Chris with Megaphone. Photo by Paul Hillier, http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadragebunny/

I swear, I was much happier than this last night.

Seriously, that was a pretty ridiculous night. We feel like there were over 2,000 people at the event, we did counts on the line and there were over 800 people lined up for Mal for the midnight signing (that went until about 3:45am). About that many in the “I just want my book” line, and people milling out, seeing bands, playing video games, listening to music, drinking, having a good time.

In short, it was the most successful event I’ve ever run. Thanks to everyone who helped out. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to Oni for helping us set it up. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for not calling the cops. Oh, and thanks to Mr. O’Malley, who basically killed himself in the service of comics… that’s all I really ask of anyone :)

- Christopher

May 24th: Zan Christiensen posts a great article about possible censorship concerns against gay-centric graphic novels at Apple’s App Store, for the iPad and iPhone.
http://prismcomics.org/display.php?id=1858

June 13th: The New York Times covers the case of ULYSSES SEEN, a graphic novel adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses that had non-sexual nudity edited out after demands by the appstore people. Rage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/technology/14ulysses.html

June 14th, 1:40am: I post a link to Zan’s article at Prism, add a little bit of commentary and additional thinking, call for comment. I feel bad for being behind the times…

June 14th, 10:40am: Tech blog Gizmodo picks up on the story of ULYSSES SEEN and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST censorship.
http://gizmodo.com/5562802/the-latest-examples-of-apples-stupid-editorial-censorship

June 14th, 12:30pm: Awesome Gay Blog JoeMyGod publishes a story on the same issue, based on a reader tip.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/06/apple-censors-gay-graphic-novels-but.html

June 14th, 4pm: Gizmodo updates that Apple has apparently reversed its decision and has asked the creators of both ULYSSES SEEN and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST to resubmit the unedited works for approval.

While it shouldn’t have taken a public, multi-site shaming to get Apple’s act together, I’m quite pleased that both sets of creators will get their work to be presented in the format they’d originally intended, and hopefully get a nice little sales boost from all of the attention. I’m glad that whatever small part I played in bringing the story to people’s attention helped resolve the situation, and kudos again to Zan for writing a great article and highlighting an obvious injustice. I hope the Yaoi Press people aren’t similarly left behind…

Which brings us to another issue, as mentioned by my friend Andrew Wheeler this morning:

@Wheeler: Given Apple’s censorship, shouldn’t intelligent liberals adamantly reject it as a publishing platform? Where’d our ethics go? I refer in part to the censorship of comic adaptations of Wilde http://tinyurl.com/37j3q3b and Joyce http://nyti.ms/9HzgFE

Matthew Seiden manning The Buenaventura Press table at TCAF 2009. Photo by Deb Aoki, manga.about.com.

Sad news today, as Alvin Buenaventura officially announced the end of his publishing company Buenaventura Press at the (excellent) group blog Blog Flume, to which he contributes.

“I deeply regret having to take these actions, but the press experienced a devastating financial blow that made it impossible to continue.”

While I do actually have a good handle on what that ‘blow’ was, it’s not my place to say if Alvin doesn’t want to talk about it just yet. The fact that he closed down Buenaventura Press in January and just told the public now implies the level of privacy he’d like, and that’s totally within his rights.

I really liked a lot of Buenaventura’s output–they’re the only North American publisher to have released work by the wonderful Tom Gauld for example, they were the amazing Vanessa Davis‘ first publishers, they took over the publishing duties of the outstanding Kramers Ergot and surprising Comic Art magazine, not to mention all of the other fabulous prints, comics, and books that they released over their short lifetime. They were a regular exhibitor at TCAF and they always put on a fantastic-looking display. They put out good work by good cartoonists, and it’s a shame that there’s now one less publisher doing that. Cheers Alvin, you did great work.

Which brings me to my next point: There are still a lot of awesome publishers around that could probably use a few of your hard-earned dollars in exchange for wonderful comic books.

Buenaventura Press at TCAF 2007. Photo by Jamie Coville.

I don’t want to turn this into a polemic or anything, I’m not trying to guilt or badger you into giving up your money, but I know more than anything how easy it is to get swept along in the day-to-day-discussion of comics, the bullshit Blackest-Night-Siege-Heroic-Age-Brightest-Day nonsense is fun because you can be a part of the conversation online about how terrible it all is, but when it comes to spending money on good books that don’t get as much discussion–but are going to hold up on your shelves and in your comic boxes a helluva lot better down the road–it really is worth your time and effort to check out some of the smaller and boutique publishers out there, because they’re often doing amazing stuff.

And I’m not setting this up as a mainstream versus indie debate–that’s fucking stupid. That’s over. This is about buying comics you like versus buying comics you don’t. And there are a lot of great books out there getting left out of the discussion that are great, that are worth your time. I do my best to promote them here on the blog, to sell them in the store, to give them a platform and an audience at TCAF, but sometimes it isn’t enough and I have to make a direct appeal like this.

So here’s a list of publishers I like, and a book or two I recommend from them; Please support them with a purchase if you can:

AdHouse Books – http://adhousebooks.com/
Recommended: Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg. The Venice Chronicles, by Enrico Casarosa

Bodega Distribution – http://www.bodegadistribution.com/
The Mourning Star Volume 1 & 2, by Kazimir Strzepek

Conundrum Press – http://conundrumpress.com/
Drop-In, by Dave Lapp.  Ruts & Guilles: Nine Days in Saint Petersburg, by Phillippe Girard.

Drawn & Quarterly – http://drawnandquarterly.com/
Market Day, by James Sturm. Vellevision, by Maurice Vellekoop. Red Colored Elegy, by Seiichi Hayashi. Get a Life by Dupuy & Berberian.

Fanfare / Ponent-Mon – http://ponentmon.com/
A Distant Neighborhood Volumes 1 & 2, by Jiro Taniguchi

Fantagraphics Books – http://fantagraphics.com/
Almost Silent, by Jason.  Artichoke Tales, by Megan Kelso. Ganges #1-3 by Kevin Huizenga.

Koyama Press – http://koyamapress.com/
Lose #1 & #2, by Michael DeForge. A Very Kraftwerk Sumer, by Chris Hutsul.

La Pasteque – http://lapasteque.com/
la Fugue, by Pascal Blanchet.  Jimmy et le Bigfoot, by Pascal Girard.

New Reliable Press – http://newreliable.com/
Horribleville Volume 1, by KC Green.

Oni Press - http://onipress.com/
Scott Pilgrim Vols 1-6, by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Picturebox Inc. – http://www.pictureboxinc.com/
New Enigineering & Travel, by Yuichi Yokoyama.

Pop Sandbox – http://popsandbox.com/
Kenk, by Richard Poplak.

SLG Publishing – http://slgpublishing.com/
Street Angel, by Jim Rugg and Brian Marruca. NIL, by James Turner. DORK Vols 1 & 2, by Evan Dorkin. SQUEE!, by Jhonen Vasquez.

Sparkplug Comic Books – http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/
Bookhunter, by Jason Shiga. Jin & Jam #1, by Hellen Jo.

Top Shelf Comix – http://topshelfcomix.com/
Alec: The Years Have Pants, by Eddie Campbell. Superfuckers, by James Kochalka. Moving Pictures, by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen.

Topatoco – http://topatoco.com/
Never Learn Anything From History, by Kate Beaton. Adventures of Dr. McNinja, by Chris Hastings.

Tug Boat Press – http://tugboatpress.com
Papercutter Anthologies, by various.

U.S.S. Catastrophe – http://www.usscatastrophe.com/
Pretty much everything they stock is awesome.

…and that’s the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of single-title self publishers doing great work like Carla Speed McNeil and Finder, Jeff Smith and Rasl, Eric Powell’s Chimichanga… hell, tons of creators trying to scrape out a living publishing under a larger umbrella too. Not to mention the many fine retailers like The Beguiling trying to stock and sell these books too.

There are people doing good work, and while it’s tempting to get yourself down when a great publisher disappears, scuff your shoes on the ground and say “shit”, it’s much more productive to remember that there are still folks out publishing great work… and we don’t want them going anywhere, you know?

- Chris

An international coalition of Japanese and American-based manga publishers have joined together to combat what they call the “rampant and growing problem” of scanlations, the practice of posting scanned and translated editions of Japanese comics online without permission of the copyright holders. The group is threatening legal action against 30 scanlation sites.

The effort brings together the 36 member Japanese Digital Comic Association—which includes such major Japanese houses as Kodansha, Shogakukan and Shueisha—as well as manga publisher Square Enix, the Tuttle-Mori Agency and U.S.-based manga publishers Vertical Inc, Viz Media, Tokyopop and Yen Press, the manga/graphic novel imprint of the Hachette Book Group.

A spokesperson for the coalition said the effort shows that Japanese publishers—who license the majority of manga sold in the U.S.—are taking an aggressive interest in combating manga piracy outside of Japan as well as inside the country.

- From the article at Publishers Weekly

Well that’s pretty good news, I’d say…! I’ll probably have thoughts on this later.

- Chris

So, here’s the deal:

CMX wasn’t, at its inception, a particularly well-run company. There are a lot of excuses out there, but bluntly DC didn’t know a thing about the manga market, and the person they hired to start the imprint wasn’t good at his job. DC offered a deep-discount offer to retailers to stock some of the initial titles, MADARA in particular, an older-Seinen action adventure title at the height of the shoujo boom. (Their sole shoujo title was from the 1970s.) I can’t stress enough, their initial licenses were very strange and generally weak with no cohesion as a line.

Sales tanked, comics retailers who were encouraged to buy BIG were left with unsold stock, and comics retailers have long and ‘specific’ memories and if they’re ever burned by anything they never forget and hold a grudge indefinitely. (Except for superheroes of course; Marvel and DC are putting out lit cigarettes on the foreheads of comics retailers every month, and they keep coming back for more. But say something nasty about Carol Kalish in an obituary and I WILL NEVER BUY YOUR FUCKING BOOKS FOREVER I HATE YOU. Comics are kinda lame sometimes.)

So with retailers burnt, the publisher upped the ante and censored one of their second wave of titles, when the _only_ thing it had going for it was the dirty bits. Manga fans hold STUPID grudges too, and they only need the thinest whisper of an excuse to steal their shit forever. “CMX censored Tenjho Tenge! That’s why I’ll download all the books they publish and never give them any money ever!” Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. You’re awful, flat out awful.

But that’s besides the point; fans were burned too.

So no retailer support, little fan support, reported difficulties getting press coverage/convention coverage, and the books were barely ever in bookstores. All of it added up to…? What? Surprise? It wasn’t a matter of if CMX was going to get closed but when, and bad news at Viz provides the perfect cover doesn’t it? “See! Economic downturn! We can’t publish manga if Viz can’t!” Except of course Viz are publishing manga, just tightening their belts. Feh and bah.

This all smells very much like someone got some early July DC solicitations, noticed there were no CMX books, and started asking questions. This seems exceptionally poorly handled, from a company who’s doing a great job at poorly handling this imprint.

So to summarize: It was a line that was poorly conceived, poorly run for the first half of its life and then barely run at all for the last half. Then it was unceremoniously killed. The end.

I’m not saying the whole thing isn’t utterly depressing, it is, but only because it’s just a monumental waste of time and resources and talent and opportunity, not because I’m particularly sad to see it go. Maybe that’s mercenary of me–a lot of other people liked the line and I should probably shut up–but yeah. DC evidenced quite clearly that they have no idea how to run a manga line so if they weren’t going to _try_ then it’s best they stopped wasting my time clogging up my shelves.

- Chris

Deb Aoki spent the night asking difficult questions on Twitter, about the difference between what Simmons did and what thousands of anime-convention artist alley kids do every year, when they sell their own illustrations and stories based on the work of famous manga creators like Tite Kubo. The short answer is that anime fandom sat up and said “NO! We do what we do out of love and have very strict rules about that sort of thing!” and blah blah blah, which basically ammounted to “It’s us doing it so it’s okay, but Nick Simmons is them, so he’s a pariah we’re all going to tear our garments over.”

Got news for you, champs.

When you sell illustrations, or short stories, featuring your favourite characters, you’re entering into exactly the same dirty world of “commerce” that poor Nick Simmons did. You may be, in your head, doing it in ‘tribute’ to the manga or the creator, but out in the real world? You’re ripping him off, just like Nick Simmons did. You’re more honest about your sources, but you’re less creative. You may even have a much higher degree of craft, but as soon as you violate someone’s copyright or IP in that way, making money based on (legally and artistically) derivative works? You’re all just a batch of Nick Simmons, building your careers on the backs of others creators.

Are there lots (lots) of people who do it? Yes. Is their a “community” of like minded people all telling each other that what they do is okay? Fuck yeah! Does it make a lick of difference…?

Here’s the thing: I’ve got infinitely more respect for obvious thief Nick Simmons than I do for the legions of artist-alley dwellers selling mass-produced copies of their fanart for characters. Nick Simmons is (badly) taking his influences and turning them into something (horribly derivative but at least nominally) “new”. It’s not original, it may not even be good, but every artist or writer is comprised mainly of the sum of their influences and experiences. But at least Simmons on his first shot out of the gate managed to synthesize all that shit into something other than “Here is a terribly drawn portrait of two BLEACH characters making out, in tribute to an author who clearly never wanted this to happen or he’d have done it himself. I am charging $10 for this colour photocopy.”

Paying “tribute” to an author like Kubo by selling work based on his creations is about the same as “building his popularity” by distributing illegal scans and fansubs of his work, I personally put the two in exactly the same category: complete fucking fiction.

What I’m saying is Nick Simmons’ behaviour is embarrassing and the work is getting the smackdown it deserves. But North American anime “fandom” for their legion of sins have no reason to be so comfortable in their condemnation, particularly because the behaviour they condone–and celebrate–is worse.

