What you’re seeing above is the de-lovely Prada ‘epicentre’ in Tokyo, decked out in the new face of the line, illustrated by James Jean. I’d previously mentioned the Fables and Umbrella Academy cover artist’s work with Prada a few weeks ago, after realizing that no one was covering this story and I felt it was a big one… Anyway according to Wallpaper* Magazine, the James Jean illustration is now covering the Japanese flagship store in honour of the release of the second installment of the Trembled Blossoms animation. Pretty damned impressive! Wallpaper* also had another nice photo of the Prada spring/summer 2008 show that featured Jean’s art that I thought I’d include.

I hope that James get all that’s coming to him out of this…

- Christopher
Photos apparently Copyright 2008 Wallpaer* Magazine.

TORONTO, (Feb. 12, 2008) - Luminato, Toronto’s Festival of Arts & Creativity, today unveiled its dynamic literary program for the 2008 Festival. Luminato’s Curator of Literary Programming, Devyani Saltzman, announced the program this afternoon at the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto.

Chris Lorway, Luminato’s Director of Programming, is enthusiastic about the festival’s literary component. “For Luminato 2008, we decided to make stronger connections between our literary program and the overall festival. I am so pleased that we were able to find someone like Devyani Saltzman to curate this program for us. She’s a great addition to our team.”

Devyani Saltzman is pleased to see her curatorial vision becoming a reality. “It’s a pleasure to bring both Canadian and international authors together around literary and political themes in addition to showcasing new works. I find the richest discussions occur because of unexpected collaborations.”

The 2008 line-up includes perspectives on South Asia, a focus on war and politics through illustration, a celebration of a renowned literary master, the launch of the third instalment of a city-centric anthology, as well as a festival of short stories.

The Political Graphic Novel
Sunday, June 8, 7:00 p.m.
The Al Green Theatre (at the Miles Nadal JCC)
750 Spadina Avenue (Spadina at Bloor)

From the war in Iraq to the life of revolutionary icon Ché Guevera, the medium of graphic novels becomes political in this stimulating evening of literature, illustration and discussion.

With award-winning Canadian author and illustrator Bernice Eisenstein (I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors), Spain Rodriguez (Che: A Graphic Biography) and the Canadian premiere of Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman’s Shooting War, which explores the war in Iraq and the influence of alternative news media. The Village Voice describes Shooting War as a “light-handed but searing political satire Shooting War…taking the Sunday comic strip places it could never have gone before.”

The evening will be moderated by Peter Birkemoe, owner of Toronto’s top graphic novel and comics bookstore, The Beguiling.

For more information on the various Luminato Events, please visit http://www.luminato.com/index.php.

Note: Unfortunately Miriam Katin will not be attending this event. My apologies for any confusion, it looks like I was using an earlier version of the press release.

- Christopher

Kazu Kibuishi & Kean Soo Signing
Wednesday, February 6th, 5pm-7pm
The Beguiling, 601 Markham Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
416-533-9168 - http://www.beguiling.com
FREE

Just in case you can’t make it out to the wilds of North York and would like a chance to get your graphic novels signed by these fantastic creators, The Beguiling will be holding a signing with Kazu & Kean the day after the TPL event, from 5pm to 7pm at the store. Now, we sincerely suggest that if you want to see some great a/v presentationing and see the creators interviewed, then you really ought to go to the event at the North York Public Library. But we are happy to welcome both creators to the store as well, and hope it will be as warm (and well-attended) a welcome as our last in-store signing.

For more on the event at North York Library as part of Keep Toronto Reading, check out:

The Beguiling post on the event:
http://www.beguiling.com/2008/01/reminder-kazu-kibuishi-kean-soo-in.html
Join the Keep Toronto Reading group on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19746872808
RSVP to the event on the Kazu & Kean Facebook Page!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8322672055

–

Regular posting soon! Promise!

- Chris

Hey there. I started typing this a couple of times, but despite how wretched the behaviour has been by a couple of retailers (and the CBIA forum in general, as of late) I’m not quite ready to burn all of my retailer bridges just yet… but I did want to comment on this. So here my nice response:

The Beguiling is the premiere sponsor of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and the fest actively encouraged participating exhibitors to debut new works at the show. We did that because we wanted the exhibitors to have a good show, first and foremost. The benefit to us? As a local retailer, we knew there would be too much stuff for any one person to buy, and because every new book that comes out needs all of the promotion it can get, the excitement generated at the show that will last for the next couple of years and we’ll reap the rewards of all of that. So, you know, it’s actually more advantageous for us–as a local retailer–for these publishers to do big launches of these books, even if we don’t get all the sales, because more often than not, it’s these big launches/pushes that help put the books on the radar of our customers on the first place.

