Comics212

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

The lovely Tom Spurgeon asked me for an interview, following the enormous success of TCAF 2010, and I decided “what the heck,” and went along with it. You can find the interview at:

http://www.comicsreporter.com/

It’s a bit of a long one, and it was almost entirely written between the hours of midnight at 4am, so it is considerably more honest and off the cuff that I originally intended, but I think it holds up okay. I kinda wanna give it another edit, but that’s life.

Originally I was going to save any official commenting on the show until our wrap-up, but as that’s been a while in coming I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to thank our staff and volunteers for all of their hard work, and Spurgeon’s is a pretty prestigious website upon which to send out those thanks. There’s still an official wrap-up coming of course, where we name names… in thanking all the wonderful people who helped out. And talk a little bit more about how things went, and what we’re going to do next time.

Also of note, not sure I mentioned it but there are a ton of photos of TCAF 2010 up online at flickr including my own. Here’s all the tagged TCAF 2010 shots:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tcaf2010/

Alright, nuff of me. More commenting coming soon.

- Christopher

I am sadly, desperately, mournfully behind when it comes to reading my Google Feed Reader (everyone should have one!), and so now I’m scraping May 11th and trying to run through everything…

…But I did want to take a minute out to congratulate my friend Jeremy Tankard on winning The Blue Spruce Award, as part of the 2010 Forest Of Reading Awards, for his children’s book BOO HOO BIRD! It’s the sequel to his award-winning debut Grumpy Bird, and it’s great! I’ve already bought copies for both of my nieces (and a few more besides!) and they’re a real hit. Winning the award puts thousands of extra copies of work into the hands of K-2 kids all over Ontario!

I know I’m kinda off in my own little world a lot of the time (and I’ve missed sooooo many other opportunities to congratulate friends) but yeah, congrats Jeremy! It’s a well-deserved award!

- Christopher
(via)

Okay, I’m officially not liveblogging the previews this month,  haven’t got nearly enough time. But. BUT. I reserve the right to bitch about stupid things:

First up, why is this killing trees?:

Time Masters: Vanishing Point #1
On Sale July 21 – 1 of 6 – 32pg, FC, $2.99
Written by Dan Jurgens. Art and Cover by Dan Jurgens and Karl Story

TIME MASTERS: VANISHING POINT #1 launches “The Search for Batman,” as Rip Hunter puts together a high-powered band of Time Masters to travel through time in search of the World’s Greatest Detective. But can even the combined might and skill of Superman, Green Lantern and Booster Gold help the Time Master pinpoint where Batman went at the conclusion of FINAL CRISIS? Information that could keep Vanishing Point from tearing itself apart?

This six-issue mini-series, a companion piece to BATMAN: THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE and a story chock full of clues that point toward the next major DCU event, hits in July from writer artist Dan Jurgens with a variant cover by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story (the artists on BATMAN: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #1). How can you say no?

(VIA)

A companion series to back-up players from Grant Morrison’s Batman? Set to end 3 months after the story it compliments? Uggggggh. I don’t even want to order this. I’ve got nothing against Jurgens, but this ill-advised, poorly timed, and entirely superfluous little mini-series is just gonna clutter up my racks. Forget this.

–
Edit: Okay, one more.

Marvel is reprinting the 1960s MARVELMAN stuff in hardcover, black and white, 160 pages at a time, and charging 35 American Dollars for the privilege.  Is anyone going to buy this? Anyone at all? It’s so very, very expensive.

AND, in case that’s not good enough, they’re doing a 6 issue ‘best of’ reprinting in black and white for four bucks an issue as well.

Is it just me or is the pricing on this totally out to lunch? More than 20 cents a page for black and white reprints?

I think I’ll be counting on reorders for this one.

And not needing them.

–

- Chris

(via)

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

Let me show you something.

This is Monthly Shonen Gangan, a monthly manga anthology published by Square/Enix, best known in the west for their video game properties. It is where the very popular Shonen series Fullmetal Alchemist, published in English by Viz, is originally serialized. This is one fat piece of comics.

For comparison’s sake, here’s how this puppy stacks up against my USB plug… it’s about 3 inches thick, and about a 90/10 split comics and advertising.

As you can see, the final story begins serialization on page 1103. The magazine, by my count, weighs in at 1144 pages. In addition to FMA, it serializes a number of popular stories currently being released in English, including Soul Eater from Yen Press. Stan Lee has a serial in here too (really) called HEROMAN, which I’m sure is coming to the U.S. annnnny day now.

In addition, the magazine was even FATTER on the shelf, coming with two gifts! A double-sized Fullmetal Alchemist folder, and a Fullmetal Alchemist mechanical “sharp pencil”. A nice little bonus…!

So how much was all of this? 1144 pages of manga, two free gifts?

That’s right, 500 yen. Actually they charged me 499 yen. That’s about 5 bucks, give or take.

I kind of wish manga would continue taking off in the states, rather than stumble into the plateau it’s hit… Because man, there’s so much further to go.

- Chris

P.S.: Having a wonderful time in Japan, wish you were here. :)

One of the loveliest things I saw this weekend was this original Catwoman illustration by Jillian Tamaki, on display at The Doug Wright Awards Booth at TCAF. This illustration is part of a fundraising auction for the DWAs, which features a number of excellent Canadian Cartoonists donating the proceeds of the sale of their work to keep the awards going. You can find all of the auctions at http://tinyurl.com/27fmlnm.

Also to the right here is Kate Beaton’s contribution, the original artwork to her cranky Wonder Woman strip which I love. The other fantastic contributions to the auction include Chester Brown’s Batman, Joe Ollman’s The Spectre, Matt Forsythe’s Hawkman, Bryan Lee O’Malley with a spread from Scott Pilgrim, Marc Bell’s Iron Man, Jeff Lemire’s Hawkman and The Atom, Lynn Johnston with a For Better or For Worse strip, John Martz’ Bizarro, Diana Tamblyn’s Black Canary, Michael Cho’s Superboy, and Seth’s Dr. Fate.

I probably should’ve mentioned these auctions earlier, but I was a bit busy. At any rate, the first of the auctions ends in less than 24 hours! So get over there and bid on some gorrrrrrrrrrrgeous artwork. That link again? http://tinyurl.com/27fmlnm.

- Christopher

I took a bunch of pictures at TCAF this weekend, and now they’re online! Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157624038123570/

In other news, I’ve received word that a few other people have put photo sets online, so if you missed out at TCAF now you can feel like you were there:

Jim Zubkavich: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=182562&id=506857670&l=40671bbc2b

Jamie Coville: http://picasaweb.google.ca/comichistory/TCAF2010#

AdHouse: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adhousebooks/sets/72157624038996660/

Coleen Frakes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleenfrakes/sets/72157624036778478/

I think there’s a couple more I’m missing… I’ll update this if I find’em.

- Chris