If something's happening in comics and graphic novels, then it happens at Comic-Con International, the annual comics industry trade show that took place at the San Diego (Calif.) Convention Center July 16—20.
CCI is where the entire comics industry gathers alongside representatives from the film, game, toy and card businesses eager to license their wares, as well as upward of 60,000 fans—imagine BookExpo America with twice as many attendees, many of them wearing Catwoman or Gandalf costumes, and most of the exhibitors selling their books rather than giving them away. This year's event marked the 25th anniversary of the graphic novel format (Will Eisner's 1978 A Contract with God is generally recognized as the first of its kind). Comic-Con is also the home to the Eisner Awards, the comics world's Oscars; the whole exhausting trade show/fanfest is inevitably the best predictor of what's about to happen in the graphic novel trade.
And this year, Random House, which launched a new line of manga graphic novels, and Houghton Mifflin, with a sprawling, multimedia Lord of the Rings pavilion, were involved in a big way.
Manga and Random House
This year's show highlighted the manga tsunami at one end of the mammoth convention center and the rise of small-press literary graphic novels at the other, with traditional American comics publishers situated in the middle. At a panel called Comic Book Statistics, Milton Griepp of ICV2.com, a comics and pop culture trade news Web site, reported that graphic novels are currently about a $100-million retail market and still growing, while manga's growth is in the double digits. There's no denying that Japanese titles are the biggest thing in the graphic-novel book trade right now, and the Tokyopop and Viz booths, in particular, were mobbed.
Tokyopop is publishing hundreds of titles a year (all in b&w and priced at $9.99) and unveiled plans to publish seven new series, including a collaboration with rock singer/songwriter Courtney Love for a new shojo (or girl-oriented) manga. The house is promoting titles all over the age spectrum: for the wee ones, there are the ultra-cute Tokyo Mew Mew and Rave Master; for teenage girls, there's Kare Kano and I.N.V.U.; for mature audiences, there's the brutal but popular Battle Royale as well as Shonen-ai titles (a gay male romance series aimed at female readers) like Fake and the much-requested forthcoming Gravitation.
Tokyopop is also developing original American manga and expects to release @Large by Ahmed Hoke, a hip-hop influenced manga graphic novel in the fall. Tokyopop and other manga publishers are increasing their distribution to outlets such as Gamestop and SunCoast—comics, video games and music share the same demographic—as well as Wal-Mart and Hastings. Tokyopop executives are working on a display dump agreement with Barnes & Noble and they noted that some retailers are saying that manga is balancing the depressed market for music sales.
In the show's biggest personnel announcement, Del Rey, Random House's science fiction and fantasy imprint, appointed Dallas Middaugh, formerly marketing director for Viz, to head its new line of manga graphic novels, slated to hit the marketplace in spring 2004. The house will begin with four titles licensed from Kodansha, with eight more titles to follow. Among the new titles, which will be published in the right to left "authentic Japanese" format, will be Negima by Ken Akamatsu, author of the very popular Love Hina series, and Gundam Seed by Masatsugo Iwase, a spinoff of the bestselling alternate-reality war manga.
Betsy Mitchell, editor-in-chief of Del Rey, said, "We knew we needed a specialist to get this up and running." The deal is part of the Random House/Kodansha co-venture announced in January. But Mitchell emphasized that while the line will be releasing Kodansha manga properties, the deal will not limit Kodansha's licensing agreements with other U.S. manga publishers like Tokyopop and Viz. Mitchell said Random spent a year doing retail market and library research, focus groups and discussions with its sales force before launching the series. The books will be aimed at teenage and older readers and will be labeled for age-appropriateness. "We'll start small and we'll try some tactics for selling fiction that will be new to this marketplace," said Mitchell.
Viz, meanwhile, was whipping up interest in its new manga series Boys over Flowers and Shaman King, as well as the unstoppably popular Dragonball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Since dropping the publication of all its periodical comics, Viz plans to release 10 to 20 new manga titles a month, beginning in September, and was also touting "Anime/Manga 101," a guide the company has produced to help retailers with the category.
Even a small manga publisher like Comics-One, which specializes in the Korean and Hong Kong versions of manga, is releasing seven to 10 graphic novels each month, with no letup in sight. Central Park Media, a pioneer in the U.S. distribution of anime, the animated film version of manga, is publishing as many as six books a month and also combining books with anime video releases in boxed sets. And Dark Horse, which is reprinting the original multivolume Astro Boy mangas, was all smiles as Sony announced plans to launch an all-new animated series updating the classic Astro Boy anime films. ADV Films, one of the largest U.S. distributors of anime video and DVD, is entering the publishing business and starting its own line of manga graphic novels with plans to begin releasing four to six titles a month in the fall.
