This week’s edition of Comics Disassembled is coming out hot on the manga front, as Anime NYC just happened which means we had a fair amount of news hit on that front. But there’s plenty to go over, so let’s explore the week that was in comics by highlighting the things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, led by some cozy comics to enjoy next year.

Kana, Standing Out

This past weekend was Anime NYC, so all the anime companies and manga publishers were happily rolling out their upcoming slates and big news items because of that. We’ll get to more news from that event, but I wanted to start by highlighting the lineup of announcements that excited me the most. It’s from Kana, Abrams ComicArts’ manga imprint, which announced six new titles for 2027 at the event, each of which appealed greatly to me.

This won’t surprise you if you already know about the announcements. I mean, one of them, Good Morning Leon, is a slice-of-life series about a dapper gentleman and his cat going on adventures together. That’s basically tailor-made for me. The whole group fits me just as well, though, as the words “cozy” and “slice-of-life” are rampant throughout the write-ups about these books. But it’s more than just that. It includes books like Soon the Fog Clears, a series about a man trapped in the world of the dead with no memory of how he died, Pumpkin Night, which is said to be “perfect for fans of classic ’80s slasher films,” and Children of the Afterlife, a series that blends Japanese folklore and mystery into a story about an errand-runner who collects souls after people pass. This is a diverse slate just amidst these six books.

That said, the immediate standout was Happy at Home, Chiaki Ida’s release that’s about…well, let’s just let the write-up from the Abrams team tell you about that. Happy at Home is “a cozy, full-color manga and illustration collection offering a glimpse into the lives and homes of five women and celebrating the modest joys, comforting routines, and personal spaces that make a home your own.” I love all of that. Of course, if it was just a sweet anthology that’s poorly drawn, it probably wouldn’t get there for me. Thankfully, the interior pages for Happy at Home are beautifully depicted, inventively laid out, and gorgeously colored. It’s the real deal, and it quickly rose to the upper echelons of my “most anticipated books of 2027” list.

Kana’s been hitting in a real way in 2026, as they’ve delivered winners like Naoki Urasawa’s Billy Bat and Minetaro Mochizuki and Shugoro Yamamoto’s Chiisakobee. They definitely had my attention already, but 2027’s looking like an even bigger year for them. I’m pumped about their future after seeing what they had in store for readers at Anime NYC.

Kazé, Coming to America

Speaking of announcements from Anime NYC, it seems Kazé — a manga publisher founded in France back in 1994 — is coming to America in 2027 as an imprint of HarperCollins, and it’s bringing a rather aggressive plan along with after long being a staple of France and Germany. Per AnimeNewsNetwork, Kazé “plans to launch with 3 to 5 titles when it launches in Fall 2027. The company plans to release 5 to 8 titles in 2027, 20 to 25 titles in 2028, and 25 to 30 titles in 2029,” with those titles covering a whole lot of bases, including manga (which will entail “shonen, shojo, seinen, josei, and beyond” per The Beat’s announcement), manhwa, manhua, “manga” that originates in English, and original properties from HarperCollins Japan. That makes it a pretty comprehensive depot for all things HarperCollins and the broader world of manga and manga adjacent releases.

This is all part of an extremely complicated journey for Kazé, a publisher that has changed names and ownership groups enough that its Wikipedia page made my head hurt. In fact, it was only earlier this year that Kazé became Kazé again, as it had been Crunchyroll Manga (not that one, though) since October 1, 2022. That change followed its acquisition by HarperCollins late last year, a move that preceded this announcement of Kazé’s migration to the United States and its grand plans for invasion. So, it’s been quite the stretch for the company!

And Kazé’s journey into this side of the world begins with SOL Sistah, an original English manga from the team of Saxton Moore and Phillip Johnson that is said to feel like a mashup of Ultraman and Power Rangers with some teen/slice-of-life elements to it. That sounds fun, and like a good fit for the market they’re hoping to be a part of when that first release hits in Fall 2027. We’ll see what it entails when it debuts, but color me intrigued! Most of all, I just hope Kazé gets to stick around with one name and owner for a while. It feels like it’s had quite the saga!