Wow, these really piled up.
§ ICv2 sits down with Toykopop’s Stuart Levy to talk about the state of the company, the manga market and so on. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
Much of it is plain talk:
There’s not as much depth overall in the category as there was a few years ago. That’s because of a lot of factors that everybody’s familiar with: there’s a lot more product in the marketplace, there’s less space overall in the retailers, there are fewer customers in the stores and there’s certainly a lot of accessibility to content online. So if somebody isn’t convinced and won’t actually purchase a graphic novel or a series, they have other ways they can consume it without making that plunge. All those factors combined have limited the breadth of the salable titles at retail. The last issue is that there’s still a question as to which retailers will not only survive but become stronger over the next few years, and which may or may not make it including some of the national chains.
But some reveals more of the entrepreneurial streak Levy is known for:
From my point of view, the thing I’m really excited about right now is that we’re doing a tour this summer. Basically I’m hitting the road with one of my guys and six students, university students. We’re auditioning right now to choose the six. We’re going to be in a bus for three months. We’re going to tour America and we’re going to film it for the Web as a reality show.
Speaking of manga, Anime Vice examines the rough waters for the manga market, both here and in Japan:
First, Japan: CNN Go writes up an NHK report that manga overall has seen a 6.6% drop in sales in 2009, the largest such drop in the industry’s history. Not good! A significant chunk of that drop was sales of manga magazines– the overall sales of these anthologies dropped 9.4%, presumably thanks to so many alternate forms of entertainment for train-goers, who are the stereotypical buyers of manga mags.
Interviews:
§ Matt Thorn with more on Fantagraphics’ new manga initiative.
Not-interviews:
§ Valerie D’Orazio has launched The Daily 23, a blog about “the weird, uncanny and just plain forbidden.”
§ Graeme McMillan has also made a trumphant return to Savage Critics
(Secondly, and this is a complete aside, but it’s my first time back here in a long time for reasons both in- and out of- my control and I’m feeling chatty, so tough: Yeah, I get that CRY FOR JUSTICE was kind of shitty, but I can’t quite bring myself to feel as morally outraged at it as the rest of the internet; for me, it’s an Eh, a soulless book that melodramatically tried to move characters around to desired locations like chess pieces. It was telling, though, to see James Robinson say at Emerald City Con that he should be given credit for not killing Speedy as “they” also wanted. It reinforced my – perhaps naive – belief that Robinson was pretty much filling in editorially-mandated blanks instead of actually writing the story on the series, and/or that there was a fairly significant rewrite to the finale. To return to the theme for a second, the longer the series went on, the more it felt like Robinson had been given the job of writing Identity Crisis all over again, and his heart wasn’t really in it.)
§ David Welsh looks at the many good things about ONE PIECE, the million selling manga series:
One observation that really caught my ear was about Oda’s world building and his willingness to plant tiny, seemingly irrelevant narrative seeds that come to full flower later, sometimes much later. Natsuki Takaya did this all the time in Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), turning seemingly oblique observations and sideways glances from volume two into searing heartbreak in, say, volume nine. It’s quite a skill, that kind of callback work, and it displays a great deal of confidence on the part of the creator that they’ll be able to tell their story according to plan.
That’s a nice element of Oda’s work, but what really make the book addictive are the moments when action, comedy and drama come together perfectly. It’s amazing to see Oda mix heartbreaking bits of character development in with a wild, sprawling brawl packed with over-the-top action and bizarre opponents. It’s what pushes One Piece from the level of very good shônen fantasy to great manga in general.
§ Caleb J. Mozzocco ponders Marvel’s DARKSTAR AND THE WINTER GUARD:
Absolutely everything I know about these characters:
a.) They are Russian superheroes.
b.) One of them is a bear.
§ A guide to the many comics shops of Norman, OK
§ Finally for you Losties, this roundup of The Latest Internet Lost Theories
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