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 MangaLife Con Report: NYCC 2008
Written by Park Cooper
You know, cabs are not guaranteed to show up even though they say they'll be there at a certain prearranged time. Mine didn't, to take me to the airport... I called their competitor, and it was a race. The competitor won, by mere seconds. He explained to me that he used to work for the other guys, and knows firsthand what the other side's problem is: they use GPS to tell where their cabs are and stuff, and their GPS is messed up.
"Oh yeah? What do you guys do instead?"
"They call us on the radio."
I dunno, I found it to be a funny answer.
Continental did a pretty darn good job getting me there... all the more amazing because they aren't Jet Blue. Or so it seems, since EVERYONE keeps seeming to expect one to use Jet Blue for such travel. Sorry, I didn't this time.
I took a bus from the airport through the Holland Tunnel, and arrived at the Port Authority... it turns out that that means Times Square and 42nd Street, complete with a nearby statue dedicated to Ralph Kramden put there by the beneficence of Nickelodeon’s TVLand. So I’m whistling “42nd Street” and “Rhapsody in Blue” all day and all night...
Once at the hotel, I check my bag, and then am told that the convention center is just three streets down, so I head over there to pick up my badge. Well, it wasn’t really three streets away, it was three AVENUES away. There’re streets IN-BETWEEN the avenues. So it was more like 6 or 7 normal blocks, I guess. Oh well.
Once badged, I realize I’ve come all this way without my business cards—they’re in my bag at the hotel. Well that was half the reason to show up, was to give high-rollers my business cards! But before I go walk all the way back there, I slip into the ICv2 graphic novel conference to see if it’s really worth the trouble. I decide it is, which means I have to walk al the way back to the hotel, get my business cards and things, and then walk back. I do.
And boy, was ICv2 packed with stuff. It was 2008: The Year of Manga Humility. Everyone was basically like, “Yeah, well, none of this really matters too much compared to how well manga is selling.” Which I knew, but I never dreamed people would admit it.
Here are the things I heard at ICv2 that I can tell you about. As someone seeking employment in the industry, I don’t think it really would be a good idea for me to tell all the things I heard... they’re too embarrassing to certain western comics companies. If you’re a personal friend of mine, email me and I’ll tell you. Here’s everything else (sometimes paraphrased, since I wrote it down quickly, instead of tape-recording it all and transcribing it later):
--Look, I don’t know if you realize it yet, but there’s another audience that the industry is desperate to get into besides the manga-buying audience: libraries.
--In fact they’re hoping to impress ACADEMIC libraries, so as to get into THEM, which means there's MONEY in comics being/becoming literature.
--Viz commented that they’ve started printing hardback manga collections so that they don’t wear out so fast, for the sake of libraries... which must also be why Tokyopop’s done so with Fruits Basket...
--Minx having so many authors with no background in comics, but instead in novels for young girls, is part of the library thing... libraries will always order more GNS after a while due to attrition...
--Some manga, especially, can be fragile in the way they are bound... I’d like to think that’s starting to improve... but maybe not much. Part of me wants to say that that’s because manga is supposed to be a disposable culture... but the truth is, many western GNs are even worse. But yeah... when a popular manga or GN at a library wears out, they will often order another one... which makes manga better suited to the needs of a library, since manga (with the certain exception of one or two certain unfortunate companies) stay in print, whereas other companies (DC say) will print a GN and forget about it the next year, if it wasn’t written by Moore or Gaiman...
--Okay, get this: a retailer was very sad about GNs maybe replacing single-issue-flimsies (as my wife calls them), because he likes how readers love their “weekly fix” –they love coming in and discussing the comics of the week (or the ones they read last week) with the staff at the store. And he not only felt that that wouldn’t work with GNs (for a second I was thinking “Why not? They certainly come out every week!” but not only does this work better with stories that are drawn out serially, but not every reader can afford to get as many GNs with such regularity... and boys like talking about things in the MIDDLE of things, before the closure), but also that girls would never go for it. So, the librarian on one panel suggested that maybe girls would like setting up GN discussion groups... no one seemed very inspired by that. I’m not surprised—it evokes the question, “why couldn’t/wouldn’t they just do so at Borders or Barnes-and-Nobles?” to which there is no good answer. And then I wondered why no one just tried it with manga... THOSE are told serially and come out every week... but the answer is that the comics store staff would have to start reading manga as much as they read comics.
