The Mangasplaining podcast staff announced on Monday, Jan 31, 2022, the debut of “MSX: Mangasplaining Extra”, an e-mail based manga newsletter subscription that will serialize newly licensed manga on Substack.

Okinawa, by Susumu Higa, in collaboration with Fantagraphics Books, and These Days, a previously unpublished short manga by Taiyo Matsumoto that will be a digital exclusive, are the first two licensed works.

MSX is also partnering with Udon Entertainment, and it will announce more titles soon.

The first project, Susumu Higa’s Okinawa, was originally published as two thematically linked manga: Sword of Sand and Mabui. It’s a gripping, powerful work, told in stand-alone chapters that can be easily read and appreciated on a weekly basis.

Okinawa will be serialized 2 to 3 times per month, with a print collection planned for release in Winter 2022 from Fantagraphics Books.

Okinawa is translated by Jocelyne Allen, lettered by Patrick Crotty, and edited by Andrew Woodrow-Butcher. The work was licensed through the author, with the assistance of Jocelyne Allen, Mitsuhiro Asakawa, and Aki Yanagi.

Finally, These Days is an early version of the story that Matsumoto developed into Tokyo Higoro, now serialized in Big Comic Original Zōkan (Shogakukan) in Japan. This early version of this story from the creator of Tekkon Kinkreet and Ping Pong will be published in both the penciled version and the final, inked comic as a digital exclusive that will be available in the MSX archive for one year. 

These Days is translated by Michael Arias, lettered, and edited by Christopher Woodrow-Butcher. Licensing was arranged through the author, with the assistance of Aki Yanagi.

A paid subscription to the newsletter is priced at US$5 per month. A free subscription to MSX will give subscribers access to all of the non-manga content, as well as previews of the manga. Some titles will also be available as print editions.

The MSX newsletter subscription will include podcast links and show notes on Tuesdays, new manga chapters on Fridays, and bonus content every other Sunday.

MSX is a spinoff of Mangasplaining, a podcast featuring Deb Aoki, David Brothers, and Christopher Woodrow-Butcher explaining manga to neophyte Chip Zdarsky.

Aoki and Woodrow-Butcher will publish manga in English and they describe MSX as “a digital publishing and creative services group. We license, translate, and publish manga digitally, released to readers through paid subscriptions of our Substack newsletter at MangasplainingExtra.com. MSX also digitally publishes lots of great additional material including our podcast episode show notes and new original articles about manga.”

Source: Mangasplanning press release via News concerns