OK, geez, I take a day off to take my dad to the doctor and all heck breaks loose. I refer to the Tokyopop/HarperCollins deal, which even made the New York Times. (registration required; I’ll update the link if it gets reposted on a free site, but in the meantime, use bugmenot if necessary).
The only nice thing about being the last to post on something is I can be lazy and just point you to everyone else’s links. Here goes: Heidi at the Beat has good solid coverage as always, with links to coverage from major industry sites PW Weekly and ICv2, including the latter’s interview with Tokyopop’s Mike Kiley.
David Taylor of Love Manga dissects the deal at length in three different posts, while Johanna rightly critiques the press release as full of buzzwords and links to more commentary, notably Lea Hernandez’s rather negative take on the whole thing. As always, the folks at the ANN and AoD forums and the engine have plenty to say.
Here’s my two cents: I’m not as thrilled as everyone else about this deal opening up the possibility of adapting Meg Cabot’s books into graphic novels. Comics are a medium, and the best comics are conceived for the medium, not adapted from something else. If I wanted to read Meg Cabot novels, I’d buy the novels. (For the same reason, I find it hard to get excited about novelizations of manga.) I look to Tokyopop for original comics, and while I’m not at all against OEL, I also really like the Japanese books, and I would hate to see them fade away. The distribution side of this deal sounds fine, but I hope the creative part doesn’t cause Tokyopop to change emphasis too much.
I too have my reservations about the direction Tokyopop is going to take in the future. I don’t mind most OEL but like you said, I hope Tokyopop doesn’t begin to change their emphasis. Well, even if they do – as long as they can produce some stuff worth the attention I guess I wouldn’t mind. Either way it seems like this deal is going to be pretty big for Tokyopop’s future.