D-Boy, Inc., in association with Studio Tron and Fanboy, Inc. plans to release a series of collectible pewter statues based on the gorgeous female leads in Kia Asamiya's Silent Mobius manga.  Silent Mobius has been made into 2 feature length animes as well as a television series.  Asamiya's American credits include work on Batman, Star Wars, and his own Dark Angel series, which is published by Image Comics.  His latest project in the U.S. is a series of covers for DC's Titans (see 'Is Manga's Influence on American Comics Growing').  Asamiya personally supervised every detail in the production of the individually hand cast and hand painted pewter figures, which will ship to retailers from Diamond in November.

 

The first figurine in the series is based on Katsumi Liqueur, the lead character in the Silent Mobius saga and a member of the AMP (Attack Mystification Police) Group.  The 9.5 cm (3.75 inches) tall figure is handcrafted out of white metal pewter, which makes it much more durable than the typical cold cast resin statue targeted at collectors.  The hand painted figures come in a handsome collector's box and have an SRP of $39.99.  The edition is strictly limited to 2000 units worldwide.  One month after the release of the Katsumi Liqueur figure, D-Boy will release the sexy Kiddy Phenil figure in December.

 

Fanboy will have a special variant of the Katsumi Liqueur figure at its booth in the Image section of the WizardWorld Chicago convention this weekend.  Only 80 of these special variants will be available and Kia Asamiya will be present to autograph the figures for his fans.  Fanboy has recently cut back on its publishing operations (see 'Fanboy Restructures') and this collaboration with D-Boy looks like the kind of project that Fanboy's  C.B. Cebulski will be doing more of as he shifts the emphasis of Fanboy away from just publishing manga and toward a multi-faceted approach to serving the collecting needs of American otaku.