. When will this break be over? We do not know, but when we feel it is time to come back, we will. Until them, it has been fun!

So, seeing as how this will be our last post for a long while to come, below is a pretty long rambling by the ComiPress staff, about the site's history and various other things. For those who do not like to read long ramblings, just skip to the end.

ComiPress was originally created as a sub-site for Manga Jouhou April 17th of 2006. Manga Jouhou began seriously reporting manga news around the beginning of 2005. In the early 2000s, the online anime news was well-established, with heavy-weight news sites like AnimeNewsNetwork, AnimeNewsService, and many smaller sites and blogs.

The online manga scene was a completely different place. Aside from the occasional manga news found on ANN and ANS, there were no big sites dedicated exclusively manga news. There were some good places for manga fans though, AoD's manga forum was a great gathering place, review sites like MangaBits were interesting, and there were some blog-like sites such as Little Harlock's Newslog and Natsume Goushin Ryu Dojo. Later, Love Manga and Irresponsible Pictures became two of the first successful manga blogs to hit the manga blogosphere, they should not be forgotten (and it's a shame they never got featured in Backstage, although both came veeeery close to). Anyone still remember Animania Japan? Or a time when Brigid's MangaBlog was just a side blog for Manga4Kids?? A forum post by Isaac Alexander in the early 2000s describes perfectly what it felt like at the time (the post was made several years earlier than some of the references used here):

Dedicated Manga News Sites

Does anyone know of any websites on the web that is in english devoted to manga news? About the closest I could find were anime news sites.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com
or
http://www.animenewsservice.com

Sincerely

Isaac

Although Manga Jouhou was a major scanlation hub at the time, we'd like to consider it one of the first "big" English site to dedicate itself to manga news. The times at Manga Jouhou were great, and one of the many "great" moments we've had was when we reported the X hiatus situation before ANN did, which resulted in the following post by ANN's dormcat:

I asked the question to Ageha Ohkawa in person on behalf of ANNers, yet the interview article, finished exactly four weeks ago, is not yet posted (scheduled to be posted tomorrow)....

Seeing ANN got beaten by a major scanlation hub is really disappointing.

That, along with many other things, helped give us the will-power to continue working. In mid-2006, due to a difference in opinion on the future of Manga Jouhou, ComiPress split off and became its own site, with the goal still being "working toward a site that would be the ANN of manga." Of course, that probably never really happened. Had we stayed with Manga Jouhou, that may have been possible, but that's all in the past, and there's no point in thinking about "what if's."

Read More »