Do you remember your first time...at an anime convention?

One of the really awesome things about being an anime & manga fan is that sense of community that comes along with it. Anime clubs, online fan communities and conventions all really help to create a network of fan. Anime conventions are pretty amazing experiences and Svetlana has done a brilliant job of making that experience come alive for the reader. However, the action and goings-on of the convention take backstage to the relationships and the romance that our heroine, Christie, an aspiring comic book writer, runs into at her first ever fan con. Svet captures all the confusion and heartache of first (and then second) love, and the struggle of trying to grow up as an artist, and as a person, by setting her story in a chaotic, sometimes hostile, but always fascinating environment.

I'd get in the final pages for a given chapter, and just flipping through them, even without the text dropped into the balloons, would be enough to make me laugh out loud or blush right along with poor, flustered Christie. Love it!

~Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, Editor

Hot off the presses!

Check out Svetlana's fantastic new feature in CosmoGIRL! magazine. Her Adventures of CosmoGIRL! manga is appearing monthly, chronicling our every-girl heroine as she studies abroad in Japan, and then has reverse culture shock upon returning to college in the States!

This month's adventure—and all of the previous episodes—are available on the CosmoGIRL! Web site.

We'd love to hear what you think, so please drop us a line with your thoughts and reactions at mangaonline@tokyopop.com.

Things just keep getting hotter for Christie as she faces up against her first ever fan convention. She's got a boyfriend, but suddenly she's not sure if he's really the one for her, and the events of the con keep throwing her in Matt's path. Matt's somewhat of a mystery, too. He's always got those wacky sunglasses on, and he can't seem to decide if he wants to be nice to Christie or just be a sarcastic jerk. Throw in an encounter with Lida Zeff, manga-ka extraordinaire, and Christie's dealing with one surprise after another. Of course, convention weekends tend to end all too quickly, and what will happen when suddenly distance is added to all of the factors keeping Christie and Matt apart?

Svetlana Chmakova was born and raised in Russia and moved to Canada at the tender age of 16. She slept through Sheridan College, but they still gave her a three-year Classical Animation Diploma (yeah, she's still waiting for them to figure out they made a mistake and come back to take it from her). Svetlana is currently a freelance artist, working on stuff that mostly has nothing to do with animation. Oops. She suspects it has something to do with the fact that comics now own her soul.

Svetlana has drawn for how-to-draw-manga books, RPG manuals, toy designs, animation, book covers and illustrations. Her current works include two manga-style online comics— Chasing Rainbows on http://www.girlamatic.com and Night Silver at http://www.wirepop.com.

Her favorite hobbies are sleeping, reading more comics than is healthy for her wallet and fighting with the family cat over chair territory.

To find out more please visit her website at http://www.svetlania.com (while you're there, tell it she says hi... >.>).

Christie Leroux
5'7", 17 years old. She is a cheerful and outgoing person, as well as a complete pushover to someone who knows which buttons to push (like her boyfriend). She is somewhat naive and trusting, but intelligent and fast to learn from her mistakes. Christie is a budding writer and is trying her hardest to be a success.

Derek Hollman
Christie's high school boyfriend. 5'11", 17 years old. He likes playing basketball and draws fairly well, though still need much improvement. He is not really serious about anything and does things while they are fun. Derek mostly looks out for himself, and it wouldn't occur to him to extend the same courtesy to others.

Matt Green
6'2", 19 years old. Reserved and withdrawn, he has a biting sense of humor and is very cautious of forming emotional attachments to people, having had a very hard time among his peers. Matt has a very strong personality, bordering on harsh, though there is some softness left in him, still. He detests being weak and will never admit to his insecurities. Most likely to say: "Your village called—their idiot is missing."

Sandra Green
The mysterious beautiful cosplayer that hangs around Matt a lot, acting very familiar. She is a cheerful, sarcastic, no-nonsense and assertive type of girl.

Brett Thomson
Derek's cousin, 26 years old, he studies criminal psychology at a nearby university. He is quite pleasant and a gentleman, though with a very odd sense of humor. He is full of morbid crime stories that he relishes in telling every chance he gets.

Greta Huff
5'6", 23 years old. The girl sharing Matt's table in the artist alley. Sweet and kind, as well as very mature for her age, she is quiet unless she is with people she likes/trusts. She is studying to be a nurse.

Opal Maydew
Brett's girlfriend, 24 years old, she is majoring in Animal Sciences at the same university as him. Outgoing and afraid of nothing, she's had some wild times before she met Brett. She cleaned up since then, but has a lot of stories to tell.

