There’s a brief but thoughtful piece in the Books section of today’s NY Times (11/28) about the ladies of CLAMP. (Yes–the NY Times covers manga! Intelligently! That might be more newsworthy than the article itself…) With more than one million copies of Tsubasa sold in the US alone, and 21 other series under their belt, this four-woman team has achieved a level of international success almost unparalleled in the American comic book industry.

CLAMP fans won’t find much in the way of new information here, but critic/interviewer Charles Solomon did elicit some interesting comments from Ageha Ohkawa about manga’s special attraction for female artists:

“While it’s true that the number of female directors in the animation industry has increased over the years, it’s more common for women artists to present their work in manga,” Ms. Ohkawa said. “It’s a way for them to express themselves freely. Strong female characters have become very common in manga — Sailor Moon is probably the most famous example — but I don’t know that women in Japan have become stronger. We’re in a unique position: Clamp makes a presentation to the publishers about what we want to do, receive an approval and go to work.”

Look for Del Ray’s Tsubasa character guide next month and FUNimation’s Tsubasa DVD set (featuring the entire 52-episode series) in early 2007. Now if only Tokyopop would revive their CLAMP no Kiseki project and publish volumes 7-12 of this commemorative series. I count myself among a small but devoted band of CLAMP-oholics who cling to the hope that we’ll be able to complete our chess sets and savor gorgeous color illustrations from X/1999, Snow Goddess Tales, The Legend of Chun Hyang, and yes, Tsubasa and xxxHolic. Rumor has it that future volumes include Fuma and Kamui chess pieces…