May 8th, 2008, LOS ANGELES – Radical Publishing, under its imprint Radical Books, is pleased to announce that Yoshitaka Amano will be signing copies of Yoshitaka Amano’s Mateki: The Magic Flute Saturday, July 26th at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con convention. Based on the opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Magic Flute, Yoshitaka Amano presents the story with his own unique vision using 128 pages of original artwork in a full color, oversized, hardcover book, set for release in June, 2008. Mateki: The Magic Flute has never been published outside of Japan leaving Radical Publishing exclusive world-wide rights for this international edition.

“Having Yoshitaka Amano on board for our first book is like a dream come true”, explained Radical Publishing’s President, Barry Levine. “His style is simply amazing. When Amano showed me the pages for Mateki: The Magic Flute, I knew immediately that this deserved a world wide release and I wanted it to be a part of Radical Books. In addition, the whole Radical team is honored to have Amano stopping by our booth and signing Saturday during the Comic-Con show. We have a huge lineup this year and expect to see more announcements like this in the coming months.”

MATEKI is a beautiful and dark tale of a young man who must put away his flute to become a warrior so he may save his lover from the lord of darkness. Mateki: The Magic Flute is a fantasy story told by an artist known around the world for his work on Vampire Hunter D, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: The Dream Hunters, and the Final Fantasy games. In discussing Mateki: The Magic Flute in a recent interview, Amano explained

“The story itself is so well known, I don’t think I need to repeat it here. What actually attracted me most is the music Mozart wrote. Even though I knew the story from the accompanied texts, just listening to music gave me an inspiration of making it more like a ballet sequence, without words but the movements of images.”

Edmund Shern provides the English adaptation and the supervision for the design of this magical volume.

Yoshitaka Amano’s Mateki: The Magic Flute is featured in April 2008 Diamond Previews catalogue and will ship in June of this year. Yoshitaka Amano’s Mateki: The Magic Flute has a Diamond order code of APR084071.