Tonkam

Tonkam
Founded	1993
Industry	Manga, magazines, light novel and comic publisher
Headquarters	Paris, France
Website	https://www.editions-tonkam.com

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 Osamu Tezuka's manga, the Video Girl Ai series, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

History

Librairie Tonkam, 29 Rue Keller, Paris.

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 Animage.

In 1993, Véret went to the Saló Internacional del Còmic de Barcelona 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 Akata 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 to the publication of Steel Ball Run from 2013 to 2016, Delcourt/Tonkam reedited the first 4 parts. They started at Stardust Crusaders, then publishing 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.

To this day, JoJolion is in publication at Volume 24, published in April 6, 2022.

Gallery

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  Volume 1

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  Volume 6

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  Volume 13

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  Volume 29

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  Volume 47

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  Volume 64

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  Volume 81

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  Volume 105

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  "Bizarre Adventure de Hirohiko Araki" box set by Delcourt-Tonkam

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  JoJolion Volume 23, "Edition Collector"

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  "Intégrale Golden Wind" published 28/12/2022.

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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.

Printing error in Volume 14 of JoJolion

• 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 CLAMP 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.