- Chris
P.S.: I love fan creations, I am happy that people legitimately pay tribute to artists they love on DeviantArt and in the myriad of Fanfic communities. Sell that work and you cross a line.

Edit Sat Feb27: Normally, I wouldn’t bother approving some of the stuff in the comments section, because there’s a combination of wrong-headedness and pomposity from a bunch of alias’d anime fans that’s off-putting at best, but I decided this time out to let the comments ride. Mostly because I think that the more ridiculous comments speak for themselves, but I also kind of knew that this would be a contentious one going in. As such, I don’t particularly recommend reading the comments here, but instead would recommend that the most compelling rebuttal to my ideas comes from Simon Jones at Icarus Comics, http://www.icaruscomics.com/wp_web/?p=4319, and you should check those out if you’re interested in more on the subject.

For my part, I do understand that plagiarism is bad news, but then I didn’t think that need to be stated. Instead my position was (and still is) that the culture of complacency and all of the mealy-mouthed defence for selling unauthorized work based on a creator’s IP that permeates anime fandom? Far, far worse than any individual instance of plagiarism, no matter how famous the plagiarist is. Seriously, the general attitude of North American Anime & Manga Fandom with its fansubs, it’s scanlations, it’s complete disregard for intellectual property, ethics, or fairness in the face of what they want (everything) and what they want to pay for it (nothing) is so much more utterly damaging to Tite Kubo, to manga and anime, and to Art and Artists hoping to make a living from their Art, than Nick Simmons could ever hope to be. Get your own house in order before crucifying this guy.

Thanks for reading!

- Christopher

“I worked for them as a letterer at an embarrassingly low page rate. I took it to get some more superhero style stuff under my belt, hoping that I could at least use them as a springboard to get better work down the line.

For the first two books, things went ok. However, on the next four, I had to send invoices up to six times with constant reminders in order to get paid. It was crazy how often someone could “lose” invoices or have them “caught by the spam filter”. After having waited about 6 months to get paid, I walked and stopped doing any work for them. They did eventually pay up, but it took a lot of effort to get them to do so.

During the above situation, someone who’d worked on one of the books that I worked on contacted me to see if I’d been paid. He’d taken a back-end deal and was told that the book hadn’t made any money. I wasn’t surprised, to be honest — It didn’t seem like it was going to be a big seller. The person didn’t know much about how distribution worked and thought that it was a lie that Diamond was only giving about 40% of cover price, so I kind of dismissed his claims at first. Then he sent me a spreadsheet of expenses and income that he’d been sent from Bluewater and asked me to look over to see if it made sense. I was shocked to find that the cost of lettering was listed at TWICE what I was paid.

Maybe there’s a logical explanation as to why the lettering cost was listed at twice what I was paid, but I can’t think of what it would be. What it looks like, to me, is number fudging.

- Ed Brisson, comics creator and small-press publisher

So to reitterate: Most creatives working with Bluewater only get paid royalties once a book is profitable. But the accounting to determine whether or not a book is profitable is done by the publisher, and has allegedly been rigged in the publisher’s favour at least once. So to those last, few, desperate people defending the business practices of this company, it’s not just that you’re working for free to ‘get your name out there’ which in this age of social media and webcomics is frankly ridiculous, but this publisher may actually be deliberately cheating you out of money that you would be owed. I would recommend, again, to any creator looking to ‘break into’ comics, to find other routes than through the gutter.

In a completely unrelated matter, in no way tied to the previous statement (particularly in a way that could get folks like Mr. Brisson in trouble vis a vis Bluewater’s constant legal threats), after consulting with my employer we’ve decided at The Beguiling to no longer carry Bluewater’s product. If a customer would like to pre-order Bluewater’s material with payment, we’ll honour that request, because we’re a full-service comic store. But frankly the idea of supporting this publisher with shelf copies (or making money ourselves off of these books) has become incredibly unappealing to us for a variety of reasons.

For more on Bluewater Comics, check out Simon Jones, Tom Spurgeon, Johanna Draper Carlson (2), and Heidi MacDonald.

- Christopher, “every bit helps,” said the old woman as she pissed into the sea.

Specifically

It would be nice if someone sent

a copy of

so he could stop giving that quote in interviews, cuz that shit ain’t true.

- Christopher

–

A month or two back, reader Mike Kitchen wrote to get my thoughts on the following announcement by Print-on-demand outfit ComiXpress:

It is with great pride that I make this post. As a lifetime fan and reader of indie comics, Dave Sim’s Cerebus always had a special place for me. The depth of the story, the wry wit and social commentary, the brilliant art of the book … this was the reason I read comics. As an aspiring cartoonist, I admired Dave’s championing of Creator’s Rights and his groundbreaking work in Self-Publishing. This guy’s day didn’t end when he put down his pencil after knocking out a page; he effortlessly changed hats from creator to businessman, showing a generation of cartoonists how it could be done if you had the brains and the guts, and in many ways made the independent comic book explosion of the 80s possible.

That inspiration is a big part of what drove me to create a company in 2004 that changed the way indie comics were made. And I couldn’t be more excited that Dave Sim has brought his work to ComiXpress.

Starting today, with the premier of Cerebus Archive #4, you will always be able to order every back issue of Cerebus Archive, Dave’s black & white walk down memory lane (completely devoid of rose-colored-glasses). No back issues ever go out of stock at ComiXpress, and Comic Shop Retailers are a welcome addition to this new Direct Market with a book from one of the most respected names in comics who has proven time and again how seriously he treats deadlines and release dates.

So please, join me in welcoming Dave Sim, Aardvark-Vanaheim, and of course Cerebus himself to ComiXpress. And lets all look forward to a brighter future for indie comics together.

Logan DeAngelis

Reader Mike mentioned, correctly, that I’d been pretty critical of print on demand services like ComiXpress and Lulu in the past, as a vehicle for solicitation of commercial projects. I still hold that point of view, quite honestly, but my thinking on it has broadened a little.

First off, I’d like to note that for terminology’s sake, I use “print on demand”, “pod”, and “digital printing” pretty interchangeably. I’m generally referring to digital printing like high-end laserjets or inkjets, versus offset printing which generally involves physical contact between ‘plates’ (usually rubber) and the paper, and offset is a much higher quality of printing. There are terms like ‘digital offset’ out there, but so far as I can tell it’s still inkjet printers, albeit with slightly higher quality.

As a sweeping statement, I will say that the quality and price of offset (‘professional’) printing has not yet been matched (let alone beaten) by any digital print or print on demand services I’ve seen so far. A couple of recent projects that I’ve been made aware of have been the closest I’ve seen to offset printing from this sort of set-up, but held side-by-side with offset work the difference is very noticeable, with P.O.D. suffering considerably in comparison.  When it comes to POD the resolution in the printing isn’t as high, leading to pixelation, the blacks often have a sheen that comes from laser printer ink, the greyscales look patchy, dark, and amateurish,  and the plain-white-bond paper stock doesn’t feel as nice in the hand or seem like a “real” book. As an artist who probably worked really hard on a story, I don’t understand the impulse to sabotage that hard work just to get it “in print”, regardless of how it looks when it gets there… I understand that it’s vital for works of limited or niche appeal, for books where the message or story is more important than the repro quality, but in terms of art it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. So, yeah, strides have been made, but it isn’t there yet. I’m not convinced it ever will be.

Secondly, there’s the cost factor. I just finished working with a friend who moved their project from digital-printing to offset. POD offered them the ability to print books as needed, in small batches for smaller amounts of money. The-trade off was that their 64 page black and white book was costing them $5 a copy to print, and they’d printed over 300 copies that way. I priced out an offset print-run for them, and for the same book with better paper, a better cover, an actual spine (POD outfits hate printing on spines, it requires too much quality control), at 1000 copies the cost per book dropped to $1.50. At 2000 copies the cost per book dropped to $1.10. The difference is between $3 and $4 a book, but the money’s gotta be paid up front. But they’d already spent over $1200 printing 300 copies of their book! For $300 more they could’ve printed 3 times as many, AND made more on every book they sold. Selling a book for $10 that cost you $5 to make is ridiculous, but hey, it isn’t my money. But selling a book for $10 that cost you a buck  to print? I’d much rather be in that business.

Granted, not everyone has $2000 to spend. Not everyone is going to hand-sell their book. Not everyone wants to ship out copies of their work, which many online P.O.D. services will do (for an added fee). Not everyone wants to solicit through a distributor (like Diamond or whomever), which P.O.D. pricing either makes impossible or foolish. Some projects are deliberately short-run, copyright-skirting endeavours that need to stay under certain radars. Not everyone should print 2000 copies of their work. Or 1000. Hell, some projects shouldn’t be printed at all and advising someone to go-offset or go-home would just be mean. There are a bunch of other caveats there, but long-story-short, offset isn’t right for every project but if you intend to make a serious commitment to the continued commercial viability of your project, the choice, IMO, is clear. Sort of.

Back to the Cerebus Archive announcement.

A quick check of the ComiXpress website shows that they’ve subsequently added Dave Sim’s other recent offering Glamourpuss to their offerings. I actually found their original post/announcement incredibly confusing, as it strongly implies that ComiXpress will be printing/offering Sim’s work from now on. Their Glamourpuss announcement uses a very important phrase not present in the Archive announcement: back issues. ComiXpress is making back issues of Glamourpuss available, seemingly once they’ve gone out of print from their initial offset printing. A quick check at Diamond shows that Glamourpuss #1-7 are listed as out of print, but 8, 9, and 10 are still in stock. A quick check of ComiXpress shows that they’re offering #1-7 but not #8-10, so yeah, looks like once the first print is gone, it’ll be kept in print ‘forever’ in digital POD form… I’m pretty curious to see whether or not ComiXpress’s print job is up to the task of reprinting Glamourpuss, as, let’s face it, the book is an excuse for Dave Sim to draw fantastically detailed portraits of attractive women in varying ink styles, an incredibly art-focussed book.  I kinda want to order a copy just to do a side-by-side comparison and see how it holds up…!

Meanwhile, Cerebus Archive doesn’t match up quite the same (publication-wise), and with a very interesting difference. ComiXpress is distributing Cerebus Archive #4, a book that Diamond hasn’t distributed at all, and doesn’t seem to intend to… meaning Cerebus Archive #4 is exclusively available as a digital POD item, something that not-very-much fuss has been made about. It looks like that book has moved POD only, which strikes me as probably a smart move considering it’s a collection of ephemera and early, rougher early work by Sim. Issue #4′s contents describe it as reprinting a wedding invitation, so, you know. But it seems very likely indeed that Cerebus Archive #4 failed to meet Diamond’s order thresholds, wasn’t (offset) printed, and is digital-only. That’s a bit of a sea-change for a book from Sim. Cerebus Archive #4 has been available at Comixpress since early September, and no future issues have been added since, so I’d rightfully cast some doubt on the future of the project… Maybe someone who does this sort of thing regularly can ping the ComiXpress guys for info? Maybe they’ll show up in the comments, who knows.

But all of that aside, the important thing to take away from this is that POD is now being used for comics as a way to keep backlist available, without having to print thousands and thousands of comics at a time that may take years to sell through. That’s about the best use of POD I can think of, actually, following up a high-quality print run with digital copies for latecomers. Anyone particularly concerned with quality or ‘real book feel’ can track down one of the original prints, and anyone else can place a convenient order on a website… bypassing comics retailers entirely. Actually, that part doesn’t bother me either, because (at least in the case of Glamourpuss) we had our kick-at-the-can, ordered our copies, and sold them too. While a project from Dave Sim is something that we’d be likely to keep in stock indefinitely in whatever form it takes, that certainly isn’t true of every project and knowing that there are creators out there that can have that work available for the long haul? Not too shabby.

So… yeah. I’m still not sold on digital printing, and you’ve only gotta flip open a digitally printed book to a page with a toned/greyscale image on it to see why, but I’m glad the technology has started to be applied in really useful, important ways. Here’s hoping that the trend continues and someday we’ll be able to order individual reproduction issues of all KINDS of comics to fill out our collections.

- Christopher

TONIGHT! and Saturday Morning at 10am.

Evangelion 1.0, the first of four feature-length remakes of the Neon Genesis Evangelion tv series/movies, is screening tonight at 7pm across Canada, at more-or-less every Cineplex Odeon or Empire Theatre. There’s another screening Saturday morning at 10am as well.

As you might have figured, I’m a bit of an Evangelion nerd, and so I am going to this tonight. And maybe Saturday too.

More info at: http://www.cineplex.com/events and http://www.empiretheatres.com/evangelion.

See you there!

- Christopher

On the Runway: An Illustrated Fashion Editorial
Weekend Post, Saturday September 12
Illustration by Maurice Vellekoop, Text by Nathalie Atkinson

“I hope there’s a red carpet at check-in,” says Marla, feeling the Sixties retro-futurism vibe of her Narciso Rodriguez ensemble (made all the more over-the-top with a Jimmy Choo bag).

Model of the moment Katya is starry-eyed, fresh off the plane from Eastern Europe and worries she doesn’t have a thing to wear: luckily John Galliano went to town in the Balkans with folkloric embroidery and traditional costume headdresses. “Dahling, anybody who tells you that less is more is simply old, like me,” purrs her booker Joan, in Jil Sander.

It’s always happy hour in the First Class Lounge. Sheila and Karen aren’t frequent fliers but their Marc Jacobs (L) and Christian Dior outfits (R) were all the points they needed to breeze past those adorable security men. (That, and the promise of mile high club benefits.) “If anybody gets suspicious,” whispers Sandrine, “just repeat after me: ‘Oh, how I miss the Concorde.”

The same charm doesn’t work on Customs, alas, as this ill-fated trio soon found out. Search and seizure agents were immune to the persuasive sartorial powers of Alexander McQueen (L), Miu Miu (M) and Comme des Garçons (R) and immediately confiscated the spoils of several fashion weeks’ worth of front row swag. Isn’t air travel glamorous?

