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Viz Posts English Version of Ikki Mag Online (Updated)

The North American manga distributor Viz Media is launching an online English beta version of Ikki, Shogakukan's Japanese manga magazine aimed at young men. The new website will promote and launch manga titles; through this, Viz will then be able to gauge interest for print editions of those titles. Viz's Ikki will also have content from the Japanese edition. Besides manga, Viz Media senior editorial manager Leyla Aker told the Publishers Weekly trade magazine that the English Ikki will include "behind the scenes" materials such as interviews with the Japanese creators and editors.

The new Ikki launches with the first chapter of Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi and an interview with Igarashi. The website will then add Natsume Ono's House of Five Leaves (Saraiya goyô, pictured at far left) and Q Hayashida's Dorohedoro (pictured at left). Whichever titles prove popular with online readers will likely get print editions.

Viz Media confirmed this week that it will stop publishing its Shojo Beat magazine next month.

Source: Publishers Weekly

Update: Viz once published an anthology magazine called Pulp for older manga readers. It ended in 2002, although Viz continued to publish a sibling magazine called Animerica Extra until 2004. Pulp contributor Patrick Macias notes that the Ikki website uses some of the same fonts as Pulp did.