After the drop of
Shinchosha's
Weekly Comic Bunch circulation numbers,
Coamix, which edited the magazine, announced
Bunchs discontinuation. Coamix marked August 27, 2010 as the day of
Bunchs last release, and started to consider to launch a new magazine. In October 2010, Coamix announced a partnership with North Stars Pictures and
Tokuma Shoten, stating that the new magazine
Monthly Comic Zenon would debut on October 25, 2010. At the same time Shinchosha launched
Monthly Comics @ Bunch, a replacement for
Weekly Comic Bunch, but edited without Coamix's involvement. As a result, many of the
manga artists from
Bunch have been moved to
Zenon. In order to approach more readers,
Monthly Comic Zenon is published in both, print and digital editions. A
YouTube channel was created to disclose
Zenon-related media. Also, "Cafe Zenon", a
kissaten decorated with manga motifs, in
Kichijōji, a neighborhood in the city of
Musashino,
Tokyo, was inaugurated on November 11, 2009. To expand its range the magazine also promotes a "silent manga" contest; first, in 2011, it was a national competition. Starting from 2013, it became an international contest, in which no dialogues were necessary. Open for professional and amateurs, the focus of the judgment was the performance of the works through art rather than exposition. The judges were manga authors
Tsukasa Hojo (
City Hunter) and
Tetsuo Hara (
Fist of the North Star), then editor-in-chief Nobuhiko Horie and the magazine editorial team. The best five received prize awards while the top three had their works published in the magazine. The first international edition received 514 submissions from 53 countries, while in the second people from 65 countries submitted 609 works. Molico Ross, a winner of the domestic competition, wrote
Nobo and Her? between 2012 and 2017, and
Shinigami ni Datte, Ai wa Aru (published since 2017) is based on "Thirty and a Half Minutes", a work by the 4th international contest winner, Vietnamese female writer Snippy MJ. In another action to expand its public, in August 2015, Coamix and The Silent Manga Audition Committee created a section called "Zenon International" on the contest website to publish the
SMAC! Web Magazine. They announced plans to translate all the series and offer them for free on their site based on demand—which is based on the readers' vote. Both imprints released its first titles on March 22, 2011. The
Zenon Comics level also publishes manga released on
Zenons sister magazine, . Published online since October 25, 2012, it is the home of series such as
Hokuto no Ken: Ichigo Aji and
Seikai Suru Kado: Aoi Haru to Railgun. ==List of works==