—
END

The line contains 4 different products, a series of balancing and cleansing oils that will run between $77 and $89 CDN, and be available exclusively at Holt Renfrew in Canada (Bloor Street, Yorkdale, Vancouver). Anno has contributed art and design for the packaging of the product, and generated a loose narrative around five archetypical Japanese women, each relating to a different ‘flavour’ of product. Also available is a make-up brush kit with Tokyo Kamon Girl designs emblazoned on the case, and a custom make-up box, also sporting Anno’s designs.

Incorporating traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print styles and Japanese iconography, laid overtop of ultra-contemporary packaging, these are some downright lovely pieces of design. They integrate the traditional elements of Kamon design including circles and nature, with each flower or plant on Anno’s badges representing different aspects of the women she’s created… Kamon in particular were typically reserved for upper-class families, and the application of these designs uses lots of shiny gold foil and ink to give the products a luxurious, high-end feel. A lot of thought and effort has gone into this campaign, and shu uemera has spared no expense.  (Click for larger.)

This in and of itself is lovely, and would make for a lovely post here at Comics212. But here’s the most awesome part: The press kit also came with a gorgeous booklet which espouses the philosophy of the line and the various “girls” on one side, and a biography and gallery of Moyoco Anno’s manga and illustratuin work on the other! And a CD-ROM full of images from Moyoco Anno’s vast bibliography! And permission to post them (until at least October 31st, 2009)! So if all of the images disappear at some point in the future, you’ll know why.

Get ready for some lovely art. Let’s start with the book, first.

The Tokyo Kamon Girls 40-page flip-book could only be the product of an international upscale cosmetics company with money to spend… if you take my meaning. It’s a high-end production, with gold-foil inset on the cardstock cover depicting the Kamon  Girl designs in something approaching their historical mode: shiny and austentatious. The book features glossy full-colour production with liberal use of a fifth-colour gold ink to add that extra oomph.

Scattered throughout are biographies of each of the five Tokyo Kamon Girls: “pure and innocent” Sakurako, “energetic and strong-willed” Tamaki; Tsuruha (“who sparkles as she drifts through the streets of Tokyo”);  “reserved and elegant” Matsuno; “coquettish” Katsura. In addition to the Kamon featuring the girls, Anno also created a full-size illustration of Sakurako as an ukiyo-e print, which is gorrrrrgeous:

Lantern at night - Sakurako, Ukiyo-e print by Moyoco Anno ©2009

The first half of the book is then rounded out with a description of the make-up brushes and make-up box, a page featuring quotes from Anno on her inspirations for creating the series (“I felt afresh that shu uemura is a global brand which is aimed at the world and treasures Japanese aesthetics. That is why, when designing the bottles, I felt I wanted to design something with a hint of modern Japanese taste.”). Oh, and a walk through the five real-life Tokyo neighborhoods that the five fictional ladies live in, places that you will never live because you are poor (for the record: Ueno Park, Den-En-Chofu, Ginza, Azabu-Juban, Shirokane). It is amazing.

Manga-ka Moyoco Anno.

The other half of the book (and really it’s a flip-book, maybe this is side-a and the cosmetics-focussed side is side-b) is an introduction to Moyoco Anno, artist. It contains a biography, partial bibliography, and dozens of illustrations. Because the bio wasn’t presented to me in a digital form, I feel awkward about copy-pasting it in here, but the notable bits from her biography are that she’s been making manga for 20 years, she’s an accomplished ukiyo-e woodblock printer in addition to being a manga-ka, she’s had a bunch of hit series, and her website is http://www.annomoyoco.com.

One of the most interesting bits about Moyoco Anno that isn’t in the printed bio? It doesn’t mention that Moyoco Anno’s manga has appeared from more publishers in English than any other manga-ka! It’s true. Her North American debut was in the pages of the Tokyopop-published Happy Mania (11 volumes), but her next series was the satirical bishonen role-reversal series Flowers & Bees from Viz (7 volumes). Her current, and most-popular English-language series is Sugar Sugar Rune, an all-ages shojo series from Del Rey (8 volumes, ongoing) about magical young witches who gain their powers from breaking boys hearts (HEH). Somewhere in there, Anno contributed a story to the French/Japanese co-production JAPON, known in North America as Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators from Fanfare/Ponent-Mon (1 volume). Actually, the bibliography mentions all of these stories except Flowers & Bees, but despite being an English-language booklet produced for an English audience, it doesn’t mention which… if any… of her manga works have been translated into English! If it weren’t for the fact that my customer demographic and the demographic for these products were so far apart, I’d fear customers coming in to ask me for manga like Hatakari Man or Sakuraman. But I have a feeling I’ll be able to sleep easy on this one.

What this book does do though is provide lots of gorgeous illustrations and excerpts from her catalogue, which I am free to run below. Yay! Oh, and: all images Copyright ©2009 Moyoco Anno, all rights reserved. Don’t copy or distribute these images. Got it?

Chandelier, original work for Prints21 2005 fall edition. Prints21©Moyoco Anno.

Jelly Beans (interior art spread). Jelly Beans©Moyoco Anno / Kodansha.

Le Chant Des Grillons (interior page), ©Moyoco Anno/s (from Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators)

Sakurakan, ©Moyoco Anno/Kodansha

Sugar Sugar Rune (colour illustration), ©Moyoco Anno / Kodansha

Tundra Blue Ice, 1988 by Moyoco Anno, SHUEISHA Inc.

Stella, original work for Prints21 2005 fall edition. Prints21©Moyoco Anno.

Lovely, isn’t it? That “Tundra Blue Ice” one actually reminds me a little bit of Taiyo Matsumoto’s work, and it’s from very early in her career. Heck, it might’ve been her first series actually… the timing works out right. Nice.

Here’s two more pieces, but these are particularly cool. These are wordless comic strips from Moyoco Anno’s newspaper strip, called Ochibisan. It runs in Japan’s Asahi Shinbun, and is illustrated in the style of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. It’s a celebration of the seasons, and each strip runs in brilliant full colour.

Ochibisan © Moyoco Anno

Ochibisan © Moyoco Anno

Seeing all of these pieces together, it really shows the range that Anno posesses. Moving effortlessly from manga to fashion illustration to ukiyo-e woodblock prints to newspaper strips to product packaging and design. She has a phenomenal career, and I find myself really inspired by her work.

In closing, I wanted to talk about a few little biographical tidbits that I didn’t get to mention early on. First off, sadly Moyoco Anno took a break from manga last year for health reasons, stopping the serialization of her incredibly popular Hatakari Man manga mid-stream (which may account for why it has not yet been licensed for release in North America). It is currently unknown when she’ll return to manga (though she is continuing her newspaper strip), though given the prestige of the Tokyo Kamon Girls project I can’t imagine why she would.

Moyoco Anno is also the wife of Neon Genesis Evangelion director and co-creator and Gainax founder Hideki Anno. They wed in 2002, over 5 years after The End of Evangelion.

–

For more on Moyoco Anno and Tokyo Kamon Girls, check out these resources:

Wikipedia Biography – Moyoco Anno at AnimeNewsNetwork – Moyoco Anno Official Website – shu uemera at The National Post – shu uemera Tokyo Kamon Girls Official Website

- Christopher
Thanks to Nathalie for the heads-up!

]]> http://comics212.net/2009/08/19/moyoco-anno-x-shu-uemura-manga-make-up-debuts/feed/ 5 http://comics212.net/2009/08/18/are-the-new-people-post-otaku-welcome-to-the-mega-culture/ http://comics212.net/2009/08/18/are-the-new-people-post-otaku-welcome-to-the-mega-culture/#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:19:03 +0000 Chris http://comics212.net/?p=3097 This past weekend a new Japanese pop-cultural centre opened in San Francisco, and it sounds pretty awesome. It’s called New People and it’s… well it’s kind of a Japan-style mall. It’s got a gift shop with manga and artbooks and designer toys and things, 4 different goth/loli-informed clothing stores including a North American outpost for hyper-popular label Baby The Stars Shine Bright, a movie theatre sponsored by Viz, a cafe (or two), and an art gallery. It sounds like a pretty amazing building actually.

To celebrate the opening of New People, they held a great big cultural festival called the “J-Pop Summit”, with bands and clothes and artists and presentations from Yoshitaka Amano (final fantasy), Yuichi Yokoyama (New Engineering), and the director of the live action 20th Century Boys movie, which I guess Viz announced they have the rights to now? At least they had an actor dressed up like “Friend” from the books, which is kind of amazing too.

Check out these event descriptions from [About.com], [Same Hat!], and [Anime Vice].

All in all, it sounds like a truly amazing event, and a step forward for the promotion of Japanese pop culture in North America. It also seemed really weird to me as well, here’s why:

I think I mentioned that this fall I was lucky enough to see a presentation on Otaku by Professor Kaichiro Morikawa, an expert on Otaku, Japanese culture, and the export of Japanese culture outside of Japan. One of the most interesting points in his lecture (and the whole thing was phenomenal) was that Otaku spaces are generally _closed_ spaces, hidden from the public eye, and that non-Otaku spaces are all about being clear and visible and open to the public. The manga, software, doujin, and toy stores in Japan have their windows blacked out, and popular clothing and mainstream culture stores have big glass windows inviting eyes inwards. Otaku are introverts, ashamed of their purchases, non-otaku are extroverts flashing their shopping bags with massive brand-name labels on them (this is both only part of his larger point, and a simplification, but still). Check this out:

Animate Flagship, Manga/Anime/Character Goods Store, Ikebukuro.

Softmap Software store, Akihabara

Lamtarra, Porn Store, Akihabara

Now, conversely, check out the frontage on these fashionable flagship stores in Fashion-capital Harajuku.

Christian Dior Flagship, Transparent Building

Ralph Lauren, 25ft high windows

Louis Vuitton, giant glass windows with Takashi Murakami art done up in lights. Gorgeous.

Can you see the difference?

Actually as a bit of an aside: Perhaps the most interesting thing here? Japanese Otaku have largely rejected much of LV ‘partner’ artist Takashi Murakami’s work, apparently. He appeals to the mainstream, to youth culture, and especially to other artists. But the hardcore nerds simply aren’t into his work or his ideals, so far as I can tell. There’s nothing moe about his work… Louis Vuitton’s great big transparent open-concept retail space (with multiple scultptures visible from the street…!) is directly in opposition to contemporary otaku retail and public spaces.

So I trust this point has been well illustrated?

Here’s what the NEW PEOPLE building looks like.

New People Building Exterior. Photo by Ryan Sands, http://samehat.blogspot.com

It doesn’t look like an Otaku space at all, not even a little. I mean, it’s GORGEOUS, it looks like cutting-edge Japanese fashion retail design. It reminds me a lot of the Harajuku H&M flagship actually, lemmie see if I can find a picture of it.

H&M Flagship, Harajuku

The scale of these two buildings is really, really different btw. The New People building is probably about as tall as the top lit part of that H&M building (called ‘the ice cube building’ btw) in the middle. But you see what I mean about that right, where each floor is open to the street, for 30+ feet of transparent frontage? That was the thing that struck me when looking at the reports on the opening of New People–it doesn’t look like it’s a space for nerds… despite the fact that it is clearly intended to be a space for nerdish pursuits.

The first-floor of the New People building features New People: The Store, a sort of gift-shop of Japanese culture. Artbooks, manga, toys, shirts, paper goods, designer items, etc. The folks at Anime Vice did a great walk-through of the space, and apparently they allow embedding so spend 30 seconds or so watching this:

Here’s a still photo, in case it doesn’t embed correctly or you don’t like clicking things:

New People- The Store. Photo by Animevice.com

Again, it’s got a big open floor plan and it’s lovely and well-designed, but it’s laid out like a boutique clothing store, not something ‘otaku’. Check this out, here’s what a hardcore otaku shop looks like:

Animate, Ikebukuro

Village Vanguard, a pop culture chain store. Shown: Odaiba location.

“So where the hell is he going with this?” you’re asking yourself. And to be honest, I’m not 100% sure. The whole thing is just leading to more questions for me, about intent, about the future of Japanese culture (and therefore manga…) in North America, about the future of retail. But I think what it all comes down to is the future, and the industry passing from a planning/regrouping phase into actively seeking “What’s Next?”.

I’m specifically curious what this means for Viz, whose CEO and parent-company are the primary investors/visionarries involved in this undertaking. Let’s face it, they’re so huge now that when you’re talking about the North American manga industry, you’re talking about Viz (publishers of Naruto, Bleach, and Pokemon, for those not in the know). For years I’ve been discussing whether or not “What’s Next?” in manga is going to be an aging demographic embracing more mature works… or if it’s just going to be 40 year old Naruto fans (mirroring the superhero comics industry). While they have continued to funnel new product into the all-consuming shonen/shojo machine, Viz seems to have clearly staked out the mature next steps, the seinen manga, the light novels, the more mature shoujo manga, the sci-fi fantasy novels. But they’re also importing larger parts of both Japanese youth culture and otaku culture. We’re getting more art books, we’re getting more Japanese movies, we’re getting more character goods. We’re getting online manga, for free, for audiences that could be entirely new to comics (or at the very least a part of the burgeoning literary/new mainstream graphic novel clique). Viz seems to be betting on a wider, wilder, more diverse manga industry (as part of a larger J-culture industry), and part of that is creating a cultural context for the material here in North America… that more than hardcore nerds are aware of. New People is clearly a massive leap in that direction.

But: NEW PEOPLE are deliberately eschewing the “otakuness” of otaku culture in an effort to present otaku culture to the mass market.

Viz, Shogakukan, all involved over there, they’re trying to create a mainstream cultural awareness of many different facets of Japanese culture, which (if successful) will make it much easier for them to import the thousands of more complicated, unique, challenging manga that they have access to through their Japanese parent companies. It’s a canny move from where I’m seeing, if it plays out right. To be honest, as a fan of complicated, unique, challenging manga I win no matter what.

