The English manga service Mangamo recently announced several exciting new series that are set to make their English debut on their app. At the Crunchyroll Expo last weekend, fans learned about the addition of DEATHDEUS: Hero of the Dead, My Evil Step-brother, as well as Erementar Gerade.

In support of the subscription service’s launching of the new titles, we recently chatted exclusively with Dallas Middaugh, who serves as the executive editor and co-founder of Mangamo. We learned a lot about what titles and publishers the company is looking to partner with and bring onto the service in the future.

Being fans of comics, we obviously wanted to learn a little about plans for any potential graphic novels or comic books from the West to be added to the service. In addition to chatting about that, we also got some insight as to how the team settled on the price point.

To hear the audio portion of our chat with Dallas, click the podcast player below!

Literary Joe: I’m curious if you have any dream titles that you’d like to bring onto the subscription service that you don’t have yet or any publishers that you want to partner with that you haven’t yet?

Dallas Middaugh: Can I just say all of them and leave it at that? (Laughs) So, I’m going to just let you know up front that I’m more or less going to dodge the question now, but I’m going to give you an answer sort of. I could sit down and tell you all the publishers that we want to work with. All the publishers we’ve been talking to, et cetera, et cetera. But that actually is not information that I necessarily want to share publicly.

What I will say is this, there is so much manga published in Japan, and there’s so much that doesn’t make it to this market. There’s just so much opportunity out there. So when I wear my business hat, I could tell you, and I’ll just pick an obvious one, right? I mean, obviously, I would love to have Shueisha on the service. I would love to have the Shonen Jump titles, but they have their own service. So that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

So when I look at it from a business perspective, of course, there are major publishers that I would just kill to have on the service. But when I look at it more from my artistic and manga fan perspective, you know, I’m so happy with the publishers that we have. We have all these amazing series. Some of them had anime that you might’ve heard of like Somali and the Forest Spirit or Arte or Dropkick on my Devil. You know others have no anime like Reset Game or Loving Yamada.

We always want to keep adding new publishers because it is our goal, and it is our mission to get as much manga out there in English, which is the easiest way to get it read by the most people as possible. So my dream list is every publisher.

The problem with that, of course, is that while we know there are, let’s say four, maybe five major publishers in Japan, there are over 200 publishers that you would consider to be full-fledged publishers. And over 2000 entities publishing manga in Japan. So, it can be hard to actually go through and figure out exactly which ones you’d want to get first. Cause really, they’re all doing amazing work.

Literary Joe: Before you became involved in the publishing world, were there any manga titles or anime titles that you were interested in back when you were younger?

Dallas Middaugh: Sure. But I’m really old. So we’re talking about a very different time. I mean, I will never date myself. I came upon anime through the show Starblazers, which kind of pegs my age for you there, meaning that in the late seventies and early eighties, you know, I wasn’t old enough to really understand this, but looking back on it, I think I was really taken in, not just by the art style, but also by the more serious subject matter. And the fact that it was a story told serially, that in fact, if I missed an episode of Starblazers, I was kind of hosed.

Cause you really had to catch each one. It was like reading a chapter of a book. And that was kind of how I imprinted on anime. You know, as far as manga goes, I’ve always been a comics fan pretty much from birth. And when I was in college, this was definitely far before the Pokemon days. Viz was releasing things with a company called Eclipse, and they did things like Mai the Psychic Girl and Crying Freeman. And again, I had a similar experience in my college years that I did when I was a kid of discovering this style of storytelling, and this method of storytelling that was just so radically different from everything else I had seen. And I was just infatuated with it.

But you know, the other story that I like to tell is that the thing that actually got me into manga publishing was, was Hayao Miyazaki’s Natsujikai. When I went to interview at Viz, I was much younger, and I wasn’t really sold on working for the company. I enjoyed the manga, but I wasn’t like a mega fan. And the person I interviewed with we got along well, and he handed me a copy of the box set of Natsujikai and said, I think you’ll really enjoy this.

And I went back and read it and was just so stunned. I mean, you know, it’s such an amazing piece of work. And I was so stunned by how good it was that I literally went back and said, okay, I want this job. I absolutely want to do this. And that was great because all of a sudden, you know, it wasn’t like you could just go online and read this stuff easily. But we had a warehouse, and I was able to go into the warehouse and just pick stuff up and read it all the time. And I read almost everything Viz published over the couple of years that I worked there.

Literary Joe: So you keep bringing up comics. Do you have any Western-based graphic-novel type comics, or do you have any plans to try to bring any on the service? Or are you strictly focusing on Japanese manga?

Dallas Middaugh: It’s a possibility for us, for sure. But anything that we would bring on that wasn’t strictly Japanese manga would have to somehow feel manga-adjacent. So, the easiest example, bringing in Superman, wouldn’t make any sense for us. Not that it’s on the table, but that just would not make sense versus finding a publisher who is doing something that has more of a manga and anime influence, that could make sense for us.

But at the end of the day, the service is Mangamo; it’s not Comicsmo, so our focus is always going to be on manga. The vast majority of what we offer is always going to be Japanese manga.

