Gutsoon! Entertainment, the U.S. sister company to the Japan-based Coamix Group, has signed a distribution agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors. Diamond will distribute the weekly manga anthology Raijin, Gutsoon's flagship publishing property (see 'Raijin Comics Announces Lineup'), as well as Fujin, the weekly update on anime and videogames. Under the terms of the distribution agreement, Raijin will be available in stores for a single issue price of $4.95, which is down $2 from the previously announced $6.95 cover price. Fujin, the supplement covering anime, games, and pop culture trends in Japan, will retail for ninety-nine cents. The first issues of Raijin and Fujin should appear in stores on Dec. 4.
In spite of Raijin's stellar lineup of top manga series including 'Fist of the Blue Sky,' 'City Hunter,' and 'Slam Dunk,' launching a weekly manga anthology in the U.S. remains a difficult proposition, given the near universal failure of 'weekly' comics here in the States (for our discussion of this issue with the Coamix chairman, see ''Interview with Coamix Chairman Nobu Horie'). And Gutsoon has been slow to line up distribution, with subscriptions and Internet sales the only previously announced channels. The agreement with Diamond is certainly a step in the right direction as was the lowering of the cover price to $4.95 (which also makes the magazine more competitive with the monthly Shonen Jump manga anthology from Viz). Still it will also be important for Gutsoon! to get distribution in other channels in order to have a chance to do the kind of numbers that would enable a sizable weekly manga anthology to become a moneymaker.