It also looks like Viz just might be trying to move their fortunes out of the iron grip of the increasingly fickle thieves (“but I’m just sampling!”) that make up anime and manga fandom to… you know, ‘normal’ people. I just wonder when, or if, the hardcore nerds, the American Otaku, are going to revolt when their fandom is opened up to the general public… It already happens all the time on smaller scales, the fandom all watches pokemon, it gets too big, they hate pokemon and people who still like it are “Poketards”. Ditto Naruto, and it’s die-hard fans who are called “Narutards” by the otaku elite (you can tell they’re elite because they refer to anime with North American releases by their Japanese names).

I wonder how long it’ll be before, much like Nintendo hardcore fans (called “core gamers” in the lingo) before them, the American Otaku cry that the manga industry has abandoned them for the general public, where companies can make a fuckload of money for a tenth the effort of satisfying their often insane and frequently contradictory desires…?

Or has that editorial already been written?

Anyway, maybe it won’t go tits-up after all, no core-fans vs. casual-readers in Thunderdome.

Uniqlo is a popular Japanese clothing chain, it’s like the Japanese equivilent of The Gap (actually Uniqlo’s been eyeing buying The Gap for years now… anyway). Uniqlo has been doing a series of radical partnerships for the last few years, putting manga characters and art, and anime, and video games, onto t-shirts. Inexpensive t-shirts too, that ‘normal’ people are expected to buy and wear. They call the whole thing “Mega Culture”.

Floor graphics, Uniqlo T-Shirt Store, Harajuku

MEGA CULTURE. Parappa + Uniqlo = greater than the sum of their parts. The blending of introvert and extrovert culture.

Uniqlo’s got the big glass-fronted stores & they’ve got otaku culture all wrapped-up in them, in their lovely boutique-style store layouts. And they’re making money hand-over-fist. When I was visiting Japan, the recently released slate of Shonen Sunday Anniversary shirts had made a debut, and the Harajuku Uniqlo was actually hosting a gallery exhibition and mangaka signing, VIP invite only. I did not get in (LAME) but I did get to observe the normals, the average hip man-and-woman off the street, prowling the same t-shirt racks as obvious otaku, both finding common ground in a bitch’n Gundam Anniversary T or distressed Urusei Yatsura LUM women’s longsleeve. MEGA CULTURE.

So maybe that’s what we’re heading towards… a more seamless blend of nostalgia, youth, and introvert culture with the mass market. Maybe there’ll be friction between the established fans and those trying to spread/exploit that fandom. James Cameron’s NEON GENESIS EVANGELION probably won’t be worse than this summer’s G.I. Joe movie (how could it be?). Maybe not, and video game t-shirts goth-loli affectations will fade. But with the opening of a three-floor, culturally oriented shopping centre by a Japanese-owned American publisher with 15 years of experience in importing Japanese culture, one thing is for certain: the game has definitely changed.

- Chris

]]> http://comics212.net/2009/08/18/are-the-new-people-post-otaku-welcome-to-the-mega-culture/feed/ 16 http://comics212.net/2009/06/15/manga-art-in-japan/ http://comics212.net/2009/06/15/manga-art-in-japan/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:39:13 +0000 Chris http://comics212.net/?p=2746

One of the things I really enjoyed about my last trip to Japan was, in the Tezuka Museum, getting to see original art (manuscript) pages by Osamu Tezuka. I feel like I have a new perspective on his work, seeing the paste-downs, white paint, pencil marks, and changes that each page went through before going to print. I feel like I’ve learned something about his process, and maybe I understand his work a little better. Maybe I’m full of shit too, but it’s still a nice feeling. (Image from Tezuka Museum to left, click for larger.

I also got to see originals at the Kyoto International Manga Museum in Kyoto Japan, although surprisingly very few Japanese original pages as the installations that were up while I was there were primarily from other countries. Still, I do like me some original art, and it was pretty great. Unfortunately the Museum’s photo policy was incredibly strict, and so it wasn’t possible to get any photos for the blog. Them’s the breaks…

Perhaps the biggest “score” in terms of diversity of material was Nakano Broadway Mall, which had lots of “auctions” going on for original artwork, with many manga pages and anime cels on display. I actually didn’t see much “finished” work when it came to the manga–lots of sketches and autographed books–but it’s still a bit of a treasure-trove of process work. (Image from Nakano Broadway up-top).

For my upcoming trip (one week! eeee!) I do plan on, if possible, hitting the Tezuka Museum and the Kyoto Manga Museum again, but I’m wondering if there’s anywhere else I can go in Japan (we’re travelling A LOT this time) that I’d have access to Japanese original art? Whether temporary shows/exhibits, or permanent ones. 

If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, particularly if there’s a website attached so I can parse it out and find the place, I’d really appreciate it! Thanks!

- Christopher

Oh, delicious assortment of Japanese alcoholic beverages.

So I am going back to Japan, with my darling and talented husband. As you might imagine I am quite excited about this, I’ve been wanting to go back to Japan since two days after my previous (and first-ever) trip ended. There’s something to be said for spending a night sleeping in your own bed, but any longer than that, I’d rather be in Japan. AND SOON I WILL BE!

We’re arriving in Tokyo on June 23rd, and staying for 3 weeks. 3 weeks! Just think about how much nerditry we’re going to get up to! We’ve done the preliminary planning for the trip and now it’s just down to fine-tuning the details. We’re going to do more traditional stuff on this trip, I think, for basically a full week. Nikko, Sapporro, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Shirahama, 7 days non-stop. Whoo! But that leaves two full weeks of hanging out in Tokyo too, which is awesome. I could be happy just wandering around Tokyo neighborhoods for days and days, and I’m looking for excuses to do so. Feel free to make recommendations about what I should see in the comments section!

Of course, the biggest nerd sight-to-see is the life-sized Gundam robot that they’ve built in the middle of Tokyo Bay. If you remember my last trip to the magical island of Odaiba, you’ll remember that it already features a scale-model Statue of Liberty, a Ferris Wheel, and a beach (seriously, don’t go in the water). Well it looks like that in recognition of some anniversary or something, they’re building a 60 foot tall Gundam that’s gonna move and shoot lasers. It opens while we’re there. It should be bitch’n. Here’s a picture ganked from DannyChoo.com:

Photo of life-sized Gundam on Odaiba, taken by Danny Choo.

Fried Rice Vending Machine

So, yeah, I am going to have a seriously awesome time.

And of course I’m going to take pictures! Though honestly sorting and resizing and uploading a thousand photos last time was brutal, so I’m going to look into some sort of Flickr feed based thing that will show up in the sidebar, and I’ll post highlights here at the blog. And commentary.

Or maybe I’ll just slog through it again, who knows? I was checking the dates and I only got 3 updates done while I was in Japan last time, and I’d like to be updating at least every other day this time… I’ll see what I can do.

Actually, I was just going through my Japan photos, and I was reminded that I never actually posted any of the shrine/temple/castle photos from my trip. Like, you got a little bit from Himeji, but we took hundreds of photos that never made it online. Geez, Kiyomizu Dera alone is breathtakingly beautiful. Shit, alright, one more photo:

Building at Kiyomizu Dera Shrine

Huh, maybe I really should get those up on Flickr too…!

Anyway, JAPAN. JAPAN. Ask me if I’m happy?

Just kidding, you know I’m happy.

- Chris

America, these are your rights and freedoms being eroded. Something that makes you feel squeamish but is entirely legal in other first-world countries might send this guy to jail for 15 years, with a $500,000 fine. Something that you reading this could be guilty of* by google image-searching the wrong Japanese manga-ka’s name with the “safesearch” turned off. 

“Mr. Handley now faces the loss of his freedom and his property, all for owning a handful of comic books. It’s chilling. ” – Charles Brownstein, Executive Director, CBLDF

“Personally, I wish the CBLDF had been running the case, and not Mr Handley’s lawyers… it’s a bad outcome all around: bad for him, bad for comics and bad for the First Amendment.” – Neil Gaiman

- Christopher
*Actually, only partially guilty for posession, not the mail-related charges. Point stands.

Anyway, if you want to see what went down in 2008, the list is below. Thanks again to all of the great artists, writers, authors, and organizations we were fortunate enough to work with last year… and this year. 2009 is already off to a pretty solid start, if I do say so!

–

Author Events at The Beguiling, 2008

Cecil Castellucci (Janes In Love), The Beguiling, January 30th
Scott Hepburn (Star Wars: VECTOR), The Beguiling, January 30th

Kean Soo (Jellaby Volume 1), Keep Toronto Reading, February 5th
Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet Volume 1), Keep Toronto Reading, February 5th
In Association with Toronto Public Library 

Kean Soo (Jellaby Volume 1), The Beguiling, February 6th
Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet Volume 1), The Beguiling, February 6th

Michel Rabagilati (Paul Goes Fishing), Lillian H. Smith Library, March 15th

R.G. Taylor (Growing Up With Comics), Industry Night, March 26th
Ron Kasman (Growing Up With Comics), Industry Night, March 26th
Mark Innes (Comic Eye), Industry Night, March 26th

Jillian Tamaki Art Show, The Beguiling, April 14th-May 30th

Free Comic Book Day For Kids! @ Palmerston Library, May 3rd
Featuring: Michael Cho (Max Finder Mysteries), Steven Manale (You Crack Me Up!), Brian McLachlan (Owl Magazine), and Jeremy Tankard (Grumpy Bird).
Presented in association with Toronto Public Library, Scholastic Books, and Owlkids. Image shown below, featuring Jeremy Tankard.

Free Comic Book Day at The Beguiling, May 3rd
Featuring J. Korim (Penciler, Atomic Robo FCBD Edition), Jessie Lam (Colorist, Neozoic), Tyrone McCarthy (Creator, Corduroy High), Alana McCarthy (Illustrator), Tara Talan (Galaxion), Willow Dawson (Violet Miranda), Nick Mandaag (Artist and self-publisher), Chip Zdarsky (Monster Cops).

Stuart Immonen, The Beguiling, May 28th

Luminato Arts Festival, June 8th
Featuring Spain Rodriguez (Che: A Graphic Biography), Dan Goldman (Shooting War), and Bernice Eisenstein (I Was A Child Of Holocaust Survivors). 
Presented in association with Luminato. 

Blake Bell (Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko), Lillian H. Smith Library, June 18th

Jason (Low Moon, Pocket Full of Rain), The Beguiling, June 10th 

Ray Fawkes (Apocalipstix), Revival Bar, August 6th
Cameron Stewart (Apocalipstix), Revival Bar, August 6th

The Doug Wright Awards, August 10th
Official Bookseller

Russel Lissau (The Batman Strikes!), The Beguiling, August 29th

Matthew Forsythe (Ojingogo), The Beguiling, September 27th
Pat Shechuk (Pohadky), The Beguiling, September 27th
Marek Colek (Pohadky), The Beguiling, September 27th

The Word On The Street, Graphic Novel Tent Official Sponsor, September 28th
Featuring: D.J. Steinberg, Steve Manale, Brian McLachlan, Jim Zubkavich, Matt Moylan, Jeremy Tankard, Matt Hammill, Steve Murray, Mariko Tamaki, Ray Fawkes, Cameron Stewart, Jim Munroe, Ramon Perez, Ray Fenwick, Susan Hughes, Willow Dawson, Pat Shewchuck, Marek Colek, Matt Forsythe, Andy Bellanger, Joey Comeau, Emily Horne, Matt Forsythe, Ryan North, Kate Beaton, Ramon Perez.

Street Fighter Tribute Launch, The Beguiling, September 28th
Featuring nearly two-dozen different comics creators including Cameron Stewart, Bobby Chiu, Kei Acedera, Scott Hepburn, Alex Milne, Arthur Dela Cruz, Eric Kim, Alvin Lee, Omar Dogan, Joe Ng, Christine Choi, Eric Vedder, Joe Vriens, Matt Moylan, Jim Zubkavich, Saejin Oh, and many more.

Lynda Barry (What It Is!), IFOA/Writing The Unthinkable, October 23rd-26th
Chip Kidd (Bat-Manga), IFOA, October 25th-26th

Shaun Tan (The Arrival), The Beguiling, October 28th

Chris Onstad (Achewood, The Great Outdoor Fight), The Beguiling, November 4th

Igort (Baobab, Ignatz Line), The Beguiling, November 15th
David B. (Epileptic, Nocturnal Emissions), The Beguiling, November 15th

Maurice Vellekoop (Pin-Ups), Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, November 25th

Dave Lapp (Drop-In), The Beguiling, December 3rd

Kramers Ergot World Tour, The Beguiling, December 11th
Featuring Sammy Harkham, Seth, Shary Boyle, Souther Salazar, Kevin Huizenga, John Pham

Faith Erin Hicks (The War At Ellsmere), The Beguiling, December 17th

–

So, yeah. Come to Toronto. We are doing awesome things here, we’d love for you to be a part of it.

- Chris

 Tlönista clears things up for those of you who don’t quite get it.  Click through to see the girl version as well.

But yeah, go ahead and be as critical as you want, or as critical as you need to.  But I’ve got no problems calling people on empty snark… just like no one should have a problem calling me on the same.

- Chris

“In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature. – Amazon.com”

Which is annoying nanny-state garbage that disinclines me to use their site, but fine. However, it seems that some patrons of Amazon have noticed differences in the way this policy is applied, and that it tends to classify many books with gay and lesbian themes that aren’t necessarily explicit as “adult”, while keeping many heterosexual explicit works in the public eye…including a graphic novel:

We would like to hear the rationalisation for allowing sales ratings for explicit books with a heterosexual focus such as:

–Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
–Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
–and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)

Yet the following books, which have a gay or lesbian focus, have been classed as “adult books” and stripped of their sales ratings:

–Radclyffe Hill’s classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
–Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);
–Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
–The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
–and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).