Part two of all of this is the fact that I’ve worked on the publisher side of the table as well. I’ve been behind a publisher booth, at The San Diego Comicon, selling books that had not yet been released to direct market comic book stores. And you know what? I don’t really think that enough credit is being given to the customers in the direct market. I would say that the number one question I was asked was “will this be available in comic book stores?” when confronted with a debut book. It’s a different story when there’s an author signing accompanying the debut or something, but yeah, customers want to honour their preorders and don’t want to lug around books at a show that they can get at their local store in the next month. And the reality of the situation is, if the book is so popular and so desirable that customer absolutely must have it as soon as it’s released, then I think that this is indicative of the kind of excitement and buzz really affecting customers in a large way… and that they weren’t really “our” customer in the first place, so much as someone who just likes to buy comics where they find them.

Much to the detriment of my making friends at retailer get-togethers, I think this is more of a non-issue than anyone would care to admit, a matter of principle that doesn’t even come close to playing out in the real world. I’m actually a lot more concerned, on the release-date front, about Diamond’s continuing inability to process books that they receive as a distributor as fast as the bookstore chains. Most bookstores are receiving manga, “mainstream” book publishers graphic novel releases, and magazines like Giant Robot, between a day and a month before Diamond gets them into my store. This week Diamond shipped Negima Volume 16, and I’ve had that direct from Del Rey since before Christmas! Maybe it’s easier to issue veiled threats against independent publishers than it is against Diamond? There are serious distribution inequities within the direct market, but I don’t think this position paper begins to addresses them… they certainly aren’t coming from 100 copies of Kramers Ergot at the San Diego Comic-Con.

- Christopher

I got my hands on a copy of the media kit for ADV’s new magazine PiQ. Since I didn’t see any note of this over at Brigid’s always-excellent Mangablog (http://www.mangablog.net/), I assumed no one else has posted about this yet. So let’s pour over the entrails together, shall we?
Designed to replace the popular Newtype USA, PiQ (pronounced “peek”) (although I keep saying “pie-cue” whenever I see it) is taking a hard line away from the beleaguered anime industry and branching out to be the high-end American Otaku lifestyle magazine of choice. Why? Well, as I mentioned the anime industry may have had its worst year ever in 2007 (although I see them regrouping and putting it all together in the second half of ‘08), and because as Naruto has shown us, Japanese culture is more than just anime (or manga), and with North American iterations of previously Japanese-only endeavours like Capsule Toys, Manga, Gothic Lolita Culture, and anime making their mark on the nerd-culture industry, it looks like a license of a Japanese magazine covering a troubled industry just wasn’t going to cut it, going forward.

But the question is, will PiQ?

The PiQ media-kit I received included a letter from Publisher Gary Steinman, outlining the major changes that the magazine will undergo. It’s very important to note that throughout all of the commentary I’ve seen from ADV on this matter, including the media kit, PiQ is being treated as a name change to Newtype USA, and not as an entirely new magazine. While I have no firm answer as to why this is, I’d speculate that declaring it to be the same magazine but with a name change (not to mention a substantial format change…) means you get to maintain your existing distribution and subscription arrangements. But it’s pretty clear that the new boss ain’t the same as the old boss.

For starters, the magazine will shrink in size, both in physical dimensions and in page count. The new physical size is 8″ wide x 10″ tall, as compared to Newtype’s 9″ x 12″. The latest issue of Newtype weighs in at 160 pages, and the info for PiQ seems to be saying it’ll drop at around 130 pages. The price is also much lower, with the new magazine retailing for US$6.99/CDN$7.99, versus $12.98/$16.98 for Newtype. Oh, and the magazine will be perfect-bound rather than stapled, which means it’ll have a spine! No more free DVDs with each issue either, so far as I can tell. The big format change? PiQ will drop Newtype’s right-to-left Japanese reading orientation in favour of a standard left-to-right orientation. Essentially, the otherworldy Japanese “object” that was Newtype USA is gone, to be replaced by something that very-much resembles Wizard in size… and in tone.

According again to the Media Kit, the new editorial breakdown for PiQ will be:

• 20% Anime
• 20% Gaming
• 20% U.S. Comics / Japanese Manga
• 20% Genre Movies / TV / Home Video
• 10% Toys / Collectibles
• 5% Gadgets / Hi-Tech Gear
• 5% Lifestyle (fashion, accessories, events)

Apparently PiQ is “entertainment for the rest of us, squarely addressing the needs of a cutting-edge young male audience,” and they’re estimating a 70/30 split in readership, in favour of male readers. This reads to be to be very, very similar to Wizard magazine, a jack-of-all-trades scenario.

Some final stats from the presentation:

• PiQ is expected to have a 100,000 circulation at launch, with a target circulation of 150,000 by the end of 2008.
• PiQ will launch with 15,000 subscribers, all of which are former Newtype USA subscribers. So, now you know how many people subscribed to Newtype.
• The first issue of PiQ goes on sale March 18th, 2008.