Literary Joe: How did you guys settle on the price point?

Dallas Middaugh: Well, you know, at the end of the day, there are so many factors there, right? Not least of which is, of course, you know, we know behind the scenes, what it costs to do all of this, and the cost is not insignificant in addition to the creation of the app itself and having full-time staff. We localize most of the series that we publish and paying for translation and layout.

It’s not cheap, but having said that, you know, obviously, we can’t just go in and charge $20 a month. You know, we can’t just look at it and say, here’s the number that would be great for us. We have to try to find that balance between what is going to enable us to run an effective business. What is going to ensure that adequate money is going back to the actual creators of the manga, but what can the market bear? And all I’m really trying to say is that all of those things were factors when we came up with the $4.99 price point.

*This interview has been edited for clarity, and the audio portion is co-hosted by fellow site writer Nick Brooks.*

Mangamo is currently available for 4.99/month, and you can check it out here.

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Halle Berry played Storm across four X-Men movies, with Bryan Singer at the helm of three of them. It’s no secret that the actress clashed with the director at times, and she’s now elaborated on that in an interview with Variety (to promote her feature directorial debut Bruised ahead of its Toronto Film Festival debut). 

“Bryan’s not the easiest dude to work with,” Berry admits. “I mean, everybody’s heard the stories — I don’t have to repeat them — and heard of his challenges, and what he struggles with.”

“I would sometimes be very angry with him,” she continues. “I got into a few fights with him, said a few cuss words out of sheer frustration. When I work, I’m serious about that. And when that gets compromised, I get a little nutty. But at the same time, I have a lot of compassion for people who are struggling with whatever they’re struggling with, and Bryan struggles.”

“Sometimes, because of whatever he’s struggling with, he just didn’t always feel present. He didn’t feel there. And we’re outside in our little ‘X-Men’ stage freezing our ass off in Banff, Canada, with subzero weather and he’s not focusing. And we’re freezing. You might get a little mad.”

While Berry is clearly choosing her words carefully here, “struggles” is certainly a unique way tom describe what Singer has been going through. The filmmaker has been accused of sexual assault by at least four men who were underage at the time, and it’s been alleged that he groomed young men while making these X-Men movies (offering roles in exchange for sexual favours). 

At this point, it seems unlikely Singer will ever work in Hollywood again, as online backlash already led to him no longer being lined up to take the helm of the planned Red Sonja movie. 

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COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere, and with theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco still closed, Deadline‘s exhibition sources tell them that Warner Bros. is likely going to delay Wonder Woman 1984…again. This time, it’s said the DC Comics movie could move from its current October 2nd date to either November or late December. 

What would this mean for Dune? Well, while we got to see the first trailer for that a little earlier today, it could slip from December 18th to sometime in 2021 instead. 

Tenet could also be to blame for this possible Wonder Woman 1984 delay as Warner Bros. wants Christopher Nolan’s movie to make as big a splash as possible at the domestic box office. With just three weeks to go until Patty Jenkins’ sequel is scheduled to hit theaters, this delay would certainly be pretty last-minute and almost certainly upset comic book fans. 

Things get worse, though; the trade notes that, “There are whispers, and Disney would not confirm today, that its Marvel movie Black Widow could move from its November 6 release date.” If that happens, then Wonder Woman 1984 could end up taking the place of the Marvel Studios movie.

Where it would move isn’t clear, though there will be those who hope that it will be sent to Disney+ like Mulan (currently, it’s believed that’s the plan for Pixar’s Soul). 

We’ll keep you guys updated, but brace yourselves! 

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The RoboCop franchise cannot be stopped, and the character has now appeared in everything from movies to TV shows, cartoons, video games, and comic books. RoboCop Returns is believed to still be in the works, and that will be based on the original screenplay penned by Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner, serving as a sequel to the original film. 

Neill Blomkamp is no longer attached to direct, so we don’t really know what the plan is now, though Australian director Abe Forsythe is believed to be hard at work on the script alongside Neumeier (incorporating a combination of ideas, including some of Blomkamp’s). 

Moviefone recently caught up with Neumeier, and the writer revealed that a prequel TV series is now in the works which will follow RoboCop villain Dick Jones and the rise of Omni Consumer Products.

“I’m working at MGM on it,” he confirmed when asked where things stand with the project. “It has all the cool stuff about RoboCop except no RoboCop. I’m working with these two writers, Dave Parkin and Rob Gibbs, who bought this idea to a TV producer friend of mine, who then brought it to me.”

“With any luck, if MGM is willing, if we can find the partners, if we can get this pilot made, if we can convince a bunch of people – it’s amazing how many people you have to convince – if that all works out maybe we’ll get a TV show up,” Neumeier continued. 

A RoboCop TV series minus RoboCop is certainly a unique approach, but there may be some potential here for a fun show. Clearly, it’s still very early days, and it’s not officially happening just yet, but it would be pretty cool if this and that planned sequel somehow tied together to create a “shared universe” of sorts.

What do you guys think of these plans?

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