Monthly Comic Zenon


Monthly Comic Zenon is a Japanese manga anthology. It is marketed to seinen public, edited by Coamix and published monthly by North Stars Pictures and Tokuma Shoten since 2010. It was produced as a replacement for Weekly Comic Bunch, Coamix's previous manga anthology. The collected editions of their titles are published under the Zenon Comics imprint.

Overview

After the drop of Shinchosha's Weekly Comic Bunch circulation numbers, Coamix, which edited the magazine, announced Bunchs discontinuation. Coamix marked August 27, 2010 as the day of Bunchs last release, and started to consider to launch a new magazine. In October 2010, Coamix announced a partnership with North Stars Pictures and Tokuma Shoten, stating that the new magazine Monthly Comic Zenon would debut on October 25, 2010. At the same time Shinchosha launched Monthly Comics @ Bunch, a replacement for Weekly Comic Bunch, but edited without Coamix's involvement. As a result, many of the manga artists from Bunch have been moved to Zenon.
The magazine's name is based on "Kanzeon Bosatsu"—the Japanese name of bodhisattva Guanyin—, specifically the "Zeon" part, which means to "hear the voice of the worldwide". The "Z" from "Zenon" was chosen with the meaning of "ultimate" since it is the last letter from alphabet.
In order to approach more readers, Monthly Comic Zenon is published in both, print and digital editions. The website "Zenon Land" was launched, publishing the Zenons manga series only for smartphones. A YouTube channel was created to disclose Zenon-related media. Also, "Cafe Zenon", a kissaten decorated with manga motifs, in Kichijōji, a neighborhood in the city of Musashino, Tokyo, was inaugurated on November 11, 2009.
To expand its range the magazine also promotes a "silent manga" contest; first, in 2011, it was a national competition. Starting from 2013, it became an international contest, in which no dialogues were necessary. Open for professional and amateurs, the focus of the judgment was the performance of the works through art rather than exposition. The judges were manga authors Tsukasa Hojo and Tetsuo Hara, then editor-in-chief Nobuhiko Horie and the magazine editorial team. The best five received prize awards while the top three had their works published in the magazine. The first international edition received 514 submissions from 53 countries, while in the second people from 65 countries submitted 609 works. Molico Ross, a winner of the domestic competition, wrote Nobo and Her? between 2012 and 2017, and Shinigami ni Datte, Ai wa Aru is based on "Thirty and a Half Minutes", a work by the 4th international contest winner, Vietnamese female writer Snippy MJ.
In another action to expand its public, in August 2015, Coamix and The Silent Manga Audition Committee created a section called "Zenon International" on the contest website to publish the SMAC! Web Magazine. They announced plans to translate all the series and offer them for free on their site based on demand—which is based on the readers' vote. At first they made available Ikusa no Ko: Legend of Oda Nobunaga, Nobo and Her? and Arte, and in December Angel Heart became part of the catalog.
After a certain amount of chapters are serialized in the magazine they are collected into tankōbon format and published under the Zenon Comics imprint. Parallel to this label, there is Zenon Comics DX that only publishes titles former released by other publishers such as Tetsuo Hara's Cyber Blue and Kōkenryoku Ōryō Sōsakan Nakabō Rintarō. This two titles composed Zenon Comics DX first line-up, while Zenon Comics one had Angel Heart: 2nd Season, Cat's Eye, Concierge Platinum, and Waraenu Warashi: 108 no Karma. Both imprints released its first titles on March 22, 2011. The Zenon Comics level also publishes manga released on Zenons sister magazine, Web Comic Zenyon. Published online since October 25, 2012, it is the home of series such as ' and '.

List of works

Ongoing series are highlighted in light green.
MangaFirst IssueLast IssueAuthor
Ikusa no Ko: Legend of Oda NobunagaDecember 2010OngoingTetsuo Hara and Seibō Kitahara
Angel Heart December 2010July 2017Tsukasa Hojo
DD Fist of the North StarDecember 2010August 2016Kajio
Otoriyose Ōji Iida YoshimiFebruary 2011July 2016Shiho Takase
Konkatsu no HanamichiMarch 2011May 2011Ai Sakurakōji
Saibanchō! Boku no Otōto Chōeki 4-nen de DōsukaMarch 2011July 2011Toro Kitao and Inusuke Matsubashi
The Commander in Chief Koichiro SakurabaJuly 2011November 2012Ryuji Tsugihara, Hiroshi Kanai, and Mitsuhiro Sera
Wakakozake September 2011OngoingChie Shinkyu
Ten-pai!December 2012March 2013KeiYu
Itsuya-sanJanuary 2012November 2013Mizu Sahara
Kū Neru Futari Sumu FutariApril 2012December 2014Kinoko Higurashi
Hatsukoi: PioneersApril 2012August 2012Mitsuru Ōsaki
Nobo and Her?June 2012October 2017Molico Ross
Kimi ni Tomodachi ga Dekiru Made.June 2012March 2015Shin Hotani
KanayagoSeptember 2012September 2013Yū Hikasa
Cross Battlers: CyberBlue the Last StandDecember 2012January 2014Motoki Yoshihara and Tetsuo Hara
The Youth of Manga SchoolDecember 2012November 2015Kotaro Yamada and Ryoichi Yokoyama
Kinyoku no Garda: Nanto Gosha Sei ZenshiApril 2013August 2013Yoshiji Yamaguchi, Buronson and Tetsuo Hara
Watashi no Kare wa Shigoto ga DekinaiApril 2013January 2015Kanan Yamada
Bakudan Ōji DynamiteMarch 2013January 2014Mon Shimizu
Back to the HeroJuly 2013December 2013Hōzuki
GenociderSeptember 2013October 2015Takahiro Akiyoshi and Maya Miyazaki
Sō Kakusei no NovaSeptember 2013February 2014Izumi Urata
Hanakaku: The Last Girl StandingOctober 2013September 2015Katsunori Matsui
Gifū Dōdō!! The Tactician of Wind: Kuroda KanbeiNovember 2013February 2017Toshiaki Yamada, Tetsuo Hara, Nobuhiko Horie and Hiroyuki Yatsu
Detective AppliNovember 2013April 2014Yū Sugimoto
''January 2018OngoingAjichika, Shinya Umemura, Takumi Fukui