Takaaki Suzuki, the historical advisor on the Strike Witches anime series, has co-created a dōjinshi titled The Witches of the Sphinx which is being published in both Japanese and English worldwide on May 6. The story centers around the Witches of Africa campaign of the war storyline first described in Noboru Yamaguchi's original light novels. Takeshi Nogami (Panzer fräulein ALTESEISEN, Sailor-fuku to Jūsensha) drew the "Three Generals and a Fuso Witch" manga in the first 90-page volume of the project, and Suzuki wrote a short story called "Before the Storm." The online store Manga Pal will ship the dōjinshi overseas.

Dan Kanemitsu translated the dōjinshi before Nogami's dōjinshi circle Firstspear debuted it at the Comic 1 convention in Tokyo last Thursday. The next volume is slated for August's Comic Market 78 convention in Tokyo. Nogami made news last month when he responded to CNN's April 2 article regarding the controversy over the Japanese erotic game Rapelay. Both Kanemitsu and Nogami are involved in the campaign against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's proposed restrictions on sexually provocative depictions of "nonexistent youths." The Witches of the Sphinx itself is not sexually explicit.

The dōjinshi portal site Circle.ms launched its emes service for creating bilingual dōjinshi apps on Apple's iPad and iPhone mobile devices last week, and it offered a demo iPhone/iPad/iPod touch/Kindle e-book version of The Witches of the Sphinx exclusively to Comic 1 attendees. Other creators who have self-published their works overseas include Yoshitoshi ABe (Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei) and Range Murata (Blue Submarine No. 6, Last Exile, Shangri-La).