Despite a lack of new releases and continuing rumors about its future, ADV Manga is still alive and keeping its books in print, according to Chris Oarr, the ADV sales account manager who oversees the manga line. While no new series are in the works at the moment, and ADV will not exhibit at the San Diego Comic-Con in July, the company is keeping the existing catalogue in print and available to retailers and consumers.

“We are selling books every single week,” said Oarr. “When I say that ADV Manga is not dead, I mean that ADV books are still available, and that we are continuing to get orders and fill orders every week.”

ADV was founded in 1992 as an anime distributor and producer and launched its licensed manga line in 2003. The following year, president and CEO John Ledford announced that the company had licensed over 1,000 volumes of manga and manhwa. The company’s actual output was much smaller, however, and over the past three years it has drawn criticism from readers on blogs and message boards for not completing the series it started. In 2006, Tokyopop picked up licenses for several series that ADV had dropped, including Aria, Peacemaker Kurogane and Tactics.

Several ADV titles, including Azumanga Daioh, Cromartie High School and Yotsuba&!, have sold well and garnered critical praise, adding to readers’ frustration over the slow rate of releases. Most recently, volume six of Yotsuba&! was advertised as a February release, but was subsequently canceled. The series has been nominated for a 2008 Eisner award in the Best Comics for Kids category. Volume five of Yotsuba&! was released in October 2007.

“I love Yotsuba&!” Oarr said. “Yotsuba&! is one of four or five manga titles that has great craft and is popular in the U.S. We want to keep Yotsuba&! available to readers. That’s what our focus is right now.” However, Oarr could not say when the next volume will be published.

ADV’s most recent release is volume 13 of Cromartie High School, which came out in February. “ADV Manga is not out of business. There are back orders on a couple of titles,” he said. “We haven't been aggressively reprinting, and so some titles have gone out of stock, but we are maintaining the catalogue.” Oarr confirmed that ADV does plan to reprint some titles in the near future.

For now, at least, ADV is sticking to the series it already has. “In terms of book publishing, we have no new licenses to announce,” he said. “There are no new series in the pipeline at this time.”

While the ADV manga line appears to be functioning, the lack of new releases, delayed reprintings and uncertain pronouncements about even successful franchises shows that ADV is being extremely cautious in dealing with the current, highly competitive retail manga marketplace. ADV has also taken a few hits for its lack of communication about its book program and its plans.

“I know we’ve been criticized for our PR strategy or whatever you want to call it,” Oarr said. “But right now, while we’re sorting everything out, it just doesn’t serve anybody’s purpose to answer the very reasonable questions that fans post on the Internet every day: ‘When will Yotsuba&! come out?’ We don’t know, and we’re not going to lie about it. I’m also not going to go out on the Net every day and say, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

“I can tell you that we are looking at every possible avenue to continue with manga franchises that have been very successful,” Oarr continued, “but our main priority is our core business, which is anime.”