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New Warcraft manga previews available
Warcraft: Shadow Wing, Vol. 1: Dragons of Outland, the new Warcraft manga written by Richard A. Knaak and illustrated by Jae-Hwan Kim, now has a preview available online at BlizzPlanet.com. Shadow Wing follows the continuing story of Jorad Mace and the blue dragon Tyrygosa, who parted ways with Kalecgos and Anveena at the end of the Sunwell Trilogy. Jorad and Tyri meet up in Outland -- and hopefully the manga explains what the two have been doing out on Celestial Ridge all this time, and how Tyri's research eventually ties in to Malygos' efforts up in Northrend. In addition, there is also a preview available for Warcraft: Mage, the second in the series of class-based books that began with Warcraft: Death Knight. Unlike Death Knight, which detailed the untold story of Thassarian, Warcraft: Mage seems to be taking a different route and telling the story of a character as yet unseen in World of Warcraft. Aodhan is a young man who comes from a lineage of paladins and warriors, but finds himself drawn to an entirely different path. While training to become a mage in Dalaran, Aodhan and the rest of the city abruptly find themselves under siege by Malygos and the Blue Dragonflight. Warcraft: Mage is also written by Richard A. Knaak and illustrated by Ryo Kawakami, who has also done work for the Warcraft: Legends series. While the manga novels still aren't available for pre-order, it looks like both novels will be released on June 1, 2010, from TOKYOPOP, and will be available at bookstores across the country.
BlizzCon 2009: Tokyopop creates stories about the little guys
While wandering about the floor at BlizzCon, I stopped over at the TokyoPop Manga booth and spoke a bit with editor Troy Lewter, who we've talked to before.. Currently, the big series they write for the world of Azeroth is the Warcraft Legends series, which is on its 4th volume with a 5th due out next month.Talking with Troy and other members of the Tokyopop team at the booth, what I was most struck with was the passion for the work and the universes of Blizzard's games that they display, and, perhaps more importantly, to the art and stories they tell.Troy laid out three important concepts that they follow in creating the mangas: Telling a solid story, focusing on a few characters, and cross-pollinating with other forms of media.In telling a solid story, the aim is to create the story such that you don't need to rely on the Warcraft world and characters, per se. In short, even if the story wasn't about Thrall or Varian or the Scarlet Crusade or anything else, you could still connect with the characters themselves.
