Frequently Asked Questions
This name is the result of an extensive selection process. It is typical for our attitude, expresses what we are, and simply sounds cool!
We like fame! No, we may be Dutch in origin, but we chose for English for a couple of good reasons;
1. According to most Dutch manga fans, they prefer their manga written in English, as they are used to in translated manga and movies.
2. Globally, English is the most known (secundary) language, and from the beginning, we already had plans to conquer the entire world!
3. We have several members from other countries, so it is much easier to work on the stories in English, in our group.
Several works are in progress but not yet scheduled for release. We expect to publish at least one new booklet in 2010.
We visit the yearly Animecon, Abunai, Chibicon and Tsunacon conventions in the Netherlands. And occasionally the F.A.C.T.S convention in Belgium.
We are also part of the Dutch "Mangafique" collective, under whose name we sometimes visit various comic strip events in the Netherlands and participate in exhibits.
We do not have a specific company location since we are not a company but run this show from our homes. Our most regular meeting point is in Brabant, the Netherlands. However, we have members spread throughout the far corners of the Netherlands, as well as in other countries like Belgium, USA, Mexico, etc.
Mostly, we work on manga projects in teams, usually consisting of one writer and one artist, but that varies for each project. Sometimes, an artist is also the script writer, or extra members are included in the team, for line art, screentoning, colouring, panelling, script writing, CG editing, etc, whichever aspect the artist needs support for. This ensures the quality of our work.
All projects are overseen by one (or several) of the leaders, who help out when necessary, and take care of quality control. Often, one of the leaders is also a writer or artist for the project. Other members of the group can give feedback on all projects, on our forum or at the occasional meeting. The leaders meet in real life to discuss the projects' developments and to make the tough decisions.
Deadlines are some 4 months before the annual Dutch Anime Convention. An artist usually has 3 to 6 months to work on an average (16 pages) manga, though this is certainly negotiable.
When the deadline hits, all pages are sent to a printer, so they will be finished in time for release at the upcoming convention.
On our forum we develop and log our plans, MSN chatting keeps us in touch, and e-mail serves as backup. The leaders of Howling Riot often meet in real life. We also have crew meetings to discuss everyone’s tasks and general things about the pocket. On our forum we speak English, so that every one of our members and visitors can understand.
Let me answer another common question first: Working with Howling Riot doesn't earn any of us money, as we use all income to print and promote everybody's works. We are a small press self-publishing manga studio, not a profitable publishing company. We also do not publish fan-comics of existing series.
Yes, we are regularly looking for quality artists or colourists (or other useful talents), but not beginners. If you've never even drawn a short manga before, we prefer that you practice on making one before asking.
To ask if you can join Howling Riot's team, email us with samples of your work and your motivation, then we will consider the possibility. The same goes for those who’d want to be a guest writer or guest artist. (it’s a good idea to start off as guest artist, to try it out for yourself too, certainly if you don’t have any experience with deadlines.)
The leaders of Howling Riot will decide if you and your work fit in the team or not. To be an artist you would at least need a scanner to scan your pages. We prefer to look at skill rather than age, but it is unlikely that we'll take in anyone younger than 14. A sense of responsability, commitment and perseverance is important to work with us, and unfortunately many young teenagers have not yet developed these traits or underestimate their occupation with school in the next semester.
Please note that we are still only a small press publisher with print runs of 100 to 1000, mainly distributed in Europe.
We usually only invite advertisers of our own choise, but you may contact us to inquire about options in current and future projects. Please check the F.A.Q. "When is your next book released?" for upcoming books. However, as with all our contents, advertisements are subject to Howling Riot's high quality standards. In order to be considered, your advertisement must:
1. Be relevant to our reading audience: Mostly teenage manga fans, mostly male.
2. Be true, respectable, of good taste and reliability. We typically only advertise quality products that we would support and buy ourselves, and companies who have gained our respect.
3. Be graphically appealing to our reading audience, according to our judgement. Please provide an example or reference of earlier advertisements if you wish to apply. In some cases we may aid you to create something suitable.
4. In the case of internationally distributed books: The products or services you advertise must be available or relevant on an international scale, at least in several countries in Europe.
No. We prefer to keep our site neat and clean.
Small press studios: If your group has published quality manga-influenced works, you may contact us for a link exchange.
Artist sites: Sorry, we only link artists we know and admire.
Commercial sites: Will be added to our list of stores only if selling Howling Riot products.
General: We will not link to sites of poor design, low visual appeal, illegal content/downloads, or sites we do not consider to be interesting enough for our visitors. In order to link to your site, we require a banner image of 200x40 pixels.
Yes, our artists do paid art commissions for individuals and companies. Please visit our DeviantART journal for our prices and procedures, and feel free to inquire through email. We are at your service.
