Tonkam

Éditions Tonkam, also known as Tonkam, is a French manga publisher founded in 1993 by Françoise Chang, Sylvie Chang, Dominique Véret and Éric Faurie. Tonkam is known for publishing many of 's manga, the series, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

History
Before being a publishing house, Tonkam was a bookstore brand owned by Dominique Véret and his partner Sylvie Chang, located in Paris and Bagnolet. These bookstores were specialized in comic and manga. 5 years later, in 1993, the society "Éditions Tonkam" was created by Françoise Chang, Sylvie Chang, Dominique Véret and Éric Faurie. By that time, they had already started publishing their own manga-based magazine "Tsunami" in 1992, inspired by Japanese magazines like.

In 1993, Véret went to the to negotiate the rights to several manga. After 1 year of preparation, Tonkam released their very first manga, Video Girl Aï, becoming (with the exception of VIZ Media) the first foreign publishing house in the world to collaborate with Shueisha.

In 2000, Dominique Véret left his position as the editorial director of Tonkam (leaving the place to Pascal Lafine) to found the society with Sylvie Chang. At the end of 2005, following the death of Sylvie Chang's father, Tonkam was acquired by Éditions Delcourt. They functioned as an independent subsidiary of Groupe Delcourt until January 2014, when Éditions Tonkam merged with Éditions Delcourt, and in 2016 the "Delcourt Manga" and "Tonkam" manga brands were combined into Delcourt/Tonkam.

Etymology
The name "Tonkam" was conceived during a trip to Thailand by Dominique Véret. He asked a Thai monk to create a name, to "bless" the creation of his new company. The monk proposed the name "Tonham", which gradually transformed into "Tonkam", as it is known nowadays.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
The series was first published by publisher J'ai Lu from January 2002 to December 2005. In 2007, for the occasion of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's 20th Anniversary, the Japanese right holders offered Tonkam the possibility to retake the license for France. Tonkam accepted the offer and resumed the publication that same year at Vento Aureo, followed by Stone Ocean, with the spines colored white. Simultaneously with the publication of Steel Ball Run from 2013 to 2016, Delcourt/Tonkam reedited the first 4 parts. They started at Stardust Crusaders and then published in release order from Phantom Blood.

However, every part had purple spines except for parts 5 and 6. Because of this, in March 2022 Delcourt/Tonkam announced the "Intégrale" box sets for Vento Aureo and Stone Ocean with the purple spines, in order to homogenize the design of the series.

As of July 12, 2023, Tonkam finished their publication of JoJolion with JoJolion volume 27.

The first million of volumes sold has been announced to have been reached October 29th 2020. Another million of volumes has been sold between October 2021 and October 2022.

Trivia

 * After resuming the series at Volume 47 (supposed to contain the end of Part 4 and the start of Part 5), Tonkam modified the volume to contain only the start of Vento Aureo. A special illustration was placed at the spine, in order to later resume the normal spine illustration.




 * For the Japan Expo 2019, Delcourt/Tonkam revealed Volume 14 of JoJolion in advance. However, they forgot to place the title in the cover.
 * Tonkam publishes the manga of the team as well. The group is known for the parodic series JoJo's Bizarre Married Life.
 * JoJo is the longest manga to ever be published in France.