Also included with the material I received, twice, was a mock-up of the first issue over. As noted on the cover itself this is a cover concept only, and is not necessarily going to be the final cover. However, it pretty clearly shows where the magazine is headed, and while it may have the bearing of Wizard, it looks an awful lot like video game magazine PLAY (which I love and is awesome). Lets take a look:

PiQ Issue One Concept Cover - Copyright 2008 AD Vision Inc.

So, what do we see here? Well, the first and most telling thing is the comparison between this cover and the most recent Newtype USA. Where Newtype USA Jan 2008 features the names of tons of new anime series (at least two dozen by my count), an anime creator profile, an anime art book, and the words “Anime, Manga, Games, Music, more!” the focus on the new cover is all over the place. A Tokyo Travelogue! Cosplay! Anime! But also video games and LOST and Battlestar Galactica and Red Hulk and the promise of bulleted lists! (No manga?)

So there you have it, the inside scoop on (what might be) the first issue of PiQ. All you have to go on about this magazine being the same one as Newtype USA is the publisher’s say-so, with the magazine looking significantly different, and more generic, than what has come before. But honestly? This is probably a really smart move on ADV’s part, with magazine publishing being almost entirely advertising-driven, opening up your mag to the extremely lucrative advertising of the extremely lucrative video game field makes a hell of a lot of sense, and ending a licensing agreement for a magazine’s name and content that may or may not be contributing to your bottom line anymore? The same. The only thing up in the air is what the fans, anime fans, Newtype buyers and subscribers, are going to think of something that isn’t quite as OTAKU as they were hoping for. Hey, there’s always Otaku USA for you Otaku out there!

Still, I’m looking forward to the first issue. I think that, much like the comics industry needs something like COMICS FOUNDRY, it also needs something like this to supplant the rampant misogyny in Wizard’s magazine… Good luck guys.

- Christopher

I’ve already linked it, but I enjoyed David Welsh’s round-up of the happenings in manga in 2007. I think David hits on a number of interesting points regarding the industry, and I had a reaction to many of the points he brought up, so I wanted to go over them in a more detailed way than a comments section would allow. I’ve included David’s original comments in bold, and my own following them.

Naruto Nation: I know, colossal “duh,” huh? Beyond being incredibly nervy of Viz to unload that much product from a single franchise in a relatively short time span is the shocking fact that it actually worked. Obviously, the popularity of that franchise was essential to the initiative’s success, and I don’t know that it could be replicated with just about any other property, but damn, they sold a lot of Naruto in the last three months of 2007.

What to say about Naruto nation… The idea of releasing 12 volumes of a series’ manga in 4 months was obviously a bold one, but more than anything I think it shows that manga companies are really paying attention to the market for their material, and in a much more in-depth way than every before. I hate to trot out this old horse, but Tokyopop’s move from serializing shojo stories in comics to the original graphic novel format worked wonders for the pub, particularly as they released those graphic novels much, much quicker than their competitors released their own collected editions. If you were a manga fan you could buy 4 or 5 volumes of Sailor Moon in the time it took 2 volumes of Ranma 1/2 to be released… and for nearly the same price! Tokyopop led the way at showing that serialization of trade paperbacks could happen a lot more quickly than conventional wisdom would allow, and now it looks very-much like Viz have mastered that phenomenon.

As David says, there’s no guarantee that any other manga could survive that sort of release schedule; Naruto benefited from the perfect storm of manga, anime, and lifestyle-products that turned a successful property into a true superstar. But let us not forget that when Viz announced the change from their old-format titles to the Tokyopop size, they went so far as to release six volumes each of then smash-hits Dragonball and Dragonball Z… ON THE SAME DAY. Viz, through a fantastic distribution deal with Simon & Shuster, and the deep pockets that Shuheisha/Shogokukan provide, has no problem pushing product to market in a concerted, supported manner. Viz and the Shonen Jump line in particular, have shown us that all of the conventional wisdom about release schedules could… and maybe should… be reconsidered.

Top titles including Death Note and Bleach and the critically acclaimed Monster? They saw bi-monthly releases in 2006 and 2007 (bi-monthly in the comics meaning, or ‘every two months’ for the normals). Anyone who’s been in the industry for a while will remember a kinder, simpler time, when the idea that 200 pages of a serialized comic released every two months would result in BURNOUT! BUUUURRRRRNNNNOOOOUUUUTTTT! And the retailers would cry REMEMBER! REMEMBER! ACTION COMICS WEEKLY FUCKING SUUUUUCKED! (I’m not good at rhyming). And yet 2006-2007 gave us 52, and Countdown coming out every week, and a number of equivalent manga titles. 2008 sees Amazing Spider-Man 3 times a month, with the stories completed a half-year in advance just to ensure timeliness!

