MangaBlog

Newsarama has an interview with Adam Arnold of Seven Seas on his web manga Aoi House, which will be coming out in print on May 31. In addition to writing Aoi House (it’s drawn by Seven Seas artist Shiei), Adam has worked on Love Hina and Pita Ten and is editor of Boogiepop. So even if you’re not an Aoi House fan, the interview is worth reading for Adam’s insights into the creative process and webcomics vs. print.

For those unfamiliar with Aoi House, Newsarama gives the executive summary:

Aoi House is a comedy webmanga in the spirit of Love Hina, The Real World and Comic Party. It follows the trials and tribulations of two down-on-their-luck college boys who join an anime club dominated by crazed yaoi fangirls.

Adam’s original vision was of a shoujo romance set in an anime club, but Seven Seas editor Jason DeAngelis wanted him to make it “more shonen.” The result is what Adam calls a “harem comedy.” The manga started out as a gag-a-day webcomic, but it has evolved since then:

When we relaunched it from the ground up, I was able to write it in a way you’d actually write the series in screenplay format. So instead of me writing everything panel by panel and forcing the artist to draw it a certain way, writing a series as a screenplay allows the artist to become the director for the series and decide the pace and panel structure on their end.

Adam also talks about the way Seven Seas uses webcomics to test the waters for print manga:

The way the manga market is now, you can’t just throw a book out there and expect it to sell. You have to build a fan base first.

The print version will have omake content and some dialogue will be tweaked, but the biggest difference, Adam says, is that the art will be fully toned.

Also, stop by and check out Adam’s room.

ICv2 has a statement from John O’Donnell, managing director of CPM:

As our business has been significantly impacted by Musicland’s bankruptcy filing, we are facing tightening sales conditions and are currently focusing on a cost cutting program which will structure the company for future growth without our largest customer. A number of very talented and dedicated employees have unfortunately lost their jobs through no fault of their own. CPM will be happy to assist these fine staff members find employment opportunities, so any company seeking experienced and professional employees are requested to email CPM at HR519@teamcpm.com for further details.

ICv2 adds

A variety of rumors about CPM have been floating around the Internet over the last few days; O’Donnell said that this statement is the extent of what’s accurate.

Got that, everyone?

AnimeOnDVD has a brief writeup on the Tokyopop panel at Anime Boston, including a list of new titles. Also:

TokyoPop is working to create original stories based on Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Something to note is that Jake Forbes is currently doing the writing for Labyrinth.

(Via Manganews.)

UPDATE: Jack has posted the list of titles in comments and wants to know what everyone thinks.

German artist Dirk Schweiger has put a new spin on webcomics: He takes requests. Ask Schweiger, who lives in Tokyo, to sample an aspect of Japanese culture and he will draw a comic about it. The result is MORESUKINE, a funny and often insightful comic drawn in classic indy-comics style. Canned coffee, cubicle hotels, natto—it’s all in there. My favorite so far: Schweiger’s beautiful rendering of a visit to Mount Takao.

Thanks to Adam Arnold for bringing this to my attention in comments on my earlier CPM piece:

Peter Tatara (CPM’s media rep) posted this message on AnimeonDVD’s message board:

“Ahoy. CPM should be making an official statement Tuesday regarding the rumors. While I know a lot about what’s going on, I’d prefer for the company to make an announcement before I do. (In other words, I’m no longer with the company.)

As for things like Wrath of the Ninja, Negadon, and VOTOMS, again, I’d prefer for CPM to issue a statement.

[Link added by me.] Peter will be looking for work as of Tuesday. On their main page, AoD adds

CPM had three panels scheduled for Anime Boston this weekend but nobody was here from the company to staff them and no reason was given why.

As this manga thing starts to catch on, there has been a lot of talk about print runs, so I thought it would be interesting to do some compare-and-contrast.

What made me think of this was this article about the third Scott Pilgrim book. I haven’t written about Scott Pilgrim because I don’t regard it as manga, but it tends to be shelved with manga, presumably because of the trim size, and a lot of manga readers like it. A lot. I’d call Scott Pilgrim a critical success. So what’s the first printing?

10,000 copies.

That seems surprisingly small for one of the most talked about books in comics-dom, but then comics-dom is a small world. Here are some other numbers for comparison:

10,000: Go!Comi’s first printing on their first volumes, which sold out and have gone back for second printings.

25,000: Sound of My Voice and Celebrities, from BeBeautiful.Of course, BeBeautiful is owned by CPM, which seems to be headed for bankruptcy.

60,000+:Queenie Chan’s The Dreaming, which went back for a third printing of 45,000, thanks to being picked up by Scholastic. That’s after a second run of 7,000, so we can guess the first printing was also in the 10,000 range.

75,000: That’s where the Papercutz reworkings of Nancy Drew are expected to be by the end of summer, after they migrate to Target and supermarket clip racks.

So, what do we learn from this?

We learn that publishing a critically acclaimed, breathlessly awaited book is not the same as a license to print money. It has been ever thus.

A more useful lesson is the importance of marketing, not just selling to the comics crowd but reaching out to mass marketing outlets. Check out the top 100 graphics novels sales in comics stores. In any given month, the top book on the list shipped between 6,000 and 9,000 copies to comics stores, and the books at the bottom of the list sold barely 1,000. The fact that you can buy manga in bookstores has been a key to its success. But Nancy Drew isn’t in the manga section (because it really isn’t manga). It’s shelved with the Nancy Drew prose novels. Naruto is kicking butt because of the TV show.

My point? For sales to really balloon, manga needs to get out more, out of the comics section and under the noses of more readers. If The Dreaming and Peach Fuzz do well via Scholastic, that could really give manga a boost, from selling-well-for-comics to selling well, period. And since it’s a well-known principle of publishing that the blockbusters support the riskier titles, that would be good news for everyone.