There are plenty of possibilities:
1. Online at our webshop, you can order directly from us.
2. At anime conventions, mainly the Dutch ones, or other events where we attend with a stand.
3. In comic book stores (manga only). See the shop section of the website to check which stores offer our manga. Other comic book stores can also order them through ISBN.
4. In any book store (in the Netherlands and Belgium as far as we know), you should be able to order our manga with ISBN numbers.
5. At www.Archonia.com, the online anime & manga store.
By bank transfer or PayPal. Once you have submitted your order, you will receive the payment details in an email confirming your order.
After we have received your payment, your order should arrive between 2 days and 2 weeks, in Europe. Simple orders usually arrive within a week. It can speed things up a little if you pay on the same day as the order is placed. If your ordered items haven't arrived within 2 weeks after payment, please contact us.
Our email confirming your order and payment details is sent automatically when you submit your order on our website. It should normally arrive in your mailbox within an hour.
If you still haven't recieved the confirmation email after 2 days;
1. Please check your spambox in case your spamfilter mistook it. If not;
2. Place your order again, and thoroughly check the spelling of your email address on the order form. Your previous order will automatically be cancelled if you only pay for the new order.
3. If that still doesn't get you a confirmation email, you can contact us directly and we will arrange your order through email.
Some of the items in our shop are only available on special request. This means the item is no longer in production and we cannot guarantee that we can make one for a single customer. If you really want the item, you can contact us by email and request one specially made for you. We may turn down your request if it is not feasable, and the prices for a special request will be high in any case. Prices and terms will be discussed with you before the request is turned into a binding agreement.
Manga are Japanese comics, or comics in typical Japanese style.
There are several different opinions on what manga is:
1. A word. Some people regard "manga" as no more than the Japanese word for "comics" in the general sense. This at least is linguistically true. Yes, "manga" is Japanese for "comics". The literal meaning of the word "manga" is hard to translate to literal English, so you will encounter many variations on "whimsical(man) pictures(ga)". "irresponsible pictures" however, is a wrong turn taken in trying to translate "man" out of context.
In practice though, the Japanese use the word "manga" mostly for typical Japanese style comics, whereas typical western style comics are often referred to as "kommikusu" (pronounced "comics").
2. Japanese comics. Some people regard "manga" purely as comics from Japan. This used to be quite true when all typical Japanese style comics were made in Japan, and is a simple yet narrow-minded definition nowadays. Many western artists find it discriminating and insulting that the type of comics they draw would be labelled only by their nationality, because these artists see "manga" as a certain type of comics.
3. An art style. Some people mistakenly regard manga as one restricted graphical art style, in the way that an artist has a particular way of drawing people. This is often thought to always look the same, large eyes, weird hair, perfect bodies, but this is a misconception: There are many varieties in both art styles and stories, and each manga artist has his or her own art style. "manga style" is a broader term.
4. A type of comics. We and many other artists regard manga as a type of comics that incorporates the principles found in typical Japanese style comics. By lack of a better word, this is usually called "manga style". The Japanese culture made for a typical graphical and narrative style that differs much from typical western comics. This type of comics has many trademarks such as often large eyes, dynamic panelling, movie inspired camera work, special graphical effects, and an emotionally involving narrative style which relies more on imagery than text, but not all these trademarks are required for a comic to be regarded as "manga". There are many variations within the manga type of comics. Because this definition of manga is based on how a comic looks and "feels", manga is not restricted to Japan, as many artists from other countries successfully incorporate the principles of manga into their own work. Non-Japanese manga are also acknowledged by the Japanese and the Japanese minister of culture. If you disagree with calling a non-Japanese comic "manga", please call it a "manga-inspired comic" instead of telling an artist how they can and cannot describe their own comic.
There is also Wikipedia's explanation.
A manga artist
Japanese animation, based on the Japanese pronounciation of ‘animated’: a-ni-mé. It’s very often based on manga, but as with everything: not always. Anime are know for their low production costs and high quality, Japanese animation studio’s produce more than any other. Again, there are many styles, but it’s important to say that anime has quite some animations for adolescents and adults as well, wich you rarely see elsewhere. For more information: Wikipedia.
Like the word says, a convention where anime (and anything related) fans meet. There are lots of activities, like video rooms, cosplay competitions, dealer rooms, workshops, karaoke, ... Usually, an anime convention, or ‘con’ for short, lasts a few days, so visitors have to stay somewhere overnight.
The most popular Dutch Anime convention is anime con.
It is organised by the J-pop Foundation of the Netherlands, and it is traditionally held in the theatre hotel in Almelo. It lasts 3 days: Friday through Sunday.
Another con is Abunai! Which has been held twice in Enschede and also lasted 3 days.