--Oh, there was one funny moment when Dark Horse asked the panel about the optimum time between a flimsy storyline ending and a GN collection coming out and the librarian (who was on the panel at the time) said “Well we [libraries] DON’T BUY the single issues...!” which made everyone else in the room shudder with dread (except the manga people of course).
--Everyone was congratulating Viz and Dark Horse (Viz slightly more often than Dark Horse, but I suspect that’s just because no Dark Horse execs were on the panels) on their care in choosing the quality of manga they’re importing... I heard this more than once, for example, from the buyer at Diamond who was on one panel.
--Of course, that was the same person who admitted he has trouble keeping track of manga and coping with “the girl market."
--Q: "Where are the aging manga readers going?"
A (from the main expert on the economy of the industry and its ins and outs): "Great question. We don't know. The jury's still out."
--I also realized that since it's all about sales, companies don't know how they feel about 2007 in early 2008! No wonder the jury is still out on where readers are going... the sales figures have to come in, be analyzed, and then be reported to the publishers (who of course only have data for their own companies, aside from booklist etc.)...
--Expert on the industry and its economic ins and outs, again: “The United States certainly had a big role in the formation of the comic book format...” I GASPED, as I never thought I’d hear an American from the industry admit that anyone else had anything else to do with it-- “But we haven't remotely caught up to Japan yet.” I gasped again. I knew this, of course, but to hear someone else say it...! So bizarrely humble!
--A woman from Del Rey was shocked by the page rate that was cited to her by an artist who’s done a lot for DC/Marvel that she hoped to work with. I don’t know why I’m mentioning this, just that it stuck in my head and so I wrote it down. I guess I felt like “ditto.”
--Oh, I found out that Tor has brought in Seven Seas for an alliance... but by now, I imagine everyone knows that, eh?
--Marvel's Dan Buckley: "Tweens aren't going into superheroes much, to be honest..." He also mentioned that Marvel wants to be on the shelf next to the manga...
--The man who sets up the incredibly successful Scholastic bookfairs talked about the problem of skyrocketing paper prices... look for THAT to be an increasing problem in the 21st century, I bet...
--He also discussed, in perhaps my favorite quote from ICv2, how at first he tried selling some shojo, it did pretty well, so he decided to order a lot of just straight romance stuff, and it bombed horribly. This taught him that: “romance just won’t sell without some sort of supernatural twist.” You’ll find out very soon, dear readers, why this made my wife and I so happy...
--Mike Kiley of TOKYOPOP was big on the community lifestyle... "Imagine a world 3 or 4 years from now when all this product is free--how do we still give the readers something they want to pay for?" I presume he meant that the manga industry must be on guard against the rising tide of scanlations, which will not lift all boats but is instead more likely to swamp them... But still... wow. Whatever he thinks the cause will be, if Mike Kiley thinks it’s possible...
--Mike Kiley also had something to say in praise of “events,” which made me cringe, but I told myself that Mike Kiley must not know (and probably doesn’t care—why should he?) about how the word “event” has pretty much ruined mainstream comics—Kiley means it more like “marketing gimmicks.” “We put the entire volume of Fruits Basket volume 19 online for readers to preview, at 19:19 (military time), for 19 minutes. I know, it would be hard to even imagine something more gimmicky than that... but the sales of that volume were up by 20% more than other volumes of Fruits Basket...” Truly, Naruto (Viz) and Fruits were the undisputed king and queen of 2007...
--The graphic novel seller from chain “Books-a-Million”: "We tried selling manga by grouping the shonen and shojo separately... the customers didn't like that... boys do sometimes read some shojo, and girls are reading shonen..."
--Books-a-Million buyer: "We're a Southern-based company, so selling mature content is really hard for us..." What, the Southern states don’t like sex and violence? What kind of America are we living in, anyway?
--Of course, this is, after all, the place where I heard “Can America even support two major bookchains?" They weren’t counting Books-a-Million, either, I’m pretty sure.
Okay, so much for that. The next day, it was time for the actual con. First I played one round of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 for PS2. I didn’t think anyone was making games for the poor PS2 anymore, but sure enough, there it was. N:UN3 seems exactly like N:UN2, only a little better. If the art is to be believed, it looks like those guys who work for Orochimaru are going to be unlockable (you know, Boney, and the rest of the Rope Belt gang... Fatty, Flutey, Spidey, and Double-Header. What? Don’t look at me like that... those guys weren’t around long enough for me to learn their names. You know who I’m talking about, Naruto fans).
