Manga Still a Big Story at Dark Horse

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on March. 28, 2006 Sign up now!

By Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 3/28/2006

Now in its 20th year, Portland, Ore-based Dark Horse Comics will roll out 20 new manga titles in 2006, bringing the total number of manga titles for 2006 to 70. Despite the loss of Megatokyo, Fred Gallagher's popular OEL manga series, manga will continue to be a strong category at Dark Horse, including classic works, newly licensed J-horror titles and manga adaptations of Harlequin romance fiction.

The house has secured to the rights to publish an English-language version of Style School, a Japanese how-to-draw-manga magazine that showcases amateur manga creators. And included on this years publishing list is a new work in Shirow Masamune's Ghost in the Shell series, Ghost in the Shell: 1.5; and two new series from master storyteller Kazuo Koike: Path of the Assassin and Crying Freeman.

Dark Horse also publishes such acclaimed manga works as Shirow's Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface as well as three other Koike titles, Samurai Executioner, Lady Snowblood and his famous and influential epic, Lone Wolf and Cub. Dark Horse has spent years building relationships with the Japanese artists that it publishes, says Lee Dawson, Dark Horse publicity director. "The artists own their work. We're not going to tell them what to do with it. We're not going to censor it and we're going to treat it as they want it to be treated."

Dark Horse will publish an English-language edition of the Japanese magazine Style School from magazine publisher Asukashinsha. Style School is a quarterly magazine; aspiring manga-ka (writers and artists) in Japan can have their work evaluated and featured in it. For its U.S. release, Asukashinsha has expressed an interest in getting American manga creators to submit to the magazine—if they're up to snuff. "It's a great way to get in touch with what's going on in Japan and be part of the scene," says Dark Horse editor and resident manga scholar Carl Horn.

While Dark Horse has no specific plans to publish more Original English Language manga, Dawson says they're always on the lookout. "American [OEL] manga is not new to us," he says, pointing out Adam Warren's OEL humor and science-fiction series Dirty Pair, which was published at Dark Horse in 2001. "It's something we've done in the past to great success. We're always looking for quality work."

Dark Horse began publishing manga back in 1988, two years after the company was founded. The house worked closely with Studio Proteus, the prominent manga translation and licensing packager, to produce English translations of such popular manga series as Outlanders, 3x3 Eyes, Hiroaki's Samura's Blade of the Immortal and Dark Horse's longest-running series, Ah! My Goddess, well before the current manga boom got started.

Dawson credits the company's success in licensing both commercially successful and critically acclaimed manga to building long-term relationships with Japanese publishers and licensors. Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson and the rest of the Dark Horse staff make regular trips to Japan to meet with publishers and artists. These relationships—the personal touch, says Horn—can go a long way when dealing with Japanese publishers. "Personal touch is important," says Horn. "Publishers want to hear about our plans for material, our marketing strategy, but a lot of it is personal interaction."

Dawson says that despite the growth in the American manga market, the U.S. market remains an afterthought for most Japanese manga publishers, who are completely focused on the local Japanese and Asian market for manga. The U.S. manga market represents only a small percentage of manga revenues for Japanese publishers and U.S. licensees need to work to get their attention.

"[Japanese publishers] don't need us. They don't need the U.S.," says Dawson, quickly adding, "That doesn't mean they don't appreciate or respect us, but the quantities that sell over there are vastly different from those that sell here." In Japan, a popular manga series can sell in the millions. A bestselling series like Dragon Ball can sell better than 100 million copies; One Piece, another wildly popular manga series, has sold more than 60 million copies. In comparison, Dark Horse has moved about 900,000 copies of the popular Lone Wolf series, and over 125,000 copies of Berserk, strong sales for an American manga title. These numbers are a fraction of what a popular manga can sell in Japan, but they represent sales numbers Dawson says "didn't exist in America for manga before."

Horror is another strong category for Dark Horse; the house publishes the popular Japanese horror manga series The Ring. Adapted from a popular Japanese horror movie of the same name The Ring has a dedicated following in the U.S. and The Ring movie created a strong awareness of the property. But even without the movie tie-ins, J-horror has its own appeal. "Japanese horror feels fresh." Dawson says. "Hollywood is responding as well. It's an untapped resource."

Looking to capitalize on its Ring success, Dark Horse licensed Ju-on, another Japanese movie, for an English-language manga adaptation. That film was also adapted by Hollywood and remade as The Grudge. The company will release five to six J-horror books this year, among them Tohru Yamazaki's Octopus Girl and the series Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service by Eiji Ohtsuka and Housui Yamazaki, which Horn describes as "Scooby Doo meets the movie Seven."

As the U.S. manga market grows, Dark Horse will continue to expand its scope and look into licensing material from different genres. "The growing market has allowed us to broaden our scope and reach a wider audience," Dawson says. Dark Horse is also looking to aggressively woo older female readers. Last year DH rolled out its Harlequin Romance manga series, manga adaptations of traditional Harlequin love stories originally created for Japan and now licensed to DH for the U.S. English-language market.

While the Harlequin manga have done well in Japan for the past 10 years, they face obstacles in the English-language market. "We're still determining if regular Harlequin readers are taking to [the manga]," says Dawson, who notes that the Harlequin brand and stamp of quality have helped attract attention. But the different format "still makes things tricky." Dawson says, "We have to explain to shojo readers that it's legitimate manga, and we have to educate the Harlequin readers that it's still the romance stories they know and love."

While some publishing observers worry that the manga category is expanding too quickly and offering more titles than consumers can support, Horn remains optimistic. Horn says that given the diversity in America, "there are so many different ways that people may enjoy [manga] and get into it." And while licensing material is becoming more competitive and some professionals argue that the best series are already licensed, Horn disagrees: "That's not true. The best manga is yet to come."

For Dawson, whether it's American or Japanese, the primary concern at Dark Horse is the quality of the titles it publishes. "It's our 20th anniversary. We've seen all the trends come and go. Manga isn't a trend that we jumped on. We've exposed a lot of readers to these works and we've created a lot of readers who will stay on. We focus on quality and, at the end of the day, once a trend dies away, the best stuff keeps standing."