Some website news today and I don’t mean regarding Kuriousity (though a reminder you can get to the site from the more easily remembered kuriousity.ca!).
First up is Kodansha Comics which after months of using their website KodanshaComics.com to list their press releases, has uploaded their actual website It’s simple and neatly laid out, which is great to see on a publisher site. Very easily navigated so yay for that! You can see covers for several of their upcoming books on the Release Dates page. The search and title info is unfortunately just linked to Random House’s page instead of housing its own internal sources but at least it’s something. A note that if you’re not using a screen resolution higher than 1200pixels wide, I’d recommend zooming out to 83% viewing. It’s a fixed width site that doesn’t seem designed to support smaller screens.
Elsewhere Dark Horse has made some huge changes to their website and I must say it looks and works great! It has a sharp new look, a retooled search function and an easy to use Browse function that allows you to call up any or all of their books in a specified period of time and ordered in a variety of ways. Each individual page even has a link to Comic Book finder so you can find a location nearest to you to purchase the goods. This site update comes just in time for their upcoming Digital Store launch which will include manga-epic Lone Wolf and Cub. My kudos to the design and programming team – the new site is fantastic!
On a less positive note, Tokyopop (which recently announced its shutdown of the company’s publishing division) is gearing up for a complete tear down of its website. With a community heavy in participation including blog posts, forums and media uploads, they’ve sent out a few e-mails to remind folks to save what they want now because as of “early next week” it’s all going to be gone.
“As we’ve previously stated in our newsletter, TOKYOPOP.com will go offline early next week. We know that you probably have kept copies of everything you’ve uploaded (photos, videos, drawings etc.), but we just want to be extra-sure and give you this last reminder so that you can pull anything down from TOKYOPOP.com that you still need. The last chance to pull your uploads is THIS WEEKEND! After this weekend, you will not have access to material on TOKYOPOP.com. If you’re concerned about losing any data, please act right away! Don’t forget to tell your friends about this too, if you think that they’re unaware of this.”
And as a bit of weird final note – the old URL for now defunct manga publisher GoComi! has been resurrected and now has the bare basics of a WordPress installation. There’s a teeny tiny bit of info regarding GoComi and a couple of their titles but I wouldn’t see this as any sign of a return. Most likely it’s a more creative than usual domain park seeing as how it uses old cached information and images from Amazon (plus a bunch of ads to take advantage of visitors who might be curious enough to click on the Google Ads). Still a little weird though, hmm? [Thanks go to Ryu Sheng for noticing this one]
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Was there ever an official announcement that GoComi was dead? Last i heard from them they were taking the website offline in a bid to reduce costs. That was also why they stopped sending review copies, and cancelled their online game.
I didn't see the ads however, i use a noscript extenstion which stopped it from showing up. Initially i thought it may be a sign of life, but i wasn't sure after realising they only listed a few books, and the blogroll had a link to a electronics shop of all things.
All the more suspect when you see how big those ads are. I mean, dang, those are HUGE.