Romance

The Dark Horse graphic novels for December have just been posted on our pre-orders. As you’d expect from DH it is a nice mixture of titles, from Conan (with the fabulous P Craig Russell, no less) to Little Lulu, Star Wars to Samurai.

And Romance. Oh yes, don’t forge the romance! Dark Horse are launching a new series in partnership with Harlequin – to those of us in the UK that’s basically Mills and Boon. Using a Manga-style they are aiming to bring mainstream romantic fiction to the graphic novel world.

Certainly romance has worked well in many Manga titles from Japan, selling in huge quantities to a female audience in both the East and the West, so it will be interesting to see how this mainstream approach manages. Harlequin Pink – a Girl in a Million and Harlequin Violet – Response are due in December.

Coming shortly after major Manga players Tokyopop announced that they would be distributing the imprint Blu which deals with shonen-ai (boy’s love) Manga starting in November, including (I’m not making this up, honest) Shinobu Kokoro – Hidden Heart which deals with romantic gay ninjas, it looks like the Manga boom and the surge in female readers it brings with it is getting stronger. Well, you can’t say we don’t offer you a diverse range of titles on our graphic novels site!