More from Tokyopop's Jeremy Ross on OEL Manga and Contracts

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on Oct. 18, 2005 Sign up now!

By Heidi MacDonald -- Publishers Weekly, 10/18/2005

A few weeks ago, we sat down with Tokyopop' editorial director Jeremy Ross to talk about the publisher's original manga line. The line is expanding dramatically—last year Tokyopop published 12 OEL manga, this year 28, and the line will probably double in 2006. With dozens of projects on tap for next year, this is without question one of the most significant attempts ever to launch a line of original graphic novels in America. At the same time, the line has been criticized in recent weeks for contracts that are reportedly unfair to the creators. In our original conversation, Ross discusses the inspiration behind the line and working with different kinds of creators, before addressing some of the criticisms.

What's your definition of manga?

We've taken a very broad definition of manga at Tokyopop from the beginning. [We] look at it as not just comics from Japan, but a real state of mind, a way of thinking about creating. Literally, there's a strong emotional reaction in the stories.

[Tokyopop founder Stuart Levy] said let's just set our sights on creating original graphic novels, because he believed that manga should not be thought of in racist, culturist ways. It's a world phenomena. At the same time, it's much more expensive and time consuming to put out original books.

There's been a lot of discussion about the term "OEL [original English-language] manga." When you started the line, what term did you use?

At some point when we were getting our editors together we said, let's not call it "original." The only time that's been used it meant an "original graphic novel." And besides, all manga is original. We decided we needed an internal acronym that we thought we'd never tell anybody, but, naturally, it's out on [the internet]. It's "OGM", which is a joke—"original gangster manga." People thought it meant original graphic manga. It's something that was fun to talk about in a meeting when we were all sleep deprived. Don't try and read too much into it.

We were trying to fight the term "Ameri-manga." Which is a diss. It means second-rate imitation. We thought, let's come up with a new term, because it's amazing how you can change people's thinking through language, and we were very pleasantly surprised that the whole notion that it's all Ameri-manga and off-topic was countered by somebody making up this term "OEL."

That term came about because some of your creators are from Canada or Singapore, not American.

It's just a transitional phrase, but it's moved from a negative term to at least a neutral term, and it symbolizes the process of the acceptance of original local manga into any culture. It already happened in Korea. It took three to five years for people to go from saying we only want Japanese manga to we make manhwa.

Are you getting an indication of how audiences are reacting to the OEL manga?

A: I'm very pleased at a sea change I'm seeing. Part of that is making it available for free online. [All of Tokyopop's books can be sampled online at their Manga Online site.] Once they see it, they judge it on its own merits. The key to the success is that these are [the audience's] peers. It becomes, "Hey, that's Billy drawing Ameri-manga. He's my friend, I know him. I'm cool now, I can be him." The ultimate marketing credibility for today's cynical teenage society is when it's not a corporate message and comes from their peers.

On a more mundane level, we just did a study in-house looking at the numbers, and on the average our OEL is selling as well or better than our average Japanese titles, when you factor out the Fruits Baskets and big hits. That's because our creators are self-promoting. We're working hard at conventions. Our marketing department is working hard. I see a lot of signs that it's going to take hold and people are going to buy it and accept it as being legitimate.

You also have a lot of established American comics creators doing books, including Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Grey, Neil Gaiman, Chuck Austen, Keith Giffen and Becky Cloonan. How do they fit into the whole picture?

I've always felt like we had two very interesting diverse challenges. We wanted to work with kids who had steeped themselves only in manga and anime, and needed to mature as artists and storytellers. [We also] wanted to see which writers or artists could make the leap from indies or mainstream into manga. What we've found so far is it's harder for an artist because so much of what you do in this medium is programmed into your subconscious. Typically it's easier for a writer or someone with a broad background. What we're looking for is mainstream guys who won't just say, oh, another publisher in town, let's get a book out there [but rather are saying] I love something about manga, so I can do a high school baseball story like Chuck Austen [Boys of Summer, by Austen and artist Hiroki Otsuka.] In some ways it was more challenging to work with someone more set in their ways, but it's really rewarding to work with someone who's a consummate pro in terms of meeting deadlines. For the aesthetic, we wanted to experiment and see what manga could be.

The above interview was conducted before the Web lit up with discussions of Tokyopop's contract for their original books. The contracts call for a shared copyright between the creators and Tokyopop (the actual division is negotiable in some cases), and some observers charge that the contract calls for a cap on royalties and leaves Tokyopop the option to sue creators for "underperformance." In an e-mail we asked Ross to comment on the discussion, and this is part of his response:

The recent discussion of Tokyopop contracts on some fan boards reminds me of the game of "telephone." As information is passed along from one person to the next, mistakes creep in and misconceptions build on each other until, in the end, the message changes dramatically.

Let me set the record straight regarding one important issue. Given Tokyopop's mission it's absurd to think we would or even could make the artist contractually responsible for the failure of his or her book. Tokyopop contracts contain no language giving us the right to sue creators for sales "underperformance" of their manga. The concept simply does not exist, nor is it something that we've ever contemplated. No Tokyopop contract has ever included the term "underperformance" or any similar term.

We pay the creator and in exchange they give us their time and talent to deliver cool, creative stories and sequential art that we can publish and together promote. In turn, we offer strong editorial development, PR, sales, distribution and marketing. Our creators recognize this value. Furthermore, we've published a few manga that, quite bluntly, have failed commercially—but we continue to publish additional volumes because we believe in the creator's message, expression, and talent.