Comic BomBom


Comic BomBom was a monthly Japanese manga magazine published by Kodansha and targeted at elementary school boys. Each issue had 700+ pages, with 80 of them being full-color advertisements. Similar to its rival CoroCoro Comic, it featured tie-ins with game makers and toy makers but toward the end of its run had less of that.

History

Comic BomBom was established in 1981. The first issue was published on October 15, 1981. Mobile Suit Gundam was extremely popular at that time. Although the Gundam boom is centered at the higher age group, the fire slowly spread to the lower age group in the form of gunpla and thus it was decided to mainly publish gunpla content. Many popular series were published in Comic BomBom like the SD Gundam series, Rockman series and Medarot series, just to name a few.
In September 1996, Comic BomBoms popularity decline started once the Pokémon Boom began. CoroCoro Comic began to run manga based on popular franchises, such as Mushiking, Pokémon, and Beyblade. Meanwhile, BomBom stuck with Gundam and original manga. BomBom then fell into its Dark Age, with King of Bandit Jing being its most popular manga running.
In June 1997, Comic BomBom skyrocketed out of nowhere and began to rise to its Golden Age, due to the popularity of BomBoms new Medarot and Cyborg Kuro-chan manga. As years flew by, BomBom began to run more original manga than before. The magazine began to include small prizes in every issue. At one point, Comic BomBoms sales began to increase higher than the sales of CoroCoro Comic. But in 2005, sales and popularity began to decline again.
In the January 2006 issue, Comic BomBom underwent a renewal. It features a revamped logo and a size increase from A5 to B5. The price remains at 480yen.
Due to declining sales, the title ended in with the December 2007 issue, released on November 15. It was replaced by Shōnen Rival.

Featured manga

Note: Series with an asterisk next to them were currently running when the magazine ceased publication in Dec 2007.

1980s