While looking through some photos last night, I came to think about Mayersche, a bookstore chain I visited a few times during an August 2007 study abroad in Germany (and also met an artist there). I also thought about Stern-Verlag but that’s not relevant to this story. I decided to visit Mayersche’s website and I saw the above image on their front page, to my surprise, advertising a “manga weeks” promotion.
It turns out there are three components to this promotion. First, there is a list of recommendations (“Manga-Buchtipps”). Second is a drawing contest with no set theme – they just ask participants to bring their ideas to paper (“bring Deine Idee zu Papier”) and send it in their original drawings by June 13th. Ten winners will receive book vouchers worth 100 Euros (1st place), 75 Euros (2nd), 50 Euros (3rd), or 15 Euros (4th-10th).
The third component is a manga workshop with Alexandra Völker that is taking place over the next few weeks at different locations, all of which appear to be in North Rhine-Westphalia. (Too bad for East and South Germans, I guess.) I haven’t heard of Völker but I did some research and her earning of 2nd place at Connichi 2004’s doujinshi competition with her entry, Tears in Heaven, opened the door to her career as a professional manga artist. She has since done Catwalk, Make a Date (a “Chibi-manga”) & Paris and has a new work called Dark Magic set to come out this September. All of those have been published by Egmont Manga and Anime (EMA), one of the main manga distributors in Germany along with Carlsen Comics and Tokyopop.
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