From Publishers Weekly

Set at a comic convention, this story shouldn't be as entertaining and fun as it is. But it's a little gem: the plot trips along, and though the art is good, not breathtaking, the Russian-born Canadian artist/author has clearly mastered the now international visual language of manga. The heroine is Chris, a self-willed girl who is taken for granted by her boyfriend, Derek. Chris meets the dark and mysterious Matt, who seems to understand her completely, and hijinks ensue. Sounds corny as hell, but the narrative is smart, witty and moving. The characters tap into the manga archetypes, which makes them breathe and have moments of being larger-than-life. Chris goes through self-doubt to self-knowledge and learns a bit of bravery along the way. It's astonishing to reflect that all the action takes place in the hotel rooms and convention floors where kids sell their homemade comics. Under the noses of adults, these "cons" have slipped into popular culture as a new land of rebels, mentors and wisdom—what road trips and the Haight once were. They're a perfect place for a growing-up story. Using every visual manga convention to its fullest, this ripping little tale is strong and expressive enough to reveal real emotional depth.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Variety's Bags and Boards

So? You know manga is sweeping the world when a 25-year-old woman born in Russia and now living in Canada writes and draws a popular English-language manga about romance at a Japanese anime convention. There may be ways that die-hard manga fans can tell from the art and writing alone that Chmakova's not Japanese, but she's obviously so thoroughly absorbed the style of writing and drawing shojo manga as to completely fool the rest of us. This is an unabashedly girly book that's sweetly romantic, full of authentic teenage angst and at times very funny. Story follows a young girl who writes a manga that her boyfriend draws. At her first con, her boyfriend flirts with every girl he can find and she's overwhelmed by the crowds and strangeness of it all until she meets a mysterious and handsome cosplayer. I have to admit that as a 36-year-old married man, I'm not the target audience for this book and that "dirty old man" feeling crops up a bit while reading this sort of thing. But Chmakova stays firmly in PG-13 territory and there's nothing in here that crosses any kind of line. It's just good, frilly, girly fun.

~Tom McLean

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From IGN Comics

An anime convention turns into drama central in this new manga series from TOKYOPOP.
"Dramacon is kept dynamic the whole way through thanks to vivid artwork, top-notch facial expressions and an excellent use of tones. You can't avoid falling under its charm."

~Geneviève Belanger

Copyright © IGN Entertainment, Inc.

From Calling Manga Island

"Dramacon is a fan favorite, and rightly so. Dramacon takes the craziness of the anime convention and puts a shoujo comedy spin on the preceding. Anyone who has been to a con and dealt with all that they involve should check out this book."

~Tony Salvaggio

Copyright © 1995-2005 Boiling Point Productions DBA Comic Book Resources. All Rights Reserved.

From PopImage

The premiere book in the series focuses on amateur writer Christie on her first ever trip to an anime convention. Christie is young and cute though a little introverted, or at least, she hasn't quite come out of her shell just yet. That changes over the course of the story as her relationship with her boyfriend wanes as she realizes he's a flirt and a dick, and she meets a mysterious stranger all decked out in a stylish cosplay outfit with action film shades on all the time. In an uncomfortable setting the stranger becomes the most comforting aspect of her life which in turn allows her to ease into the engrossing convention scene, breaking away from her table to get her fill of merchandise and get her ego stroked.

In Dramacon, the setting of the convention sets you up with a clear view of the characters' surroundings, a whirlwind of adolescence and geekdom, but the depth of the drama that Svet portrays lifts the story from its surroundings while at the same time pulling you in to take a vested interest in the fates of the characters.

But things get worse before they get better.

The "White Knight" syndrome is a scenario involving a damsel in distress rescued by a valiant man, which usually involves some immediate attraction between the two. When the drama escalates between Christie and boyfriend Derek, Matt feels the need to react, and he does—in the very predictable yet exact same manner every man would—because...there are just some things you DON'T DO. This is handled very well and may be one of my favourite scenes [aside from the taunts of tentacle porn], but it also serves to show how well Svet has integrated her anime and manga influences, allowing her to be able to go from hyper-expressive and light-hearted to deeply profound and solemn without breaking the flow of the story and giving even more meaningful substance to the in-between moments where it's OK to smile and hold hands, no matter what is going on around you....

As the story progresses, obstacles are conquered and fun is had by all but new obstacles arise as new friends have to part ways leaving what happens next completely to chance. All they know is that they'll be coming back next year.

The artwork perfectly matches the story; Svet has a keen understanding of the expressive nature of her characters—she knows how to perfectly portray them without giving too much or too little. In a way, she has an ability to make everything cute and thus invokes the readers to take a vested interest in the lives of her fun, melodramatic, heart-on-their sleeve-wearing characters.

When it comes to toning, I'm still attuned to the mindset of pens and brushes as great tools than to that of Wacoms and Photoshop, but Svet uses the tones to further convey the emotional elements of the scenes. Hard inks and lightning cracks for one extreme and light and soft snowflake effects for the sweeter moments—much like the way colourists use striking colours to convey emotion. So future artists take note, toning: for more then just filler.

Dramacon will appeal to all you comics readers who, deep down, are giddy romantics at heart, and as a part of the comic buying industry, you may even see yourself reflected in one of the characters featured therein.

Pick up a copy of Dramacon; you'll like it, trust me.

It's sweet.

~Jonathan Ellis

Copyright © Scott Grunewald and Aorta Press. All rights reserved.