Please tell us, Amazon, why the explicit books with a heterosexual focus are allowed to keep their sales ratings while the non-explicit romances, the histories and the biographies that deal with LGBTQ issues are not. - Petition against Amazon’s policy

I like Lost Girls as much as the next guy, but how is that not an “adult” work when a non-fiction history of Homophobia is? Maybe it’d classify if adult if someone told Amazon about all the hot lady-on-lady or man-on-man action?

This is pretty gross. I realize the world is filled opportunity for outrage these days, but if you could muster some against a policy which will very, very likely be changed with enough attention, I’d appreciate it. Head over to:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

and sign up.

EDIT: If you’re looking for more on this story, Jezebel has a great write-up, more examples of books stripped of their standing, and what it all means. Check it out at: http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books

- Christopher

“Last week, Marvel’s 2007 adaptation of the Stephen King fantasy epic appeared, as if by magic, atop the hardcover list, unseating Watchmen. Although I couldn’t find an obvious reason for the book’s performance, I was willing to accept that the upcoming release of The Dark Tower: Treachery hardcover or another miniseries might’ve renewed interest in the original. (Or did I completely miss a new edition or reissue?)

“But this week The Gunslinger Born is nowhere to be seen. Watchmen again rests comfortably upon its hardcover throne, followed by a trio of Batman-related books.

“It’s as if last week never happened.” – Kevin Melrose, Robot 6 @ CBR

Sorry, I didn’t realize that no one had addressed this.

It’s pretty clear that the NYT Graphic Novel Bestseller lists are equally weighing all of Diamond’s direct-market sell-in with all of the other sales channels’ sell-through. What this means is that every book shipped by Diamond to a comic book store counts exactly the same on their list as every book actually sold by a bookscan-reporting store. It means that, on the week that comic-store-favourite graphic novels get released, their positions on the bestseller list will be abornomally high… but they will most likely never be heard from again. Unless their reorder velocity in a given week is incredibly high… maybe if that item was put on a sale or something?

So how did we end up with Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born on the list? That’s tricky. Marvel is a very litigious company, and has all sorts of warnings about reproducing their private personal information in public. Blah blah blah. So, let’s talk about me instead, because I doubt even Marvel would be able to argue that retailers aren’t allowed to talk about their own businesses. So: There was a time period last month where I ordered Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born and received a higher-than-average discount on that book, and for every copy I ordered, I got another copy of the book for free. I did this, it happened, and I am talking about my actions as a retailer (litigious!). So the week that all of those discounted copies and free copies of Dark Tower that I ordered shipped to me, the book ALSO appeared on The New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller list. Do you see the correlation there?

I don’t think Marvel tried to game the system with this maneuver; Diamond Comics also reported the first Dark Tower collection as being the top-seller for the month, likely because of this promotion. Apparently according to Diamond, something that sells at a reduced price—even if that reduced price is zero—is still a sale, and when they report data to the NYT? A sale is a sale.

Basically, in the larger bookselling community, the “end customer” is the reader, the consumer, because bookstores can return unsold product to the publisher (or distributor), and so a sale is really only final once it leaves the store. But in the Direct Market of comic book stores, the “end customer” is the retailer–the comic book store owner–because the comic book store owner can’t return the books; the final sale is when the books arrive at the store. Worse than that, comic book store owners are expected to front-load their orders–order heavily up front with no immediate promise of further availability–to secure a better discount from Diamond as a supplier, which further weights the Diamond’s numbers on the day-of-release.

So two largely incongruous sales systems are being merged–pretty badly it looks like–to generate a list that has books with little long-term sales spiking on release and never appearing again, and heavily prone to being thrown entirely out of whack by promotions, sales, discounting, and… hell, just giving stuff away for free! It’s one of the many, many problems of the apples-to-oranges sales systems that we have in comics. And yeah, it’s why The New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller List is Broken.

- Christopher

OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK
The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames (Vertigo/DC Comics)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb and Joss Whedon (Dark Horse Comics)
Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka (DC Comics)
Secret Six by Gail Simone (DC Comics)
Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction (Marvel Comics)

The awards are handed out to media and media-makers who provide compelling, honest, and visible portrayals of GLBT people.

I’ve often felt that the intended aims of the media awards were awkward, giving a pat on the back to straight people who are good to gays rather than recognizing the achievements of… you know… actual gay people who also inspire and create great work and are visible and honest and etc.  But since I haven’t read 4 of the 5 books on my list up there I’ll hold my tongue until I get through them… if I ever get through them.

(Maybe Scott Pilgrim will finally get nominated next year when the movie comes out, eh?)

- Chris

What pushed me over the edge? Well I’m about a week behind on my feed reading, but I just came across a post at the Blog, talking about Naruto and Bleach anime at iTunes in Canada. Which is a non-story, and just sort of lame, but fine. What pushes the whole thing into all-caps LAME is that they illustrated the article about Naruto anime… with Fan Art. Like they have no idea what Naruto anime looks like. Better still? Fan Art by COREY LEWIS (Sharknife). Not exactly an unknown creator, you know? And they didn’t credit him, or link his site, they just used his art commercially without asking him. And they didn’t correct the story when folks wrote in in the comments section saying “Hey, what’s up with this?”

Just… just amateur hour. I don’t need to be reading this site.

If you need to see for yourself, it’s a December 17th entry. I’m not linking them.

Merry Christmas.

- Christopher
P.S. Check out Corey Lewis’ stuff online at http://www.reyyy.com/

“Ever since Archie’s first appearance in 1941, Archie Comics has prided itself with keeping up with the fads and fashions of the times.  That includes technology.  Photocopiers, fax machines, microwaves, video players, compact music players, the internet. you name it. Archie Comics has been there through every innovation, exploring each with hilarious humor as the classic cast of characters both utilize and wrestle with modern technology.  This March, several stories highlight the latest gadgets in goofy fashion, as only Archie Comics can!”

The part that they forgot to mention is that they are consistently 10 years behind in doing so. For example, I present the rest of the press release:

“ARCHIE #595: “Home Insecurity”: After robbers break into his safe, Mr. Lodge upgrades his security system to protect his property. but who will protect him from the ever-pervasive new system?!”

I hate to be all “Simpsons Did It”, but just in terms of “keeping up with the fads” The Simpsons did wacky-home-security-antics with Pierce Brosnan 2 years ago. Yikes.

Other issues that month will have (not joking) Archie addicted to text messaging, Betty & Veronica joining “The Geek Squad” (like Best Buy! Only not-litigious!), and Reggie having some sort of problem with camera phones. I hear Archie might even get Vista for Christmas… next year.

Watch out Ellis, Archie’s nipping at your body-modified, cybernetically-enhanced heels.

- Chris

What do The RZA, Jay Z, Busta Rhymes, and ICE MUTHAFUCKIN T have in common? They’re all over Kagan McLeod’s completely, completely awesome HISTORY OF RAP poster, and Kagan’s been getting pics with all of them and the poster over at his Facebook page.

ICE T with Kagan McLeod’s History of Rap print. Photo by X-man from Disconnexions.com

RZA with Kagan’s History of Rap. Photo by X-man from Disconnexions.

There are another 20+ pics over at Kagan’s site…

I know I’ve blogged about this print before, but? Local boy makes very good, you know? We’ve sold a ton of these at the store and a ton more through the website (they’re only 20 bucks), I’m super happy for Kagan getting to live the dream and meet all these incredibly talented artists.

- Chris
Top Photo of Kagan McLeod at the Source magazine offices, by X-Man of Disconnexions.com.

“Update: Simon and Schuster representatives wrote CR Monday evening claiming that the number of images used in the publication of this interview (eight, including cover) Sunday morning surpassed the number of images they allow anyone to use for free.” - Tom Spurgeon, Comics Reporter.

Brazil… When hearts were entertaining June, we stood beneath an amber moon and softly whispered ‘Someday soon’. We kissed and clung together then; tomorrow was another day. The morning found me miles away with still a million things to say. Now when twilight dims the skies above recalling thrills of our love there’s one thing I’m certain of: Return, I will, to old Brazil!

- Christopher

I don’t know why everyone keeps going on about this “Archaia Studios Press” being bought out… I had thought it was the publisher of Publisher of Mouse Guard being bought out… Or at the least, The Publisher of Mouse Guard and they’ve got some good French licenses as well. I mean sure, The Publisher of Mouse Guard is publishing other books, and they’re all produced by nice-enough folks and there’s a general level of quality to the line which speaks well of managing editor Mark Smylie. But The Publisher of Mouse Guard publishes Mouse Guard, which is a phenomenally successful indy publishing story, possibly the best-selling indy comic of the past few years. It’s sold tons and tons in hardcover, and the soft cover edition was published and distributed by an imprint of Random House, Villard Books, which is a pretty big deal. So why hasn’t anyone mentioned Mouse Guard in all of these proceedings, then?

Let’s just throw some actual facts out there:

- ASP apparently had a great, great creator ownership contract. (Except for a strange non-compete clause).

- Mouse Guard sold a fuck-tonne of books, which would mean ASP would either have paid or would owe Mouse Guard creator David Petersen a fuck-tonne of money, because again, that contract was pretty good.

- David Petersen hasn’t updated his blog since July 30th, wherein he won two Eisner Awards. I haven’t seen any public comment from him anywhere throughout this whole ordeal or since that time.

-  Despite books continuing to dribble out from ASP over the past few months, despite the restructuring, we haven’t seen a new issue of Mouse Guard, with the second series stalled at 3 issues (of a projected six) since February 26th, 2008.

- Mouse Guard is ASP’s best selling book.

- If they’re in a situation of financial uncertainty, and they are publishing books occasionally, why aren’t they publishing their best selling book?

- Everyone, everyone, wants that second Mouse Guard collection. Diamond Book Distributors devoted more of their Book Expo America booth to Mouse Guard as a property than any of the other publishers). You know Diamond wants it. I bet ASP wants that second book. Villard too, probably. Booksellers want it (I want it).

So where is it? I can only imagine that whoever acquires ASP will want that book, that money, and the rights to make toys and cartoons based on the series too, and if I had to hazard a guess, that would be a big part of why we aren’t seeing it… Of course, that brings up the fact that no issues of the series have shipped since the end of February, and the “media rights” contract is a fairly recent development. Something else is going on.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that it’s fascinating that the crown jewel of the ASP line hasn’t been mentioned in any of these discussions; it’s the elephant in the room with an army of tiny adorable mice riding its back. If someone told me all 9 issues of Mouse Guard published to date sold more than every other comic book ASP has published combined, I wouldn’t even blink–I certainly know that’s true for us at the store, in our limited experience. I’d go so far as to say that the vast majority of the reason one would want ASP, and demand partial ownership of all of their properties, is solely to get a hold of Mouse Guard.

So let’s move from statements of fact to a line of questiong:

- What if you were the guy that owned the most successful indy book in years?

- What if your publisher went from a “fair” or even “generous” contract, to one that met the “industry standard” in an industry where that standard wallows in a sewer, rights-wise, most of the time?

- Where you were now expected to give up all of your media rights without so much as a bidding war, despite the fact one is very-much called for?

- Would you sign that contract?

- What if that “Industry Standard Contract” was a lie, in an industry with Image, or First Second Books, or even Villard (with whom you’re already working)? Where not every publisher demands those rights from you? In fact, factoring mainstream book publishers, most pubs don’t make those requests of you.

- What if almost anyone in the industry would publish your book on your terms, just because it would make them so much money on the publishing alone?

- What if not signing the new ASP contract meant that you couldn’t put out your series again for a year, or more, because of a “non-compete” clause in your original contract?

- What if that derailed the intense momentum of your series? Made it so that you couldn’t meet the deadlines of your other contracts with Random House? Severly disrupted your cashflow, your work schedule?

- Would you sign it then?

- How would you feel being put in that position?

It’s very easy to forget the human face behind words like “Strongarm Tactics” and “Industry Standard Contracts”. It’s easy to forget that PR spin is just that: spin. It’s easy to forget that just because someone describes something as “Industry Standard” doesn’t make it true… That just because one creator is willing to sign a bad contract (see: Platinum, Tokyopop, etc.) doesn’t mean that every creator is obligated to. That silence does not mean consent.

So how would I answer my own questions up there? Simply, I’d just go ahead and start publishing again, that second collection through Villard, and let Random House’s massive team of lawyers take all comers… If there were any contention at all of course. Sometimes legal posturing is just posturing. I think that would be the way to go, and it would minimize the interuption to my creativity, my cashflow, and my life. Because it’s coming up on February 26th again soon.

But then I guess we won’t know until The Author of Mouse Guard speaks up. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

- Chris
All art from Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, by David Petersen. Theoretically Copyright 2008 David Petersen.

Above is Pascal “White Rapids” Blanchet’s poster image decrying the arts and culture funding cuts perpetrated by Stephen Harper a few weeks before he called an election. It’s a lovely image, isn’t it? Feel free to spread it around a little…

More on the lovely work of Pascal Blanchet at http://www.pascalblanchet.ca/.

- Christopher

A few weeks ago I took a little vacation from my day job selling comics for The Beguiling, to head out to Seattle and sell some comics for my friends at Udon. They exhibited at the Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, in Seattle, WA, a video-game convention hosted by the popular webcomic Penny Arcade. They’re really strict about who does or doesn’t get to exhibit at their show (though anyone can attend), and it’s the incredible devotion of the Udon guys to the Street Fighter videogames that got them through the door. I had a fun time, ate some great food, hung out with cool folks, and played a lot of Bomberman on my DS… I really gotta buy that at some point.

Anyway, the above notice was posted by the entrance ways to the exhibit hall, and a version of it appeared in the convention booklet that every attendee was given. Notice #5 there? It doesn’t take a genius to realize that getting a bunch of folks all in one place and getting them amped up, and maybe even a little turned on? There need to be some ground-rules laid out. The PAX guys throw an outstanding convention, really top-notch, and figuring out little things like this help a lot. Better still, security guards were both centralized and roaming, they received solid training, and there was never someone more than a yelp away. It was a safe, attentive, and solidly planned event. An event that ballooned from under 3,000 people 5 years ago to more than 50k this time out, with only the most minute of growing pains.

