Howdy folks! It's been a minute, but I'm here to spread some cheer. I'm big on Christmas, love this time of year. Here in Southern California, very little indicates it's the season for giving, so for some Christmas spirit you've really gotta pop into the malls where everything's decorated and they've got jolly songs playing all day long. Ah, consumerism!

These past two years, I've given myself a rare Star Wars gift for Christmas. No one else is gonna do it, after all. Last year it was the Holiday Darth Vader. This year, I had to do quite a bit of sleuthing. But I found it: the English translations of the new Japanese Star Wars Manga from Tokyopop.

Not to be confused with the manga and Cinemanga adaptations of the Star Wars films, these puppies with all original stories were published in Japan last year, and it wasn't until last month that they were finally translated into English. The catch, though, is that due to some legal mumbo-jumbo, these English translations were only published in the United Kingdom. How dare they!

Aha! But with the Internet, there's no problem! This is old hand, see. When I first got the go-ahead to write a Star Wars piece on the legacy of Darth Vader (forthcoming), I bought the original Japanese versions of the Star Wars Mangas from Amazon.jp. That was easy enough. What wasn't easy, though, was understanding them, since they're written entirely in 日本語. However, I still keep in touch with my fourth grade best friend, of Japanese decent, so the problem wasn't insurmountable. But I still wanted to have easy-to-read versions.

Now I'll just pop over to Amazon.co.uk, and search for "Tokyopop Star Wars Manga" and...

...nothing.

Hmm. I know the product exists. Well, how 'bout if I just type in "Tokyopop Star Wars"?

Nothing.

Okay. I'll just split the word "Tokyo pop"... how about just "Star Wars manga"?

Okay, I'm not worried. Let's just type "Star Wars" in the book search and see what comes up...

Only 193 pages! Yippee!

Call me lazy, but with nothing even resembling luck after browsing about 40 pages, the situation was quickly becoming distressing. Are you telling me that the UK branch of Amazon, the largest book depository on Earth, doesn't carry a pair of books exclusive to its own country? Balderdash!

Determined now, I ran a search on Google. I didn't have much luck until I came across these pages. After deducing that "Språk engelska" probably meant these versions were in English, I did some more investigating to figure out these were Swedes I was dealing with and how much 383.00 Kronan came out to in U.S. bucks. About $60. A little pricey, especially since I hadn't calculated shipping yet, but completists can't be choosers.

But they can be duped! After spending about 20 minutes self-teaching myself Swedish, and plowing through the final Ordering page, I realized they only ship to Europe! Helvete!

Well, things were lookin pretty dark for our hero, friends. I'd spent the better part of a morning obsessively trying to track this phantom manga down, from Amazon to Google to Tokyopop.com, ForbiddenPlanet, sfbok.se, IncognitoComics, and all other sort of bizarrely named place on the web. The dark forces of disorganized cataloguing and localised shipping had seemingly triumphed and the day belonged to evil.

But hope, too, never dies.

What's this? An ISBN number on the Swedish page? I learned long ago those long strings of numbers were a book lover's best friend. A direct search on 9781598167931 came up short, but it did lead me to this glorious German page: Star Wars: v. 1 (Taschenbuch).

Aha! So, that's the real ISBN!

The ability to translate a manga is insignificant next to the power of the ISBN.

Behold fanboys and girls! For your English reading pleasure and ease of procurement, the stupidly-listed Vol. 1 and 2 of Star Wars Manga at Amazon.co.uk!

Star Wars: v. 1 (Paperback)

Star Wars: v. 2 (Paperback)

The total came out to £33.93 with shipping, or about 65 bones.

Ah, but that priceless feeling of success? That's the dog's bollocks.

Happy holidays folks! ~ Abel G. Peña

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