Comic Gumbo becomes first free manga weekly

Comic Gumbo, Japan’s first free weekly manga magazine, debuts on Tuesday. The weekly is produced by Dejima, a venture publishing company started by entrepreneur Akihiko Kai. Its target audience is males in their 20s to 40s.

The magazine will feature two complete stories and eleven series, including works by Tatsuya Egawa, Motoka Murakami, Hiroyuki Yoshida, and Syufo Itahashi. Each issue is expected to have 230 pages, which is relatively light for a manga weekly. Like other free publications such as Hot Pepper and R25, the magazine makes its revenue by selling pages to advertisers. In Gumbo’s case, approximately 26 pages will be devoted to ads.

Dejima plans to produce 100,000 copies per issue, handing them out at about 30 train stations in the greater Tokyo area.

Source:
Mainichi Shinbun