Why is this so hard for comics? Why all the hand-wringing and endless debate about nothing? It’s just like the bullshit about drinking or not drinking at the Hyatt during San Diego… endless chat and recrimination and “fun” suggestions and “concerned” suggestions and nerds marching to “a different drummer” but in the end? Just do the right thing. It’s not even hard. You’d think it was, but it’s not.

John DiBello is by all accounts a nice guy. I’ve never met him but people I like vouch for him, so that’s really all it takes–he’s a nice guy. He witnessed some pretty severe-sounding sexual harrassment at Comicon this year, tried to do something about it, and then realized that the biggest comics event in North America doesn’t have a policy on sexual harassment at their show… So he made some noise about it. Seems pretty open and shut, right? But… Angry nerds are still cluttering up comments sections with this stuff though, arguing against it, against him. But yeah, you can go to PAX and they (proudly, even) post right at the front door “Don’t be a dick guys, we’re all here to have fun.” and it’s not controversial, it’s not a problem that needs to be solved with zany solutions or protesting against organizations by giving them our money (I mean come on…). Some people just get it, and do the right thing. So, do it.

It’s funny, the first time I went to the Ad-Astra science fiction convention in Toronto, a small, fan-run and fan-oriented event north of the city, I kinda chuckled when I got to the part in their convention program about proper behaviour for attendees, and that included unwanted sexual advances… I mean, what kind of nerd needs to be told not to touch someones tits or that not everyone wants to hug you? But as soon as a friend I was hanging out at the show with expressed that same disbelief out loud, it clicked for me–this is a sexualized environment. Some people are going to be wearing little clothing, some people are being paid to be friendly (up to a point), some people are going to be demonstrative about their… affections. And that might give someone the wrong impression–that impression being “Holy shit she just made out with that guy I’ma gonna make out with her too!” There’s nothing wrong with setting ground rules.

It’s not like I don’t understand why certain comics folks get a little defensive about stuff like this… The idea is that having a sexual harassment policy means that you need a sexual harassment policy because comics people can’t be trusted to behave themselves. But guys (And It Is All Guys), that’s not the case. Every modern company of more than 4 or 5 people has a sexual harrassment policy, I’m pretty sure you need to have one by law in most places. Every con should have one just like every con should have rules regarding people taking pictures in the aisles, people with carts full of long boxes of books to be signed, and even when the doors open to let people in. That just ensures that a show happens that’s well organized, where everyone is on the same page, and if someone does behave badly there’s a clear statement saying “you shouldn’t have done that” and a very clear set of reprecussions for that person (“gtfo”).

So let’s take a cue from our kissing cousins over at PAX; there’s nothing wrong with telling people how to behave at your event, period. It not that hard to do the right thing.

- Christopher
P.S.: This is nice to read.

Except it’s not just in his head, those are real people doing that. For tonight’s performance, the roles of the angry cartoon animals that exist inside the depressed cat’s imagination will be played by people in the comics industry. It’s kind of amazing and awful at the same time? Like, people gathered down to shout-down a project that they personally feel is too ostentatious? Can you imagine if this happened in other media? Like people protesting The Batman movie because Christopher Nolan didn’t remake the Adam West one? Haha… So sad/awful/amazing.

Keep hope alive, guys.

- Chris

I never really wrapped up my Japan trip from last year. I think it’s because my trip ran from September 3rd to September 17th 2007, and I made my last photo-intensive post about Japan on February 28th, in the absolute worst and greyest part of the winter. I had been talking about my trip for more than 5 months, and so i decided that maybe I was done for a little while.

It turns out that I am not done?

I feel like I’ve missed being in Japan more or less every day I’ve been back in Canada, in some small way or another. Quite honestly, my financial situation is such that I’ll not be traveling back that way any time soon, and that helps a little bit, knowing that it’s far away by more than one metric. It feels far away in my mind, I think because I took so much of my experience and compartmentalized it for the blog here, it now has a life of its own and has been enjoyed by more people than just me–and seriously, thanks to everyone for the comments and kind words on the photos and the journal, I’m tremendously proud of these posts and many of the photos.

Between talking to people at the Comic Con a few weeks back in San Diego, various friends that have come and gone to visit Japan since my trip, and the fact that I get a constant stream of Japanese news and info through my feed reader, little things have kept cropping up in my head, things that I never blogged about, things that I forgot until reminded of them. So maybe if I do another post about the things I miss, and love, I can get over some more of these memories, or at least be able to share them in a better way.

Things I Miss About Japan

1. Convenience stores that are actually convenient. 24 hours, stocking all kinds of stuff you never even knew you needed at 4am but are happy to have access to, like fresh meals and cheap healthy dinners. The only places that have ever come close are the deli/bodegas in Manhattan, and they’ve just gotta keep better hours… and sell alcohol after 2am.

2. Vending Machines are everywhere. I joke that there are vending machines every 15 metres in urban Tokyo, but that’s probably a figure that’s on the low side in most neighborhoods. Tucked into every available space there are machines serving cold and hot drinks of every conceivable stripe, not to mention booze, snacks, and even fried rice and dumplings, all for a buck or two. I’ve never been so hydrated or had so little annoying pocket change as when I was in Japan.

3. What if the Transit actually worked? In Japan, it does! In two weeks of constant, constant public transportation use, we only ever encountered one late train. Seriously, everything else arrived exactly on time, to the minute, and we know that because there were signs everywhere saying when the next train would be. It had better and more frequent signage than the subways in Toronto, and in English to boot. It was a completely integrated transit system–payment was made with one loadable card that you didn’t even have to swipe, you just sort of waved near the turnstile. If you so desired, you could even just use your cell phone as your transit pass, wave IT over the turnstile, and have your transit fees appended to your cell phone bill. It… it just works. It’s clean and well laid-out and bright and on time and it goes everywhere and it works.

4. A feeling of personal safety. I’m a big guy, I live in a good neighborhood, and Toronto is a pretty safe city, all-told. But walking through the streets of Tokyo, Osaka, Himeji, Kyoto, in the middle of the evening, and not having to look over your shoulder? It’s not something you’ll really understand until you get to experience it for yourself. That’s not to say that there isn’t danger in Tokyo, I’m not an idiot, but I dropped my credit card while walking through a mall and someone actually ran up and gave it back to me. Let’s just say that sort of honesty rarely makes an appearance in my day to day life here in Toronto. Hell, not even close.

5. The height and the density. I was talking to my friend Nadine, and the density (and the noise) really, really put her off big-city Japan… she found it to be too much, but ever since I’ve been back I’ve been walking down streets wishing that everything was between 3 and 8 stories tall and jam-packed with amazing little boutique stores and new places to discover. I like that the big cities use their space intelligently, and vertically, and that there’s far, far less suburban sprawl. I like that the space between where you are and where you’re going is almost always filled with something interesting, or pretty.

6. You have to go to an onsen. One of the big things I wanted to do on my trip to Japan was sit in an onsen (a public bath), with a pool set into the side of a mountain and stare out at the sea and contemplate life. I did not get to do that, sadly, but I did get to sit in an outdoor pool outside on a manmade island in the middle of Tokyo Bay and look at the stars, contemplating life, and that was pretty excellent too. I have to admit to being pretty bashful about being big and white and red-haired and parading around naked in a traditional Japanese bath, but about 5 minutes in the baths and that melted away… literally melted as the water was like 40degrees centigrade (104f). It is a whole cultural excursion based entirely around relaxing as much as you possibly can, and it’ll run you between 10 and 20 dollars for 24 hours (you can sleep over, making it about as cheap as staying in a hostel). If I ever have to do Tokyo on the cheap, I’m going to eschew hotels entirely and just take a tour of various onsen.

7. It’s just different. I’m happy and comfortable and my husband is awesome. Things are pretty good. But dropping yourself down into someone else’s culture and then trying to adjust? Completely changing your day to day, your cultural touch points, your diet, your sleep, and trying to make yourself understood to people that are somewhere between vaguely afraid and outright terrified that you might engage them in an English language conversation? It’s awesome. I miss things being different, I miss feeling like I’m adjusting and then coming across something I can’t even begin to explain. I miss that most of all, probably.

Andrew just summed it up: Being in that situation really highlights the mundane. Because Japan is so weird anyway, things that are normally mundane aren’t. Like… toilets, for example. Just every day things like “which is the West exit, exactly”? Everything you do is an achievement. Throughout the short time we were there, we got better at being there, and that was really interesting.

So, yeah. I miss Japan. I miss all the things I got to do and all the things I didn’t get to (can you believe I never got to go for Karaoke? Seriously?). I hope to go back as soon as I can, for longer, but it’s a long way off. Thanks for reading, and sorry for the lack of comics content. I’ll get back to it sooner or later…

- Chris

I haven’t linked to Adam Stephanides site Completely Futile for a while, but his recent post on D+Q’s manga initiative made me think, so I wanted to respond. Here, I’ll let Adam explain his problems with D+Q’s manga releases in his own words:

Drawn & Quarterly’s edition of Red Colored Elegy, a Japanese-language edition of which I reviewed here, is finally out. (Note that the D&Q book contains only the title story from the edition I reviewed, not the shorter stories that were also collected there.) Unfortunately, I can’t greet this occaion with unalloyed joy, because Drawn & Quarterly did the same thing that they did with their Yoshihiro Tatsumi collections: rearranging the panels on each page so that the page (and the book) reads left-to-right, but not flipping the original panels.* Why do they do this? If they aren’t going to publish it unflipped, which they should, I’d much prefer that they just flipped everything. That way the relationships between the panels, and the overall design of each double-page spread, would be preserved. I really don’t understand. Drawn & Quarterly is clearly publishing this as a labor of love, so why do they deliberately mutilate it? - Adam Stephanides, Completely Futile blog

I really enjoyed reading Red Colored Elegy in the D+Q edition, and if you enjoy a work that challenges you as a reader I’d recommended it. That said, I am bothered by the ideology of the D+Q release, of selectively flipping panels or cut-and-pasting pages. I even advocated against such back in the day, back when I heard the first Tatsumi Yoshihiro book The Push Man and other stories was on its way. But despite my problems with this method of formatting manga for North American release, as onerious as this production method is, a) it has the approval of the actual author of the work, and b) every other method for translating manga into English is potentially worse.

I don’t like flipped manga because mirror-imaging original art tends to reveal imperfections in drawing, that’s just the way it goes. It also makes manga-ka practically die of embarassment, seeing work with all of its flaws revealed to the world. I also think that, should someone like D+Q release a manga unflipped, the commercial possibilities of the work are practically halved. Any time a prominent blogger talks about a new manga release, Ed Brubaker (love ya Ed!) pops up in the comments to mention that he can’t read unflipped [backwards] manga. Just can’t read it. And he’s not alone… it’s one of the things that makes unflipped manga so attractive to younger readers by the way… it’s like visual pig-latin. So yeah, I mean, we get the Tatsumi books rearranged (“translated”) for Western audiences and the sales are great because the older, not-necessarily-manga-reading crowd that the books are aimed at can actually read them, and most importantly the original creator of the work is happy with it. Or, at the worst, he is at least happy enough (though having met Mr. Tatsumi, I can in fact confirm he is extremely proud of the D+Q editions of his work).

So, yeah, Adam, I really empathize with you on this one, because I’d love to read the work in a format as close to the original as possible. But I can’t, because I don’t read Japanese, and I’d rather the books come out and find a measure of success to ensure that more come down the pipe as well. And it’s not like D+Q doesn’t do a good job–they just don’t do the job we’d like them to do… a crucial difference.

On that note, Tom Devlin dropped in on Completely Futile to explain D+Q’s position:

Officially, we do this to reach as wide an audience as possible. We don’t view these books as specialty fiction but as stories that everyone should read. We realize that many people will view this as “mutilation” but we always run the English version past the artist before publication. In fact, Tatsumi actually rearranges the panels himself. I personally think of this approach to editing as somewhat similar to putting subtitles on a foreign film–it clearly alters the experience but it’s often the only way for many of us to experience the storytelling art of different cultures. - Tom Devlin, D+Q, on the Completely Futile blog

I think it’s just a matter of fingers crossed, waiting for the industry to change at this point. But it’ll be… shit, 10 years minimum before the readership base comfortable with reading unflipped manga is large enough to support niche or artcomix releases. Keep hope alive, Adam!

- Christopher

SAN DIEGO — A $125,000 donation in support of an anti-gay marriage initiative by a San Diego hotelier has drawn the ire of gay and lesbian activists and local labor unions who are now calling for a boycott.

Organizers held a news conference in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, near Seaport Village, on Thursday. A coalition of LGBT community leaders and the labor movement spoke out against Doug Manchester, who contributed a donation in support of Proposition 8, which would allow only men and women to marry in the state of California. The group opposes the ballot measure because it threatens the recent state Supreme Court decision that allows marriage between men and women.

I know it’s unlikely that anyone is canceling a hotel reservation for Comic Con at this late date, but if you wanted to take the time to tell the owner what an asshole he is on those handy comment cards they provide you, or perhaps in other more creative ways, well, I would support your decision.

For my part, the Hyatt can go fuck itself. I’ll be drinking elsewhere. I’d invite you to do the same.
- Christopher, via [JoeMyGod]

In response to my last message, and probably to Kai-Ming Cha’s blog post from the floor of Anime Expo, David Welsh put up a really lovely, reasonable little essay about a mature manga industry, and the schedule upon which it will arrive. David makes the very salient point that manga, up until the Gekiga movement in the late 60s, really was considered a medium entirely for children. In that regard, Gekiga (as practiced by folks like Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Seiichi Hayashi) acted a lot like underground comics in did in the North American comics industry, giving both longtime readers and brand new folks a way into the medium that showed that it wasn’t all stories for children and teenagers… Granted we’re in the midst of a classic comics revival, with dozens of comic books, strips, and cartoons from the past being repackaged in such a way as to be reevaluated by an adult audience, but… yeah. It was nice having someone come along and shout “Hey, look what I can do with this medium! We don’t have to read adventure stories forever!”

