"Comic Gumbo", the world's first free-of-charge manga magazine had ceased its publication with its issue #48 released on December 18 (Tuesday).
As we have reported earlier, "Comic Gumbo" is a free manga magazine started its release from January 2007. It was published and run by a Degima Co.,Ltd.; a venture publishing company invested by major companies like the Nippon Television Network Corporation and transcosmos. The magazine was distributed 100,000 copies every week at major transportation terminals and manga cafe throughout Tokyo, but on its press release dated December 11 it announced of its discontinuation.
This news was a sad news for everyone, for "Comic Gumbo" had just started to release its serialized works as comic books from this October, and on November 20, it was announced that the magazine will be distributed not only in the limited Tokyo area, but to be distributed throughout the country.
In the press release announcement, Degima reported that the reason for the publication cease of "Comic Gumbo" was "due to various factors", but according to the large-bankruptcy news flash released by the corporate credit research company Teikoku Databank, Ltd, Degima had stopped its entire business by December 11, and left its aftermath to be handled by the lawyers.
The amount of total liabilities was approximately 200 million yen. It seems that despite the main source of income was advertising revenue, its unit price did not increase as expected, and together with the fact that the magazines were distributed for free, various cost burdens had increased and resulted in funding difficulties.
Before "Comic Gumbo", the latest publication cease of the manga magazine was "Comic Yoshimoto" released by one of Japan's top talent agencies for comedians and other comic entertainers, Yoshimoto Kogyo; which started its release on June this year, but ended up discontinuing only after three months. "Comic Yoshimoto" started with a lot of fanfare: with its stories and concepts provided by famous Yoshimoto Kogyo-affiliated comedians such as Sanshi Katsura and Shinsuke Shimada, etc., and illustrated by famous manga artists. However, the numbers of copies sold did not reach as expected, and thus was forced to retire.
Manga publishing business in Japan is a business in which cost burden increases while being published as magazine, and only when its contents are sold as comic books, it can make a profit. Furthermore, the number of copies must in quite a large quantity, and until those copies are actually sold, the company cannot collect the profit. Free-of-charge "Comic Gumbo" that assumed its profit from advertising revenue was a new type of business model within the current publishing industry, thus attract attention, but with "Comic Gumbo" bankrupted, it showed that this kind of business was difficult after all.
