There're a minimum of six out in Japanese now. As far as I know, there are still only two translated. They're both excellent and I think Dark Horse would have done well to get their asses in gear earlier.
When I went in to buy Hellsing 2 at the Waldenbooks, it was right after van Helsing had started being really pushed. The cashier said they were selling Hellsing manga like hotcakes now because of that; thankfully for me Hellsing 2 had just come out. Oh yeah, number two lets on heavily about the dealings with the Nazis.
Okay, so we know there are a base of six tankouban out in Japan. We have three translated and released on the market as of two weeks ago (according to
Dark Horse' release list. Here's the release schedule as yet:
Hellsing Volume 1 TPB - 12-03-03
Hellsing Volume 2 TPB - 04-07-04
Hellsing Volume 3 TPB - 06-16-04
Hellsing Volume 4 TPB - 09-22-04 (unreleased as of yet)
So, it will have taken them probably a year to translate four tankouban. I know they're not standard sized tankouban, they're a bit bigger than normal. I suppose with a schedule like that, we'll end up with the eighth tankouban being translated relatively soon after it is released. Unless the contract requires them to wait x months after the release of a tankouban in Japanese to publish it in English, I really don't see a point in essentially sitting on the property. If they had had number two out earlier, it likely would've flown off the shelves along with number one. It doesn't make business sense to have held off like that, at least not to me.