Another thing I think that’s important to note is how many of what we consider mature or prestigious manga releases in a given year actually had their origins in work for children. The most shocking one to anyone who’s read it is probably The Drifting Classroom, by Kazuo Umezu. This story of a school full of 5-10 year old children that go on a “lord of the flies” themed adventure through time and space was actually intended for (and enjoyed by) children right around 10 years old. For a book that features shrink-wrapping, warning labels, and an 18+ rating, and that all of my friends and coworkers love, there’s a real disconnect there between the intended audience and the actual audience. Similarly, the high-end releases by Vertical of select bits of the Osamu Tezuka library take pains to remind us that there were readers of all ages coming into those stories, and they probably weren’t doing so because the books were $25 each in hardcover. You can see the early-adult and mature audiences for works by the D+Q and PictureBox crowd, not to mention the ultra-contemporary adult readership for works by PULP and Fanfare/Ponent-Mon alumni, but I don’t think it’s breaking any confidences to note that Tezuka’s Buddha is the most popular “mature” manga release in English in the last 10 years at least… and perhaps its intent as appealing to readers of all ages is at least partially responsible for that.

So what do I want the manga industry to look like then? I think that Drawn + Quarterly has a good idea, with one prestige-format (meaning a format with actual prestige, like a hardcover book with lovely thick paper and a beautiful design, and not those flimsy little 48 page superhero comics with a spine) release of “mature manga” per year. If there were 3 or 4 publishers doing that, each with a nicely designed manga release per season (spring/fall), that’d be maybe 8-10 wonderful books per year, which I think that the market could bear, and that’d be lovely. Currently the number of high-end manga releases in a given year is about half of that, which accounts for the loud noises I make when they manage to drop. Add in the serialization of older seinen and adult books from publishers like Vertical, Viz, and Tokyopop? I think I’d be okay with that.

Heidi MacDonald seems to think that someone is missing the point (I’m not sure who since she hasn’t linked me on this subject…), and that there’s a fundamental disconnect between the current generation of shojo and shonen manga fandom and a literary manga readership; it’s her contention that manga is more fashion than hardcore readers. Sort of how Harry Potter didn’t magic-up overwhelming book sales for the rest of the industry. I don’t entirely disagree, but reading her post on the subject I couldn’t help but think that she was selling the current generation of readers a little short. I don’t think it’s likely that fans of Bleach are going to turn into fans of Red Colored Elegy, but I do think there are middle-steps, a natural progression from Bleach to Vagabond, from Slam Dunk to Real, from Naruto to… well, grown-up Naruto I guess.

I think that… well I think that if we build it, they will come. If we build an industry with a proportionate diversity of material, of target audience, and we advertise the whole thing intelligently, we can build a market for older material, even for the literary stuff. Even if that number is 1%, or half a percentage point, of readers of shonen and shojo that go on to normal material, that’s great! That’s a hell of a lot more than we had last year, or the year before, or the year before. Anecdotally at the least, I can tell you about three amazing young customers at The Beguiling. All of them are 12-14 years old and have been shopping at the store (with their parents) for 3 or 4 years now. Over that time I’ve seen their tastes broaden considerably, and it’s kind of amazing to see someone go from Naruto to Naruto + Ruroni Kenshin to Naruto + Ruroni Kenshin + Buddha, to asking me about Dororo, Vagabond, Black Jack. But also work by creators like Seth and Chester Brown, Darwyn Cooke, Bryan O’Malley. They like what they like, but they see there’s other work out there that we at the store like, and wanna try it out. So we talk to parents and explain what they’re going to find in them and let them decide together if they’re cool with boobs or swears or bloody disembowelment. If you’ve got a store that believes in the material, and that keeps it in stock, not just makes it available for pre-order, then you can sell the material. In short, we have to invest in the industry we want, not just as retailers, but as journalists and pundits by covering the material we like, and as consumers by supporting the books we like with our dollars.

That’s my prescription for the manga industry: let’s make the industry we want, do our best to convert fashion into function, and celebrate our successes where we find them rather than complain that we’re not quite successful enough.

Next time: Tokyopop for reals.

- Christopher

So I was able to actually confirm this a little while back, but in such a way that I couldn’t blog about it without getting a few people in some trouble.

I can also confirm that Dark Horse no longer has the license for AKIRA (licensed from Kodansha) and that Tokyopop has canceled Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad volumes 13 and 14, and this is a Kodansha-licensed title as well, so it looks like they might have lost that license (edit: or they canceled them for sales issues or another reason. It’s too bad too, because I always thought that was a title that could benefit immensely from a brighter spotlight, the kind that canceling 50 or 60 of their other titles might provide. Sigh…).

There’s more coming too, but I’ll let it go until an official statement is made somewhere.

–

Also, just a quick guess here, but I would find it surprising if Kodansha pulled any licenses back from Del Rey, as they’ll likely be relying on Del Rey parent company Random House for distribution in America (under the auspices of the Kodansha/Random House “deal”), and that would likely sour the working relationship. Which isn’t to say that it won’t happen of course, but is far less likely and has not, to the best of my knowledge, happened yet.

- Christopher

“Our maids don’t call customers master and the girls are sweet rather than flirty,” Ms. Hancock said. “We want customers to come in and feel like they’re in Alice in Wonderland, not Hooter’s.”
- Susan Hancock, owner of a new New York Maid Cafe. Who has never been to a Japanese Maid Cafe.

Check out this New York Times article on a recently opened American Maid Cafe. The owner does her best to distance herself from Otaku culture whilst simultaneously trying to sell that same culture to hipsters. It’s kind of amazing, in a “with an attitude like that they probably won’t be open by the next time I make it to New York” kind of a way.

If anyone is traveling to Tokyo anytime soon (or, you know, already there), you owe it to yourself to check out a real maid cafe in Akihabara. The experience really can’t be duplicated, and there’s a lot more going on culturally and psychologically, I feel, than what’s hinted at in the article. I know we had a good time during our visit…

- Christopher
Photo of a Murakami “DoB” sculpture from the Brooklyn Museum Murakami Show. Photo by me. Thanks to Nathalie for the heads-up on this article.

OUTSTANDING CANADIAN COMIC BOOK WRITER
- Cecil Castellucci for The P.L.A.I.N. Janes (DC/Minx)

OUTSTANDING CANADIAN COMIC BOOK ARTIST
- Dale Eaglesham for Justice Society of America #2-4, 6-7, 9-11 (DC Comics)

OUTSTANDING CANADIAN COMIC BOOK CARTOONIST (WRITER/ARTIST)
- Jeff Lemire for Essex County Vol. 1: Tales From The Farm, Essex County Vol. 2: Ghost Stories (Top Shelf)

OUTSTANDING COVER BY A CANADIAN COMIC BOOK ARTIST
- Steve Skroce for Doc Frankenstein #6 (Burleyman)

OUTSTANDING CANADIAN COMIC BOOK COLOURIST
- Dave McCaig for Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. #12, New Avengers #27-35, Fallen Son – The Death of Captain America #1: Wolverine, Marvel Comics Presents #1-4, Wolverine #50, Avengers Classic #7 (Marvel Comics) DC Infinite Halloween Special #1 (DC Comics), The Other Side #4-5 (DC/Vertigo) Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jensen #1 (ONI Press)

OUTSTANDING CANADIAN COMIC BOOK &/OR GRAPHIC NOVEL PUBLISHER
- Drawn & Quarterly

OUTSTANDING CANADIAN WEBCOMICS CREATOR / CREATIVE TEAM
- Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza for Least I Can Do http://www.leasticoulddo.com and Looking for Group http://www.lfgcomic.com

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT BY A CANADIAN RELATED TO COMIC BOOKS
David Watkins for using comic books as a teaching tool

CANADIAN COMIC BOOK CREATOR HALL OF FAME
Stan Berneche
John Byrne
Pierre Fournier
Edwin R. “Ted” McCall

FAVOURITE CANADIAN COMIC BOOK CREATOR – ENGLISH LANGUAGE PUBLICATIONS
Faith Erin Hicks – Zombies Calling

FAVOURITE CANADIAN COMIC BOOK CREATOR – FRENCH LANGUAGE PUBLICATIONS
Philippe Girard aka phlppgrrd – Danger Public

FAVOURITE INTERNATIONAL (NON-CANADIAN) COMIC BOOK CREATOR
Ed Brubaker – Captain America, Criminal, Immortal Iron Fist, Uncanny X-Men

HARRY KREMER OUTSTANDING CANADIAN COMIC BOOK RETAILER
Big B Comics – Hamilton, Ontario

Congratulations to all of the winners, and particularly my friends Cecil Castelucci, Faith Erin Hicks, and Jeff Lemire.

- Chris

As soon as I saw the question I thought “It’d probably be a neat blog post to actually compile all of the suggestions and see what projects are the most popular and most-demanded” because I’m weird like that. So I did, and the biggest surprise is that there’s remarkably little overlap in the requests of fans. Despite about 200 suggestions, there are only about 20 projects that netted at least 2 votes, and less than 5 that netted three or more. The big trend though was that many more requests were made for specific works than there were requests for artist-centric projects, with the former outnumbering the latter around 5 to 1.

So what are the top fan-requested Archival/Translation projects? Here’s the list:

Various works by Sergio Aragones
Barnaby, by Crockett Johnson
Barney Google, by Billy De Beck
Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese, by Mizushiro Setona
Corto Maltese, by Hugo Pratt
Various works by Steve Ditko
EC Comics Reprints by Artist
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, by Gilbert Shelton
GeGeGe No Kitaro, by Shigeru Mizuki
Gokusen, by Kozueko Morimoto
King Aroo, by Jack Kent
Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture, by Masayuki Ishikawa
Various works by Usumaru Furuya (Music of Marie in particular)
Nancy (specifically by Ernie Bushmiller or John Stanley)
Various works by Osamu Tezuka (Princess Knight in particular)
Various works by Alex Toth
Touch, by Mitsuru Adachi
Trots and Bonnie, by Shary Flenniken
Wash Tubbs, by Roy Crane
White Boy, by Garrett Price
Works of Al Williamson
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, by Hitoshi Ashinano

I hesitate to draw any major conclusions about this from such a limited sample pool… I do think that choosing a major reprint project is risky for any publisher, because every fan has their own particular favourites, and fans find different value in different projects. For example, despite everything he has done to turn me off of his work, Dave Sim is single-handedly responsible for making me want to dig deeper into the work of Al Williamson thanks to Glamourpuss #1 a few weeks back. It’s an oddball project, for sure, but if you can divorce Dave Sim the person from Dave Sim the guy who created a pretty solid comic book talking about the history of illustration and illustrators, it’s a good read. If not, please promise me at least to not wreck the copies I’ve got on the rack.

There’s also, I feel, a real balancing act between something that has enough exposure to create a large fanbase (and demand) for the material, and something that has so much exposure that it actually sates the demand of the public. On that note, the gap between retailer demands is quite different than consumer demands. For example, if you ask a group of retailers what they want in collection, the unanimous answer will be (I shit you not) Sugar and Spike, the children’s comic from DC. However out of all of the suggestions for reprint projects, only one was put forward for those adorable little ragamuffins… Is it economically viable to publish something that only hardcore fans (retailers in particular) will publish?

But the one thing I can definitively draw from the responses I saw? Everyone, everyone, wants complete collections. Not “best ofs” or retrospectives, but every single strip, every single page, every single work, PLUS bonus material. Some people (lookin’ at you, Dorkin) were particularly emphatic about that. I totally understand of course, there’s that Obsessive/Compulsive part of my brain that is irrationally angry as soon as I realize something I purchased is “incomplete”. I’m trying to work through it in therapy, but it’s going poorly. Which isn’t to say that sometimes a best-of or retrospective can’t be downright magnificent, the Sunday Press Little Nemo: So Many Splendid Sundays and Sundays with Walt and Skeezix are best-of collections, specifically chosen for their suitability to be printed at that huge 16″ x 21″ size, and I can’t think of anyone arguing against them being fuck’n cool. I could think of a good argument against how essential they are, however, which is something that a “complete” collection will never be.

On that note: We are living in a wonderful time for the North American comics medium, where more of our history is coming back into print every day, and in progressively more affordable ways. The care and attention to detail being given to these reprints is phenomenal as well, and I couldn’t be happier that these projects are able to find good publishing homes, and so many of them are selling well enough to warrant their continued release.

- Chris
P.S.: My top 5: Complete Works by Taiyo Matsumoto, Complete Works by Usumaru Furuya, Complete Works by Katsuhiro Otomo, Complete Journals by Fabrice Neaud, and the entirety of Ralf Konig’s catalogue, in colour (or with a better print-job than it has received in North America to date).

Although he was under no obligation to do so, Tom Spurgeon didn’t post the full text of my response to the news that Fantagraphics has signed an exclusive deal with Diamond… It’s a little more balanced and nuanced then what ended up in the CR piece, in my always-humble opinion, so I figured I’d post it here.