Perhaps the greatest indicator of change in release schedules and frequency, for me, was the end of Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura in the comic-book format serializations. The majority of comment on that change focused on the transition from pamphlets to books, but I think a big part of it is frequency. Readers want the story quicker, and for them the story isn’t the dribs and drabs of 32 pages, but instead the story arc, the way that the creator intended for the book to be read. That’s not to say that anthologies like SHONEN JUMP and SHOJO BEAT don’t have a place in the industry–500,000 readers a month can’t be wrong. I just think that at 80+ pages of Naruto per issue and an incredibly well-designed and well-written package doesn’t tend to steer readers wrong, but even then I get complaints from the kids that the magazine slows down the graphic novel releases of their favourite series… More better faster is the name of the game in 2008.

The Age of the Omnibus: Maybe I’m overstating the importance of this because I like the idea so much, but this is another somewhat unexpected idea that seemed to gain a lot of traction in 2007 and actually work, leading me to suspect that the trend will expand in 2008. I mean, there’s already a mix of high-end, collector’s collections and value-for-volume versions, which has to tell us something.

Man, do I not have a ton of faith in Omnibus editions.

I know there are a ton of them on the way, but I’m just getting little shivers thinking about these programs and what they’re going to mean. I think the most important thing is to break the discussion down into the three different kinds of omnibus collections: Vanity Editions and Cost-Cutting Editions, as David mentioned, but also Samplers.

First up, I’m with David… to a degree… in thinking that vanity editions have a place in the manga industry. They’ve already proven their worth in Japan a hundred times over. People want to own the best possible version of something, with all the extras and the bells and whistles, and they’re willing to pay for it. (DVDs, anyone?) Manga is constantly reissued in new editions in the East, anything from new cover art to a larger size and colour printing to hardcovers or whatever. It’s equal parts nostalgia, marketting, and Vanity with a capital V. I think the recent collection of Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy Ultimate Edition is maybe the most successful omnibus of the year, particularly as a vanity omnibus. All three volumes… for the same price as buying them separately! Way to make me money, Tokyopop. Plus it’s big! It’s a hardcover! It’s got 8 pages of new comics in full colour AND an afterward with the dude who helped make the game! It’s got an external fanbase that spends all of their time playing that godforsaken game and they’re totally absorbed in the lifestyle! It’s a visibly and uniquely different product than the manga tankubon editions! Hoo-ray for Warcraft! But seriously, it’s done pretty-much perfectly. I’d change a very few things myself (every copy comes with a redemption-code for an in-game item?), but it’s certainly a lot better than the complete failure that was the first Fruits Basket HC. A larger size that doesn’t do the sparse art any favours, you bothered to print the pages that were originally in colour in colour, and only two volumes per hardcover when it at least feels as thick as three? Thanks for this completely useless new product, Tokyopop! Actually, I’m sorry, completely useless product line. It’s not like Fruits Basket backlist isn’t a strong seller. Man, individual hardcover volumes of THOSE books for like 15 dollars a pop would’ve been awesome, we would have sold a ton.

(Side Note To Vanity Editions: I think the BATTLE ROYALE editions at 3 volumes for $25, in a size comperable to North American comics collections but loaded with all sorts of insane back-up features is much, much more successful as a package. They earn their spot on the rack pricepoint-wise, there’s enough there to keep fans interested too. If they had only paid someone to re-translate the series away from Keith Giffen’s interpretation, that would’ve been the sales slam-dunk we would have needed to really sell the book. Battle Royale sold much better in the DM than it did in the bookstores, and this new DM-friendly edition makes a hell-of-a-lot more sense on this product than it does on Fruits Basket… Ugh…)

Then, there are the cost-cutting editions. The big announcement at the end of the year from Viz seems to be aiming squarely at this market. To whit: As manga publishers’ backlist grows ever, ever, ever larger, it becomes more and more expensive to keep backstock in print. The easy solution is to replace three backstock items with one backstock item, and subsidize the cost of that item by including juuuust enough material to make the established fan-base dig into their pockets and buy this one too. Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Rurouni Kenshin all have dedicated fan-bases who love these series more than is reasonable, and they will find these new editions with colour pages and bonus materials and vaguely reduced prices “sick”. Why do these succeed where I felt Fruits Basket failed? Prestige, for the most part. Authenticity, a term that Tokyopop practically coined when it came to manga, but that Viz has perfected here. They’re the ones going back to the well and introducing refreshed translations, author interviews, all of the colour pages, and not wrapping it in a space-hogging hardcover edition. The prices are low enough that customers feel like they’re getting a deal, but high enough at $18 a volume that they feel to retailers (me) that they’re paying for their shelf space. I think that, if the Cost-Cutting, backlist-eliminating editions are going to take off (and they haven’t announced that the backlist is definitely going away, this is supposition on my part) then this format is probably the smartest way to go about it: replacing the books with something that is clearly different, and clearly better.

