Princess Ai, the manga created by rocker Courtney Love and D.J. Milky with character design by Ai Yazawa (Paradise Kiss), is developing into a major franchise for Tokyopop. Later this year Tokyopop, the first company to publish manga in Sunday newspapers in North America, will debut Princess Ai of Ai-Land, a new east-west collaboration between D.J. Milky and Pauro Izaki, as a seven days a week comic strip in over fifty papers including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the
The Princes Ai of Ai-Land comic strip, which concentrates on the teen years of Ai and her struggles with the dual identity of being both a teenager and a royal princess, will debut in papers across North America on July 9th.
A month after the Princess Ai newspaper strip debuts, Tokyopop will publish the first of a series of five novels based on the property, The Ai-Land Chronicles: Book of the Second Revolution, as part of Tokyopop's young adult Pop Fiction line. A book of poetry, Princes Ai: Roses and Tattoos, is in stores now and the Princess Ai Soundtrack will soon be available for downloading from iTunes.
D.J. Milky is also working with the anime studio Satelight on The Ai-Land Chronicles, an anime feature tentatively scheduled for a 2009 release.
With a considerable amount of Princess Ai merchandise including t-shirts, journals, postcards and dolls (see 'Princess Ai Dolls from Bleeding Edge') already on the market, the property appears to be maintaining its momentum well after the initial series of Princess Ai manga was released.