We really wish that Fantagraphics had consulted us as their retail partners before they made this move, because we would have said “Good God No, Don’t Do It.” We’re very sympathetic to the general indifference of the Direct Market to good comics, including those that Fantagraphics publishes, and we understand the reasons they made their decision. Speaking from our point of view though, we like the opportunity to deal directly with Fantagraphics, because if Fanta has a book in print, then they will have it in stock. That is not the case with Diamond. Even on the largest publishers that have moved their Direct Market business exclusive with Diamond, publishers like Viz and Tokyopop, our fill rates on in-print books are less than adequate. We hope that Fanta knows what they’re in for on that front.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but as The Beguiling we’re fortunate enough talk to reps from a large number of publishers, great and small, and many of them really aren’t happy with their exclusivity deals with Diamond. No one will go on the record about it of course, because regardless of exclusivity or not they’re still going to be working with Diamond going forward and being openly critical of Diamond is not the best way to get good service from them. So, no one talks about how things are not going the way they had hoped, and everyone re-ups for another few years hoping things will change because hey, everyone else is doing it. Worse still, we’re worried about the sort of “chilling effect” that goes on whenever a publisher signs an exclusivity deal. Fantagraphics better than anyone (thanks to reportage in The Comics Journal) knows the havoc that exclusivity agreements caused direct market retailers, particularly with regards to Image and Dark Horse deciding on Diamond after DC had made their deal. Has the consolidation of the direct market to, effectively, Diamond Comics Distributors, shown a noted increase in stores, sales, or market strength over the past 10 years? Particularly for any company that isn’t Marvel or DC? Not at all, and yet the consolidation continues, leading many publishers to believe that there’s no other way to do business and succeed (or at least stay afloat) in the market.

Honestly, we order the majority of our Fantagraphics product through Diamond, all of our frontlist and the occasional backlist. But when it comes time to do actual store restocks on perennials like Ghost World and the works of Dan Clowes, Love & Rockets, the Ignatz Books, Mome, that order goes to Fantagraphics because of a solid discount, and because if the book is in print, the publisher will have it in stock. Right now Diamond doesn’t seem to have Ghost World in stock, which is perhaps just an unfortunate coincidence. But the first time that we try to order something from Diamond and can’t, and that backorder takes weeks or months (don’t laugh, it happens all the time), and that book would have been available to us direct from Fanta? That’s a lost sale for Fantagraphics and for us, and truly unfortunate.

Hopefully Diamond will keep all of these books in stock under this new deal. Hopefully with thousands of new book-format comics coming out every year, Fanta titles now solely available through Diamond won’t get lost in the shuffle. We know that the good folks working at Fantagraphics will be responsive to our needs as their customers just as they always have been; we just hope that history proves us all wrong and that Diamond is responsive to theirs.

We wish them the best of luck.

- Christopher Butcher, Manager, The Beguiling

–

That’s the entirety of what I sent Tom yesterday afternoon, and I’ve been thinking on it since then. In my head, my vision of the comics industry is one where comics are available if not everywhere, than at least everywhere you’d otherwise find printed material. The key to that, in my mind, is more access, and not less. I’m not unaware of economies of scale, of how much cheaper and easier it is to deal with two major distributors than dozens of smaller ones. I just honestly don’t see any smaller store that stocks Fanta/Eros stuff going through the hassle of opening a Diamond account and trying to meet monthly order minimums in order to get something better than a 35% discount when they do a backlist order. I hope there are other options, grandfather clauses, whatever, that keep Fanta’s reach as broad as it ever was. I really do wish them the best.

- Chris

And to other retailers or small business-people operating without insurance (or the benefit of living somewhere with good government-sponsored health care), strongly consider your group insurance options through trade organizations. Many comics retailers qualify under booksellers-association guidelines to join those groups and get a decent discounted plan, and there’s always comics retailer organization COMICSPRO, which I believe offers access to a discounted group health insurance plan as well (for U.S. Retailers). Check them out at http://www.comicspro.org/.

- Christopher

First and foremost, Weidenbaum’s new title at Viz is “Editor-in-Chief, Magazines. Vice President, Original Publishing” which kind of makes sense, as the two manga magazines are where more-or-less all of the original content is being generated at Viz right now. The recent cover-art/interview/short comic by Bryan Lee O’Malley on Shoujo Beat sort of brought this fact to everyone’s attention, though Viz has done original content in the past, including a Pokemon comic strip for newspapers a few years ago. But the original publishing aspect of Marc’s title will likely become very important to the comics industry in the next few years.

According to Marc, it’s all about television.

Marc Weidenbaum: “We’re in a golden age of television right now,” specifically referring to the critically and commercially successful serialized entertainment offered up by HBO, BBC, Showtime, and even some of the networks. Marc feels that there are all of these wonderfully episodic shows that build up a serial storyline with amazing cliffhangers that you can’t miss. And he doesn’t seem inclined to cow-towing to any particular ‘style’ or genre of story either, with a crime drama being just as interesting and well produced as a comedy or historical epic… Editorializing a bit here, it’s no mystery that Brian K. Vaughan (for example) was picked up for LOST–his work on Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and even Runaways is built on the gripping last-page reveal, and his work is structured in an incredibly compelling way. If I’m reading Marc correctly, he sees this not so much as a model, but as inspiration for a new line of comics work: One that has broad appeal, strong construction, and the benefit of a talented and trained editorial staff.

That last part is particularly intriguing to me, because while producing licensed material does have Viz editors sharing some of the same duties as their original-content producing counterparts in the rest of the North American comics industry–scheduling, proofing, working with creative talent–the Japanese editorial system, the one that Marc referenced a couple of times, is quite different and even more involved than anything you’ll find in North America… In a bit of a coincidence I picked up a new manga by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon at the New York Comic Con just before I was talking to Marc, called Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma. It’s about this manga-ka that goes nuts from stress and becomes a bum living in the mountains. In it, the protagonists manga editors are variously portrayed as abrasive, mean, and egomaniacs who threaten and taunt him, draw over his artwork to change it to their liking, and ignore or encourage any number of truly life-destroying behaviours on the part of Azuma-san… as long as the work comes in on time. It’s a comedy. And autobiography to boot.

But Marc’s a smart guy with–believe it or not!–creator interests at heart. He seemed to be talking about a sort of a hybrid system, where he and other editors at Viz had worked closely with Editors within the Japanese comics production system to learn from them, and have brought this system back to North America to put their own spin on it. This also tied in nicely to the fact that Viz’s big guest-of-honour the NYCC weekend wasn’t a manga-ka, but rather an editor, (one Mr. Asano who edits Bleach and Shaman King amongst other top-of-the-charts releases). Marc has a lot of respect for editing and editors in general, and the idea of working with a creator to produce the most successful and strongest possible work. It’s the kind of idea that I can feel myself bristling at, as I type it out now, but hearing it come out of Marc’s mouth I totally believed it… I do have to say that will not be the sort of editorial guidance that every creator is looking for, particularly not in an industry where the idea of editorial mandate from DC and Marvel has become so reviled that it seems every other comics publisher’s editorial guidelines are a hands-off reaction against them.

I was having a hard time getting an idea of this ‘line’ at this point in our conversation, what it might look like, and I couldn’t tell if it was going to be akin to Tokyopop’s “hire’m all and let the market sort’em out” original content strategy, or something a little different. So I asked him flat out–name five books published in the last few years that you could see as part of this line. His response? “None.” Really, not one book? “Not really, I don’t see a lot of the work fitting our ideas. Maybe elements of Scott Pilgrim come closest to it, or Ed Brubaker’s Scene of the Crime or Sleeper. Stuff that’s really good, solid concept-stuff but with a twist to it, a hook.” I believe I mentioned that Scene of the Crime and Sleeper sold fairly poorly at the time, but I don’t remember what, if any, response came of it.

Said I: “I’ve talked to a number of creators working in the ogn or straight-to-collection format, and many of them have very similar concerns about the system of creating a graphic novel with little-or-no input for a year, and releasing these graphic novels to sometimes little or no feedback, and then going back to the drawing board. The idea of shorter serialization has been floated as a possible remedy…” Marc responded that things were still up in the air regarding format, but had heard and shared many of the same concerns. We talked a little bit more about various successes and failures but Marc was reluctant to name names, which I can appreciate…

“You know,” I said. “As soon as I post this you’re going to get flooded with submissions. Horrible people sending you their ideas for a sequel to Dragonball Z, all that shit.”

He knew it, but made it pretty clear he had no interest in submissions right now. “Maybe in a few years we’ll open it up to submissions,” said Marc. “But right now I just want to see already completed work. What you’ve done, what you’re capable of.” So if you’re sitting on the world’s best manuscript for a 3400 part serial about a new level of Super-Saiyan, can it. At least for a little while. But I do have to say that Marc seemed quite genuine about wanting to see published work and specifically mentioned webcomics, mini-comics and self-pub’d work as well as professionally published material…

It’s at this point in the conversation that my friend writer Ray Fawkes (Apocaplipstix, coming this summer from Oni Press) walked by the little concrete benches where we were seated and came and said hello. Ray has 4 projects in development with four different publishers at the moment, is incredibly talented, and above-all sounded like the exact sort of person who would be doing books that would fit with Marc’s idea for the Viz Original Content Line. I introduced them and mentioned something to this effect, and sure enough there was a warm exchange of business cards and a plan to talk further about an exchange of work… So if Marc wasn’t being genuine when he said he would happily look at published work, he was at least putting on a good face in front of my friend ;).

Sidebar: It’s worth noting that at the big Viz Panel the next day, this exact situation came up. Here, I’ll quote from “A Geek By Any Other Name”:

“Someone just asked about whether they’d be accepting any original series, and they answered that they weren’t really looking for anything, which is a little counter to what Brigid and other bloggers heard yesterday.”

I think that’s a pretty clever answer, actually, because Marc made that quite clear to me as well: They aren’t looking for anything in particular. They’re looking for talented people who’ve done great work–at this point in the game–and are probably looking to develop something with them as opposed to just accepting or rejecting a pitch. An important bit of semantics!

Now, you have to understand, all the while I’m having this conversation with Marc… I’m feeling pretty good about all of this actually, but this nagging phrase wouldn’t stop repeating itself in the back of my mind: “THE TOKYOPOP DEAL”. I fucking hate The Tokyopop deal, flat out. It’s awful and abusive of young creators, and while I haven’t gotten up and shouted I TOLD YOU SO at anyone two years later, the number of disenfranchised and angry Tokyopop creators has more-or-less done the work for me. I’m not particularly happy about being right of course; it is, at best, a pyrrhic victory.
“Marc,” I said. “Who owns it?” I was honestly not anticipating the response.

“The creators do. It’s going to be a standard book-industry type contract, although even there we’re doing a bit of tweaking. I believe in that, and we wanted a fair deal.”

Huh, how about that. We discussed it a little further, mentioning things like other-media adaptation rights and all that, and while we really only talked in generalities, it all sounded really reasonable. Maybe even… good. Marc relayed an anecdote about visiting a comics class at SVA the previous week, I think either he mentioned either Tom Hart or Matt Madden or Jessica Abel were teaching, and he was talking about this very line. The instructor sort of built up this menacing tone and said “And now we’ve got a hard question for you, Marc! WHO OWNS THE WORK!?” which I have to admit that’s kind of amazing, that ownership and contract discussions are a part of comics instruction now. But Marc said “oh, the creators.” and just sort of deflated the instructor’s bubble (it was funny, not dickish, at least when Marc told it). You have no idea how heartening it was to hear this, the idea that copyright (amongst many other rights) would reside with the creators of the work. Of course, no contract is perfect and each one is different and be sure to get a lawyer to read things over before you sign them, etc., but just hearing an affirmative and positive reaction to creator ownership coming from the spokesperson for a massive international corporation? Even one with Marc’s long history of publishing and working with comics creators (google him)? It’s fantastic.

Our conversation sort of drifted from that point as it seemed that I’d wrapped up everything I had to ask, and started mulling over my opinions of the prospects of this line. I can’t help but feel that the possibilities of a company as well-invested and an editor as well-intentioned as Viz and Marc both are could seriously shake up comics production, where the money becomes in line in both frequency and scale as Marvel and DC; where they could develop a very creatively supportive but still professional environment; where serialization and the possibility of easy access to the Japanese market (and work produced in a Japanese-fashion) could attract a whole new generation of manga-inspired creators.

Moreso than Vertigo’s announcement at the show that they were actively scouting out “original graphic novels” and, to my mind, trying to directly take projects away from Oni Press, Slave Labor, and Top Shelf, this feels like something that just isn’t being done in the industry right now, but when laid out as Marc Weidenbaum did for me, makes it seem essential… Possibly even as important to original comics content creation as manga was to the bookstores. It doesn’t take a genius to see that serialized original content with a strong narrative hook and enticing cliffhangers are part-and-parcel of the manga experience… perhaps with Weidenbaum’s affection for top-notch (and often very mature) television shows and evocations of Brubaker’s crime fiction, this line of books could be that mythical ‘stepping stone to adulthood’ that everyone wonders about for the aging manga demographic.

Or not. It’s pretty easy to look at what I’ve written here and see it as corporate-controlled comics, with nothing to offer the comics auteur. I can’t speak for Marc on this point but I do see validity to that point of view. There’s a reason that someone like Seth designs his books right down to hand-lettering the indicia and choosing the colour of the foil-stamping on the hardcover, you know? I don’t see that as what this line is about, and quite frankly there are lots of places to publish that sort of material that do it very well (Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Pantheon, First Second, etc.). But a vision of the comics industry where compelling commercial comics don’t mean superheroes, half-assed movie pitches, or the occasional fluke from the majors (and let’s not forget that Y: The Last Man‘s commissioning editor was fired by Vertigo shortly after its launch…!)? At the very least, you can put me on that mailing list.

Anyhow, those are my impressions of the conversation I had with Viz’s new Vice President of Original Publishing. All of which are subject to the haze of memory and just having come off of a panel where I sat 15 feet from Stan Lee for an hour. Following our chat I walked Marc to a cab and resisted the urge to invite myself to his dinner with important people from Japan, which showed some tact on my part (though obviously less-so now that I blogged it). I ended up having a great dinner anyway (thank you, Dave & Raina), and didn’t see Marc for the rest of the weekend. Just goes to show you that it’s important to make time when you can, at these sorts of shows.

Thanks again for being so generous with your time Marc! I hope your inbox is not immediately flooded.

- Christopher