(Side note to Cost-Cutting Editions: The “Omnibus of the year” for me was easily Tekkon Kinkreet: Black and White by Taiyo Matsumoto and published by Viz. An edition that saw the perfect-collection in Japan and then one-upped it a couple of times, this really is the ultimate edition of the material. At $30 (when the trades used to run you $50+) it’s a deal, but the high price-point and movie tie-in makes it a viable product for the North American market. Plus, have you held this thing in your hands? It’s ten kinds of awesome, you can’t NOT buy it unless you are poor, or perhaps sad.)

Finally, there’re the samplers. I think, again, with the aging backstock thing, these are gonna be important for series that drag on… and on… and on. The most recent example is Sgt. Frog, which keeps on coming out with new volumes, once or maybe twice a year, in Japan. As long as Tokyopop have the license, they’re going to NEED to keep this material in print (it’s in their contracts…), so what better way to do it than by offering a cheap way to get in on the ground floor, generating additional interest in the series? Several of the longer-running Del Rey series had ultra-cheap 3-volume bind-ups released this year through an exclusive with one of those American bookstore chains, I wonder what that did for volume 4 sales…? Dallas, if you’re reading?

…but are the readers actually going to buy into this? Are the retailers? Although 2007 eliminated the myth of the finite shelf-space issue (essentially, bookstore managers will allot however much space is necessary to product that generates income), not many of them are carrying full runs of any material in multiple formats. Once the paperback comes out, the hardcover gets remaindered and goes to special-order-only, that sort of thing. Further, I don’t think we’re going to be seeing that many second or third volumes of these ultra-cheap bind-ups, not for a little while. Essentially, if all of the sales are equal, 3 x 200 page books at $11 each are worth more than 1 x 600 page book at $13. Even with the reduced overhead and increased sales that one cheap book will provide, those sales have got to be pretty high indeed to make up for the sales of 3 books at a higher cost, particularly over a longer period of time. I’m not saying it’s impossible, it happens all the time, but it’s all about product life-cycles and blah-blah-blah. Comic books come out in hardcover once the sales-cycle of the floppy is more-or-less done. The hardcovers come out as trade paperbacks when they’ve made their money. Then the Trade paperbacks get absolute editions once they’ve slowed down. Sometimes that order is jumbled a bit, but the whole thing is about going to the well until it’s bone fucking dry, and I can’t see too many publishers, particularly not in manga where the licensing fees on material like Negima and Tsubasa (two titles involved in the Del Rey sampler from this year) are not inconsiderable, deciding to completely devalue their IP or their stock. Dragonball sold well and finally slowed down, so you bring out the next edition that’s better and cheaper, but you don’t decide to lower the price on every volume to $3 each. I mean, it’d be great if you did, but that shouldn’t happen at LEAST until the fourth or fifth iteration of the product is out, you know? ;)

Anyway. Omnibus editions. If people buy them, they will take off, but I haven’t really gotten the sense that the fan base is on board with them yet, and I’m just not sold on the idea that anything other than the vanity editions will end up being viable from a retail standpoint. From a creative standpoint? Anything that produces the work in a better edition is ok by me, but it’s gotta be a lot better for me to drop the money on it twice.

…onto David’s next thought…

The Autism Comic: As I indicated above, Yen Press has announced a number of nervy moves in 2007 – the promised anthology, acquiring ICE Kunion’s catalog, announcing a boys’-love line, etc. But in terms of actual, existing product, and ignoring their fairly generic-looking first wave of licensed shônen, the newcomer’s publication of Keiko Tobe’s With the Light, a meticulously researched comic about a family dealing with autism, is most noteworthy. And it’s apparently selling extremely well to demographics outside the norm for manga. (Of course, that demographic could possibly have just been terribly underserved in terms of intelligent fictional portrayals.) All the same, I find the publication of this book and its apparent commercial success terribly encouraging. (Soon, the way will be paved for agri-manga. Soon!)

Sorry David, I feel like this was a total, total crapshoot. Yen had a notoriously difficult time obtaining all of the licenses that they wanted in a fairly crowded marketplace, going so far as to acquire another publisher to get their hands on those books, as mentioned… Taking a chance on a book like With The Light, of which there are hundred of similar types of books overseas, seemed more like a shot in the dark that seems to have paid off… actually I’m not familiar with the actual success of the book outside of the blogosphere? I mean, I know WE liked it but I don’t know that it sold. I’d be curious to hear how it did. Kurt?

Anyway, I really liked Iron Wok Jan a lot, but it, sadly, did not usher in a bold new era of cooking manga. It certainly inspired a number of OEL creators though! I think series like Tokyopop’s Life (The manga about cutting!!!) and Confidential Confessions (The manga about sexual harrassment! And drugs!) trod that ground before, and with similarish results. Aiming older might be the saving grace for this book (it’s about a confused mom rather than a confused teen) but I’m not… you know… convinced… Besides that, more and more manga non-fiction, and instructional work made its way to store shelves this year than ever before. Everything from How-To-Draw books to How-To-Cook books to Manga Einstein to Manga Sudoku. I’d say this trend is developing, rather than a ’story’.