I saw a trailer for Batman: Gotham Knight, which is basically the Animatrix (remember that thing?) for Batman. Therefore you have my permission to call it the Batmatrix or perhaps the Battymatrix. I wonder if two-thirds of it will suck, as was true for Animatrix? I suspect the answer is no, it’ll be better than that. It LOOKED pretty decent. But then so did Animatrix...
I stopped by Funimation’s area and saw that they are doing xxxHolic. First I complemented them on their fine choice, then I yelled at them for not doing it sooner. “We had to kinda try Tsubasa first,” they explained, not-sheepishly-enough. Then I yelled at them about how I can’t get Hare and Guu: Deluxe part 2, to say nothing of the Hare and Guu that comes after the two Deluxe DVDs. They said they’d look into it.
Many things were not quite ready yet this early in the day on Thursday—some guy at Mattel was quite a jerk when I accidentally wandered into their area. I swear, I wasn’t even looking at their toys—I was just on my way to somewhere else and not really paying attention. He must not have seen my press badge. Well reap the fruits of your attitude, Guy From Mattel! Eat the power of The Fourth Estate!
I spoke briefly to Jeremy Atkins of Dark Horse, who pointed out that Dark Horse has indeed now been bringing the world manga for 20 years. They’ve got the Blood+ (plus), they’re doing manga/novel combos, they’ve got Gantz... oh yes, it’s all coming together for Dark Horse. I told him what they were saying about him at ICv2 and what my wife was saying about Oldboy in MangaLife. Jeremy was happy.
Meanwhile, guess who’s doing a tie-in with the upcoming super-hot Speed Racer movie?!? EVERYBODY! That’s right, half the publishers at NYCC had some kinda Speed Racer thing they were hawkin’, such as DMP, who are selling old Speed Racer manga from the old days, but they’ve been updated and they fixed the art and made it sharper and... “You’ve digitally remastered it,” quoth I. The DMP guy agreed. I asked him if he watched Speed Racer when he was a kid (like I did). He vouchsafed to me that he used to watch it in the mornings before school... and then the PTL network would come on afterwards, with Jim and Tammy Faye.
I guess that’s why I only watched it in the afternoons.
Meanwhile, at the manga library...
That’s right, the manga library... by, I dunno, Friday or Saturday, I think, there was a room downstairs set up with a lot of manga, and one gave the attendants one’s badge and they gave you the manga volume you asked for... anyway, they told me that the imaginary series they discussed in Genshiken is a real manga now. That’s all. It just blew my mind, that’s all.
I talked to Kurt Hassler of Yen Press... I asked him what’s coming up from Yen and he blew me away with a list of things:
--Harubi Suzumiza, THE MELANCHOLY
--July: Yen Press starts a monthly manga anthology
--It’ll involve chapters of Soul-Eater
--Sumomomomomomo (some relation, perhaps, to Cartoon Network’s Bo-bo bo bo-bo-bo-bo? Or the same thing somehow? Or a sumo version? I didn’t stop to ask)
--Nabiri No On (Or is that last word “or”? My Ns look like my Rs)
--Higurashi: When They Cry (insert Prince/doves joke here)
--Bamboo Blade
Also, Yen is apparently doing an adaptation of Maximum Ride, the novel by James Patterson. Did you know James Patterson is a New York Times best-selling author? Kurt Hassler and the New York Times assure you this is so.
Oh, and then as if an afterthought, there’s always the teen-audience-aimed Nightschool by Svetlana. There are other manga artists named Svetlana, but this is the one they talk about in hushed, squeaky tones.
I saw a trailer for the anime L’Chevalier D’Eon, which appears to be like The Scarlet Pimpernel and the Three Musketeers but with a supernatural twist, that’s supposed to be super-good and all... but honestly, the art looked so old-school to me, that it really got in my way. I dunno, maybe if it dropped in my lap I’d watch it and learn to ignore the character designs, but I dunno...
Well, that’s about it... When the time came, I rolled my luggage up to Madison Square Garden (did you know there’s a train station under that thing? I did not), bought a train ticket, almost couldn’t find where they hid the train platform, rode to the airport, and found that my Contintental flight home was delayed and kept getting more delayed. So, thanks for nothing, Continental. Reap the fruits of your tardiness in this bad press! Eat the power of The Fourth Estate! No wonder everyone loves Jet Blue more than you!
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