Sesame Cinemanga from Tokyopop

[DTWolf]

I thought others might like to know that manga publisher Tokyopop has a line of books called Cinemanga Jr. featuring Sesame Street. "Cinemanga," if you're not familiar with the term, is essentially a comic book made by taking stills of a video program and sticking them on a printed page with word balloons to supply the dialogue. Naturally you can't reasonably print every frame of the show; somebody picks and chooses which shots best illustrate the story.

So far there are three titles using Sesame Street material:
Happy Healthy Monsters,
Elmo and Zoe Fly a Kite, and
Abby's First Day of School.
Each one is printed in 6x9 format (15.2cm x 22.8cm) and is 32 pages long. Cover price is $3.99.

These are designed, according to the info on the introductory page, to be read by parents to young children. Each tells a simplified version of the video story it's based on. I confess the only one of the three I've seen the original of is Abby's First Day. I saw that episode of Sesame Street and I think they've left out some things. They have Abby poofing back to the Street from school only twice, and I remember her doing it a few more times than that.

They would be nice little books, except that the image quality in two of them falls short. In Happy Healthy the screen shots look great--perfectly clear and crisp. Unfortunately the other two look like low-res screen captures done from a VHS tape. The pictures are grainy and jagged, which stands out partly because the images on the covers and title pages are so clean and sharp. I'm surprised Sesame Workshop failed to provide Tokyopop with good-looking stills.

Then again, the books are entirely readable, and the pictures in Abby and Elmo/Zoe aren't actually horrible, they just don't look professional. And as I said, the pictures in Happy Healthy Monsters are fine. Plus the books aren't all that expensive for full color on slick, high-quality paper.

 

[Drtooth]

I really much dislike cinemanga. i do want the Family Guy one, but that's about it. It would be amazing if SS did have some real manga (like the ones seen here http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Japanese_Sesame_Street_Magazines ). Some sort of cute little Gag manga (like Doraemon or Dr. Slump, not some sort of bizzare action thing) instead of just having screen shots of the TV show.