More specific: a manga anthology is a collection of original stories in one book. May contain very different styles, themes,... or ongoing stories. Most of our pockets are like this ^^
Self-published manga. Most dojinshi are stories drawn by fans and based on an existing manga/anime series, but there are also original dojinshi. The only real difference with other manga is that dojinshi artists do not use a publisher, but prefer to make and publish their works by themselves. Many Japanese dojinshi contain ‘adult situations’, while Dutch dojinshi are more often parodies or completely original stories.
The word "dojinshi" literally translates to "same(do)"-"people(jin)"-"magazine(shi, a contraction of zasshi)", or less literally; "magazine made by like-minded people".
Since Howling Riot self-publishes original manga in the form of books, they can also be called "dojinshi".
A magazine self-published by fans. Unlike dojinshi, fanzines mainly contain written articles about existing series or cult. They contain little or no self-made manga.
Outside Japan, a single dojinshi artist can’t publish without trouble, that’s why the circles came to life. Artists and sometimes writers gather as a group to make and publish a book. These books often contain more stories, sometimes ongoing, sometimes short, either fanworks or original work. There are themed circles that focus on one series, others focus on a certain genre.
Manga for boys. Of course, girls read these too. Shounen contains a lot of action, the stories often are about heroes, main characters who chase their dreams. Typical shounen are manga about fighting, mecha or sports. Some examples: Bleach, Naruto, Dragon Ball, One piece, Slam Dunk, Gundam Wing.
Manga for girls – strange enough, the very typical shoujo like highschool drama’s are rarely read by boys. There are different kinds of shoujo, the stories for younger girls are often easily predictable, all about love and friendships, others are about paranormally gifted main characters, angels, dramatic SF, fulfilling your dreams, music... Like Hana Kimi, Nana, Please Save My Earth, Sailor Moon, Ceres: Celestial Legend, Gravitation.
‘beautiful guy’ They appear as the guy every girl is in love with in shoujo, every shoujo-manga is filled with so-called ‘bishies’, some styles are known to depict guys rather female, with long hair, long eyelashed, not too muscular or too thin, always well-dressed... (or maybe not, for the rebel-bishi)
It literally means ‘beautiful girl’, in manga and anime there are many bishoujo, some are only pretty, others are the ideal of a combination of beauty and intelligence. Bishoujo can act as both main characters or main antagonists in shoujo, or as mere fan-service in shounen.
It’s a way of drawing a character in a simplistic, quite small or childish way, often used to express strong emotions of surprise, fear, shock... This is used in many genres, the more serious a manga is, the less chibi’s there are, or none at all. Humourous manga contain more chibi’s, shoujo also contains more than shounen.
Manga/anime about or containing large navigable ‘robots’, mostly the pilots have to get into the robot to navigate it, they can fight with a large scale of weapons, going from guns/canons to lightsaber-like swords.
In Japan, it used to be a negative term given to (quite extreme) manga/anime fans. The type that collected everything from his/her favourite series. Like nerds, otaku of this kind were thought to have no social life, and no use in society, they were lazy and lots of other bad things. Luckily, things changed, but most of all the notion of ‘otaku’ became less negative. The fans have proved themselves, have come out in the open and are being more appreciated, and respected. In the West, the word otaku never had that negative connotation it had in Japan, because only the fans knew it. Western otaku have kind of always been proud to be a fan, and in the small otaku subculture in the West embraces all fans. Yay!
And now, a lesson in Japanese ! Neko means cat. Manga/anime sometimes has catgirls. Catgirl cosplays. Things like that, but neko just means cat. ^^
If there’s a cat, there has to be a dog. Inu Yasha. I don’t know what "Yasha" means though.
Cute ! The girls’ favourite yell. Ka-wa-II ! ^^
Japan’s honorable fighting class. Are actually not as loyal and brave and whatnot as you see in movies or stories. They wanted to get richt, and for that they switched to whatever ‘master’ that was winning a war.
Other than that, but still reality : samurai have different classes : the ones on horses and the ones on foot. Some have heavy armour, some have not, depends on what the samurai could afford. Traditionally, a samurai carried 2-3 swords, the longest one is the katana, the one you all know. The other one(s) were kept if they ‘d ever come as far as to commit ‘seppuku’, the formal term of the more known ‘harakiri’. Formal suicide. Lovely age, those warring times...
Samurai in manga are often less realistic, they have awesome powers, or abnormal weapons. The age in wich they live is often placed historically correct, but lots of things that happen or ‘existing persons’ are not. But who cares ! Samurai manga are cool and very shounen. Here goes ; Samurai Deeper Kyo, Rurouni Kenshin.
I don’t know much about what they really were (except that they were used to assasinate people in a nice untracable way). Ninja are different from samurai in the way of their teachings and for instance use of weapons, ninja rather lurk in a tree and throw kunai (knives) or shuriken (‘ninjastars’) at you than fight you. Even though they can, they prefer a quick and easy battle. I already mentioned Naruto above, probably the best example for a popular manga about ninja.