Abrams ComicArts has announced that it will launch a new manga imprint called Kana, which will focus on the translation and release of manga series for an adult audience in English for the U.S. market.
The Kana imprint will primarily publish titles translated from Japanese, in addition to select titles originally published in French. It aims to publish 40-60 titles per year in paperback, including individual issues in ongoing series. The series come from a variety of French and Japanese publishers, including Kana, Éditions Ki-oon, Vega Dupuis, and Ankama, and Japanese publishers Shueisha and Enterbrain.
Kana’s first line of releases consist of six total titles, three of which are manga series. They include Shiro Kuroi’s Leviathan, Tetsuya Tsutsui’s Manhole, and Yumeji’s Eden of Witches.
The other three French comic titles include Brandon Arias’s Scars, Yoann Vorniere’s Silence, and ZD’s Space Punch.
Kana will be led by Rodolphe Lachat, a VP and publisher of Abrams ComicArts, and will be made up of five employees. Distribution for the titles will be through Abram’s main partner, Hachette.
Lachat says that Kana will aim to publish works that “focus on more emotionally mature subjects, characters whose ages are older, or genres that are not usually suitable for children” that also include horror and thrillers. Moreover, the new imprint will “take inspiration from how manga is originally published in Japan” and include “a dust jacket, a first signature in color, and beautiful paper.”
Publishers Weekly notes that while Kana shares a name with Les Éditions Dargaud’s French-language manga publisher Kana, it is an entirely new imprint not related to any of that imprint’s editorial lines. Both Abrams ComicArts and Dargaud are owned by the Belgian media conglomerate Média-Participations.
Abrams Books first established the Abrams ComicArts imprint in 2009. It later became a full division of Abrams Books in April 2023.
Source: Publisher’s Weekly, The Beat (Heidi MacDonald and Deb Aoki)