American-Style Graphic Novels
Western-style comics publishers still generally do better than manga in the comics direct market (comics shops), but the big question facing them at Comic-Con was how to get their own piece of the bookstore pie. These titles have such high production costs with detailed color artwork that it's tough to compete with the $8—-$10 price points that are key to manga sales.
CrossGen, whose experiment with the low-priced Forge and Edge anthologies failed to work out, is now trying smaller-sized paperbacks. GrossGen also announced plans to release a number of its graphic novels in digital form on DVD, adapted to the electronic format using a new cross-platform proprietary technology that it developed in-house. In fact, the house claims that the new technology, which it calls Chameleon, will be attractive to many noncomics publishers involved in electronic publishing for the educational sector. CrossGen was also very bullish on Bridges: Comics for Your Classroom, an education initiative that utilizes its comics and offers reading and vocabulary teaching supplements for four of its graphic novel series.
But literary graphic novels, with visual ideas that owe more to the art world than to old comics, were also selling extraordinarily well to Comic-Con's attendees. Drawn and Quarterly brought hundreds of copies of Chris Ware's $45 sketchbook Acme Novelty Datebook, and sold out of them in two days; Top Shelf blew through a small mountain of copies of Craig Thompson's 600-page, $30 graphic novel Blankets, as did Avodah with its artsy anthology Kramers Ergot 4. Highwater Books offered Mat Brinkman's Teratoid Heights and Marc Bell's underground-comix—-influenced Shrimpy and Paul and Friends.
Fantagraphics's booth had signings for some hot new titles (such as Fredrik Strömberg's Black Images in the Comics) and excellent word of mouth for Chris Ware's oversized Quimby the Mouse hardcover. In addition, its B. Krigstein Vol. 1 won the Eisner for Best Comics-Related Publication.
NBM reported rapid sales of art books by Luis Royo (who was on hand for a signing). Publisher Terry Nantier also had Richard Moore (Boneyard) and Patrick Atangan (The Yellow Jar) signing at his booth and ballyhooed new books from Ryan Inzana (Johnny Jihad) and much- touted Europeans Christophe Blain (Isaac the Pirate) and Joann Sfar (Dungeon).
The graphic novel world's self-publishers (unlike their mainstream publishing counterparts) can build a serious fan-base on their own—Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest series spent decades at the couple's own WaRP Graphics before its new and much-hyped move to DC. John Pham's Epoxy Press, with his own lavishly designed books and merchandise, looked like the micro-publisher to watch. Carla Speed McNeil's Finder, from her own Lightspeed Press, is now a solid cult hit; Richard Starkings's Active Images press featured his European-style graphic novel Hip Flask: Unnatural Selection. And Larry Young's AiT/PlanetLar, initially created for his Astronauts in Trouble, has become an independent force to reckon with, offering such hot titles as like Last of the Independents by Matt Fracton and Kieron Dwyer.
Licensed properties beyond manga—especially movie tie-ins, for which the film industry was scouting full speed-ahead—were attention magnets, too. DC's Bob Wayne noted that the paperback edition of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was in its sixth printing in six months, and Wayne quipped, "I don't even think the movie's [bad reviews are] going to stop it." DC's Vertigo imprint is also enjoying a buzz around two graphic novels, Fables and Y: The Last Man, and getting ready for a big fall with the omnipresent Neil Gaiman's much- anticipated Sandman: Endless Nights.
Marvel Comics didn't have a booth at this year's show, and the company's presence was focused less on its graphic novel titles than on its monthly series and upcoming movie projects, like The Punisher. Dark Horse, besides its ever-popular Star Wars line, will soon be reviving Conan—including three volumes reprinting Barry Windsor-Smith's classic early-'70s Conan the Barbarian series.
Book publication Eisners were awarded to Lynda Barry's One! Hundred! Demons! (Sasquatch) for Best New Graphic Album; Lorenzo Mattoti and Jerry Kramsky's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NBM) won an Eisner for Best U.S. Edition of a Foreign Graphic Album; and Batman: Black and White Vol. 2 (DC), edited by Mark Chiarello and Nick J. Napolitano, received an Eisner for Best Graphic Album Reprint.
