Warriors manga live on… for now

When the manga publisher Tokyopop closed its doors last year, many readers were left without the end of their favorite series. Fans of the Warriors graphic novels, based on Erin Hunter’s prose novels about cats living in clans, have been spared that fate, however: The books were produced under a joint agreement with HarperCollins, which will publish the final two volumes of the SkyClan and the Stranger trilogy. ICv2 has the details, and as it happened, I talked to the series artist, James Barry, at MangaNEXT the weekend before last and got the straight scoop from him.

According to ICv2, the trilogy, which was the fourth, was planned and commissioned by Tokyopop before its demise, and HarperCollins picked up the reins—not surprisingly, as the books are among the top sellers in the graphic novel category. The Bookscan figures alone (available here) showed five Warriors graphic novels selling between 5,000 and 10,000 copies each, which is pretty respectable in the manga world, and all of them were at least a year old, meaning that they had been selling for a while.

Here’s a side-by-side look at the first and second volumes of the series—as you can see, the trade dress is almost identical, except that the Tokyopop name is missing from the second one.

Book 2 of the trilogy, Beyond the Code, is already available, and book 3, After the Flood, is due out on April 3.