Manga: The Complete Guide: Nothing confirms the official arrival of an entertainment category like a comprehensive (at the time), general-audience guide to the available offerings, and this is a very good example of the form. There’s already some very good popular scholarship available about manga from the likes of Frederik Schodt and Paul Gravett, but a user-friendly guide like this seems particularly noteworthy. (I’m not about to call Jason Thompson the Roger Ebert of manga, because Ebert bugs me.)

I think Jason Thompson’s guide is top-notch, and is probably the best comics-related release in 2007. But I don’t know that this is the book I’d give to a newcomer, as you suggest. I think Paul Gravett’s MANGA: 60 YEARS OF JAPANESE CULTURE is a stronger non-fiction introduction to the medium thanks to it’s visually oriented nature and overview-status. What sealed my thinking on this was that Tom Spurgeon really liked The Complete Guide book and found it useful, recommending it a few times over at The Comics Reporter. Tom would humbly describe himself as a newcomer to manga, but really, he’s hardly a neophyte. I think that a dense, information-rich tome like this is invaluable for folks like us reading and writing about manga all the live-long day. I think there’s definitely a place for this book in the industry, but it’s for people that want to know more, that need to know more, rather than people who are simply curious but unmotivated. if someone asked me about manga, I’d hand them Tekkon Kinkreet or Death Note, or Phoenix or even Love Roma. I’d let them decide about something like this book on their own, when they felt they were ready. But all of that said I really am glad that it’s available, and hope to see updates every year!

Okay, it’s 3am. I’ve decided I don’t have anything else to say if I want to get up in the morning.

- Christopher

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/wri/533365969.html

Viz is looking for a Senior Editor for their magazine line, including Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat. Reporting directly to Marc Weidenbaum, who’s a cool guy, you’ll be responsible for appealing to and shaping our nation’s youth through the magical power of manga.
If you get the job after hearing about it here, please remember to think of me fondly when you’re handing out writing assignments.
- Christopher

The new comics rack at The Beguiling. Photo courtesy Photosapience

The problem with disagreeing with Brian Hibbs’ column, “Tilting At Windmills,” is that it always feels a little like telling a business owner “hey, you don’t know how to run your business” when really, you just have different ideas about the nature of how businesses are run.

For example, in Hibbs’ last column, he talks about how single issue comics (and specifically longer storylines which are serialised over any number of single issues before being collected in trade paperback), are necessary for comic shop owners…. not so much for their bottom line as for their cash flow. Here’s Brian talking about it:

In the micro, the periodical comic book provides a tremendous amount of cash flow to both publisher and retailer. Book publishing tends to be “burst”-y – weeks will pass where nothing especially significant gets published, then half a dozen major books will all drop at once. Without the (relatively) steady week-in, week-out publication of serialized comics, your friendly neighborhood comics store will never be able to keep their doors open.

At Comix Experience, over half of our sales come from book-format material (as opposed to comics-format), but I’d have to shut tomorrow without the steady, and reliable cash-flow that the periodical provides. Periodicals provide cash-flow, books provide the profit.

This totally rubbed me the wrong way. Hibbs is right, of course, in saying that without periodicals “your friendly neighborhood comics store” would close their doors. This is because their operations, their business plan, all of it is rooted in this system of periodical comics serialisation and release. If everything that eventually would get released in trade paperback was instead only released in trade paperback starting tomorrow, yeah, the whole system would collapse.

But if you took the percentages Hibbs puts forth in his piece, ‘more than half’ of his gross coming in from book-format titles, and told him to try and operate under similar conditions 10 years ago, he’d have a similar system collapse. His observation that periodicals provide cash-flow is, while accurate, also irrelevant, because it’s far from the only method of generating cash-flow as a retailer and I don’t personally believe it’s the most effective in a market that is increasingly moving away from periodical production. It’s simply “how things are done because that’s how we’ve always done them” and if there’s one thing I’m tired of seeing in comics, it’s that. I’m not arguing that it’s not useful to have these comics for cashflow purposes, but again, it’s not the only way.

Particularly when the customers are telling you, in increasing numbers, that those comics aren’t what they want.

