Professionals, Fans and Panels Open New York Comic-con 2007
By Douglas Wolk, Laurel Maury, Rachel Deahl, Trevor Soponis and Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 2/24/2007
The New York Comic-con opened its doors to professionals (during the day) and the fans (after 4 p.m.), offering a full slate of programming for both, including appearances by Stan Lee and Stephen Colbert in the late afternoon. While traffic was light most of the day, fans streamed into the exhibition floor at 4 o’clock, providing a preview of the crowds likely to show up on Saturday.
Indeed, Saturday has been sold out for weeks, and weekend passes (covering Saturday and Sunday) were all gone by Friday afternoon. “We’re trying to encourage people not to show up Saturday,” said one show official. Much the same message has been posted on the New York Comic-con Web site.
Here’s a quick survey of notable panels held Friday.
At the “Graphic Novels: Direct Distribution or Book Wholesalers?” panel, which looked at the evolution of book ordering in the generally nonreturnable comics shop market, three store owners compared notes with Diamond Comic Distributors’ Roger Fletcher and Baker & Taylor’s Regina Kanicki, describing the strategies they’ve developed to manage stock.
One point of contention was that some of the books Diamond carries are intended to be kept in print as long as they keep selling, and others are designed to have limited availability. Stores used to be able to tell how many copies of a potentially hard-to-keep-in-stock book Diamond had on hand (by a little hack on Diamond’s Web site—type in an order for 100,000 copies and see how many it noted they were able to fill), so they'd know how much to invest in something like Dark Horse’s 300 hardcover—now they can’t any more. The “premier companies” that Diamond distributes, Fletcher noted, may not want each other to know what their inventory levels are, but he agreed that “maybe that bears looking at again,” at least for trade paperbacks.
Vertigo executive editor Karen Berger had much to say about DC Comics’ new Minx imprint, during the panel “Capturing The Female Reader: The Fastest Growing Audience for Comics.” Berger said Minx was being positioned “to the left of manga and to the right of YA and called Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis a “watershed book” for young female comics readers. She also cited Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and described the ideal Minx reader as a girl who is not interested in young adult novels that are either overly girlie or guy-centric, “a smart girl interested in different stuff.” Tokyopop editor Julie Taylor spoke about Tokyopop’s copublishing deal with HarperCollins (and bestselling YA author Meg Cabot’s upcoming comics projects). And Audry Taylor, creative director at manga publisher Go! Comi!, said the company was looking to attract older girls in addition to their core audience of teens. Tokyopop’s Taylor agreed: “As big as the audience for manga is, we need to grow it. We have a hard time reaching college age women.”
Over at the “DC Nation” panel, attendees were given two pins—“Jimmy Olsen Must Die” and “WWMMD?” (with Mary Marvel’s lightning bolt)—as part of a promotion for the weekly Countdown series, a followup weekly series to last year’s 52. The series’ head writer Paul Dini, layout artist Keith Giffen and newly announced editor Mike Marts were all present. DC Universe maestro Dan DiDio took questions from the audience, inviting audience members to turn around placards that showed teaser images from Countdown, and addressed complaints about DC titles’ problems with lateness. DiDio: “Paul, do you read All-Star Batman and Robin?” Dini: “When I was a kid...”
"World War Hulk will blow your mind!" howled writer Greg Pak, introducing the upcoming crossover series event at Marvel’s afternoon panel. Following on the heels of Marvel’s well-received Civil War miniseries, CEO Joe Quesada explained that World War Hulk will tie-in to 35 titles over a four-month period beginning in May. The story, set after the events of Planet Hulk, where the big green monster is unwillingly banished to an alien planet. However, the Hulk returns to Earth to get revenge. Marvel artists, writers, and editors repeatedly assured the crowd that much smashing would ensue.
With the growing popularity of manga, even American publishers like Marvel are Japan-savvy. In the panel, “Comics Publishing: Review and Outlook 2007,” Paul Levitz of DC comics pointed out how literacy functions in Japan and ties into the popularity of manga as well, and it couldn’t be simpler: “In Japan people like to read,” he said. Del Rey Manga’s Dallas Middaugh pointed out manga’s success in the U.S. as a result of teens with disposable income. He emphasized the need to build an overall consciousness about manga and graphic novels in order for it to permeate the mainstream.
In the panel “Manga: What’s Hot,” Tokyopop editor Lillian Diaz-Przybl noted how the unflipped format of manga at times became an obstacle in the media penetrating the mainstream. Giving the example of the series Tramps Like Us, Diaz-Przybl noted that convincing the average 20 year-old female non-manga fan to read comics right-to-left was challenging. Tokyopop also introduced the authors and artists behind some of their newest original manga. Paul Benjamin, writer of Pantheon High, Dramacon’s Svetlana Chmakova and Eric White of My Dead Girlfriend fame were present. Korean publisher NetComics announced that they would take on the role of licensor. One of their titles has been licensed for the Italian market and Net Comics will be entering more contracts with European companies this year. The publisher will also begin licensing Japanese manga for the U.S.
Viz Media announced that they will be reprinting two Junji Ito horror manga. GYO, a two-volume series, will hit shelves in October. Uzumaki, a three-volume series, will hit the market in October. They will also be launching the 23-volume Hoshin Engi in June and will release it on a bimonthly schedule. The teen-rated manga is an action story involving Chinese mythology. Viz has two bi-shojo (beautiful girl) manga: Pretty Girl, a six-volume manga, will be available in August. Strawberry 100%, which Viz editors described as “19 volumes of a high-school boy chasing after strawberry panties,” launches in July. The publisher will also publish a 900-page prose novel by Miyuki Miyabe for the young adult market.