If the complaint is that Vertigo in particular have trained customers to wait for the trade, then developing systems to punish readers who do so is not the answer. Actually, that sounds a lot like you actually don’t like your customers very much, which… again. I’m not telling you how to run your business, we just disagree that making it harder or more annoying for people to buy things in my store serves me in the long run. Mr. Hibbs, if Vertigo can’t launch a series these days because their audience is either entirely divided or has massively switched to a different format preference, then Vertigo needs to follow the money, so to speak, and start publishing the way that their customers want. Their original graphic novel program has been doing fairly well as of late, so far as I can tell and so far as I’ve heard, with good word-of-mouth and press for SENTENCES, PRIDE, FABLES 1001 NIGHTS, and lots of buzz surrounding upcoming titles. If something like Crossing Midnight or American Virgin can’t catch on sales-wise in single issue format, which leads to poor sales on the collection, ‘enh’. Hibbs makes the argument that Crossing Midnight in particular is a good book, “as high in quality as Fables”, but Crossing Midnight was a book with an exceptionally, painfully slow start that crippled sales in our store. I’m glad that the series has (apparently) found its creative feet, but the most common compliment about the book that I’ve heard is that “it really took until issue 4 for the premise to become clear and for it to get good”. That’s four months, including a heavily-promoted first issue, for readers to encounter the series, not enjoy it, and either spread the word (negatively) or just skip it all-together. “I tried it, didn’t like it. On to something else.” If that book were an OGN and came together in the last third and then ended on a great, positive note? Great! A new series of books that we can sell! One that hadn’t been poisoned by consumer apathy after 4 months of mediocre comics!

Hibbs’ other argument is the cost of moving to trade paperback-only releases; are consumers going to try out a new title that will run them $20 instead of $3? They didn’t mind doing it for Pride of Baghdad, which may have been a fluke, but let’s look at Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm. It launches at 1,700 copies, which ranked it number 63 on the top 100 graphic novels for that month. Retailers are notoriously cheap about ordering OGNs, particularly hard covers, but those numbers aren’t bad. Particularly when, at $20 a pop, that’s the equivilent of sales of about 11,400 copies at three bucks a pop, placing it alongside DMZ and 100 BULLETS rather than American Virgin… Also, has a black lead character, which is usually sales death in the male/white/hetero-centric direct market. Actually, hah, if the MF GRIMM hardcover had its sales translated to the single-issue charts, it would be the top-selling book with a black lead character for the month. Sentences isn’t just a success for a Vertigo Original Graphic Novel, it’s a TRIUMPH for the comics industry.

Okay, seriously, 1705 sales is pretty mediocre through the direct-market, but it’s still better than a 10th of the top-seller of the month, The Walking Dead Volume 7, which moved around 13k during the month, and which shows you that these aren’t vast gulfs of numbers we’re talking about here, like the 150,000 copies and 8,000 copies that mark the top and bottom of the top 300. Speaking of the best-selling graphic novel of the month, although it wasn’t listed as part of Hibbs’ thesis (being as it isn’t a Vertigo book) TWD sells about 23k in serialization and that 13k in collection, which (while not at par) is pretty interesting. It’s another one where the collection comes out directly on the heels of the serialisation, quicker than any Vertigo collection, and usually following a much more eratic serialisation schedule. And yet? It totally works, there are distinct audiences for both formats… The series gets stronger and stronger in collection, with new readers funneled into the collections stream, and yet there are a ton of readers who still find the single issues incredibly compelling. Why is this, do you think? Maybe it’s because EACH ISSUE IS INCREDIBLY COMPELLING. I don’t even care if you think it’s “good” or not, but you can’t argue that ending each issue on a “literally anything can happen” cliff-hanger makes for a compelling read. This is a characteristic that it shares with the successful titles in Vertigo’s line; Fables, Y The Last Man, 100 Bullets, DMZ, these are titles with compelling larger narratives as well as individual issue-to-issue reads that reward the reader for coming back every month (the exact opposite of wanting to punish the reader who only wants to come back every 6 months…). Maybe the problem with series like American Virgin (recently cancelled) or Un-Men (unspectacular launch) is that through both execution and concept, they just aren’t grabbing people! You can argue that Army @ Love is as high-quality as Fables all you want, but Vertigo’s had a long, successful history with fairytales and fantasy that enabled it work to find an audience for that series. They’ve got no history at making something like Army @ Love work… hell, I’m actually not sure who the audience for that series is other than “Vertigo readers” and “Fans of Rick Veitch”, who’re both lovely groups of people, but quite a bit smaller as a prospective audience than Fables’ “Fantasy/Fairy Tale Readers” and “Fans of Neil Gaiman” demographics.

Also: Quality doesn’t mean fuck all when it comes to sales. They cancelled The Invisibles twice for low sales, and that’s better than anything Vertigo is publishing these days by a good solid measure.

Getting to my eventual point: Vertigo is training readers to wait for the trade: Fantastic! I don’t know why they’ve decided to take the financial hit to do so, but someone needed to do it to clear out some of the clutter of single issues that dominates the Previews catalog. There’s between 20 and 40 book-format comics being released to the direct market every week, at $10-$50 a pop. It’s nice when we get to build an audience for something over a couple of issues, but it’s just as nice to build an audience for something like NAOKI URASAWA’S MONSTER by selling them the first $10 trade, and then having them be hooked on a series of $10 evergreen books, rather than $3 periodicals with a 30 day shelf life. We’re not hurting for product to sell outside of the single-issue format, I don’t think any other forward-looking retailer is facing that problem either…

If the readership is seriously moving towards collections on the Vertigo titles, lets support that and get behind it sales-wise rather than trying to do anything to cripple it. Follow the money, not the past.

Oh, and I outright don’t-buy the argument that readers won’t sample a new IP (intellectual property) when it’s $20 rather than $3… They do it in every popular medium including dvds, cds, video games, movies, oh and BOOKS, like from bookstores. Between internet previews, magazine previews, advance reader copies, POP material and more, there’s plenty of ways to get the customer interested in your project well before it arrives in stores, and rather than instituting an earnings-cap at Vertigo by telling them how infrequently they’re allowed to publish trade paperbacks, I’d rather they used any money they’re making by pumping two FABLES trades out a year (thanks, DC/Vertigo!) to print up previews and promotion for their OGN program, like that preview the published of the forthcoming CAIRO Original Graphic Novel (that generated quite a bit of advance interest in the book for us…). Sounds like a better use of everyone’s money to me.

My two cents.

- Chris
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been sick.

+ Let’s see what joys the internet can provide for us today, shall we?

“Fan Fiction is an Internet site where fans can speculate, converse and write on books, movies, shows, etc.
“One branch of the site is dedicated to Harry Potter, and explicit scenes with Dumbledore already appear there.”
- Christian Broadcasting Network News

Thanks to Mike for the link, we find that J.K. Rowling outted Dumbledore in a reading last week and that this move will likely have Christians more upset. As usual, they’ve made sure to get their facts straight before rushing to the internet. Oh, Christians, you’re the worst part about Christianity.

+ Meanwhile, the comics journalism debate was ended this week way before I threw Beaudelaire at it, by Tom Spurgeon. A rumour reverberated throughout the industry about long-running indy comics show APE, The Alternative Press Expo, moving from it’s “first show of the year” placement to pretty-close to the last show of the year in November. What would this mean? Why would they do this? Why didn’t anyone pick up the phone and actually just call and find out what was going on? Congrats to Tom Spurgeon who actually put the effort in to find out the how and why instead of just the ‘what’, in this interview with David Glanzer from Comic Con International (the folks behind APE as well as well as the big show in San Diego). If the blogosphere had put as much effort into actually doing comics journalism in the past few weeks as they’ve put into talking about why no one does comics journalism, the question itself would cease to be.

+ At MisterKitty.org, Dave uncovered a ‘plot’ by Archie to try and whitewash the actual creators out of their creative history. Archie comics re-uses stories from throughout their publishing history all the time, making small updates to the art or dialogue to try and make them more contemporary for today’s youth (although how they get away with those fashions is beyond me… I guess with the electro revival a few years back all their 80s reprints would’ve been cutting edge for a little while there).

Anyhow, one of the more recent reprints does a lot more than alter a pop-culture reference like ”Burt Bobain” to “Bernard Bay” to make it relevant, it changes a breaking-the-fourth-wall moment with Betty acknowledging top-notch artist Dan DeCarlo as the creator of the story she’s in, to a general “The Archie Comics Staff”. I think that I can take it for granted that you, my audience, find this as gross as I do, but let’s talk about the reason why. Dan DeCarlo created the characters/properties of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats, and aside from not acknowledging DeCarlo with any finanicial consideration considering the other-media successes of both properties, Archie Comics has steadfastly maintained that DeCarlo was just the artist, and that an employee of the company (and not a freelancer) really came up with the ideas when all evidence points at that as being a load of bull.

Poor guy got fucked over by a major corporation even WITHOUT signing a contract that effectively says “I didn’t create this thing I’m creating, AOL/Time-Warner did, or possibly Stu Levy.” Wait until they erase this generation’s names off of their own work in ten or fifteen years…

Anyway, if there’s a bright-side to all of this, it’s that when they re-lettered Betty’s word balloon they did it in what looks to be a computer-generated ‘lettering’ font without changing any of the other lovely hand-lettering, so the whole thing has the air of a creepy, computerized “Mis-terrr Ann-derrr-son…” voiceover. Maybe today’s young Betty & Veronica readers will see through Archie Comics’ attempts at erasing the human hands that built their empire? One can hope, until then, we can all linkblog the hell out of it.

- Christopher

“I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.” - BAUDELAIRE

“If one wishes to know the real power of the press, one should pay attention, not to what it says, but to the way in which it is listened to. There are times when its very heat is a symptom of weakness and prophesies its end. Its clamors and its fears often speak in the same voice. It only cries so loud because its audience is becoming deaf.” - TOCQUEVILLE

“My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.” - T. H. HUXLEY

- Christopher, from The Viking Book of Aphorisms, by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, Viking Press, 1962.