The inevitable Comic-con post.

Well I'm back, had my dehydrated sleep deprived first day, and now life is back to normal. I of course went to the Comic-con International in San Diego. And it was a blast. It's funny I've been going to this show since 2001 and with all of the changes and the ever expanding crowds I'm always waiting for the other shoe t to drop, when I'll come home having had a terrible experience but that's still never happened. Maybe if I hadn't grown up with the con that would be different.

So what did I do? well I went to my first TV panel, for the MythBusters on Saturday night, that was quite fun. I really admired how Adam, Kari and Tory actually did their own handouts when people where in line. I'd experienced lines before at Comic-con, sometimes to no avail, but this was the first LINE I ever was in, we had actually given up but after meeting Kari Byron and realising that it was only twenty minutes to panel we figured "what else are we doing" It was a fun panel and we got to learn things like what's the most embarrassing question (who' Kari with) what was their favourite explosion (the water heater) and what myths would they like to do but the insurance won't let them (nuking the fridge).

I also went to see the thirtieth anniversary panel for Love and Rockets. The Hernandez Bros comic series has been a favourite of mine for some time, and it was great to see a talk by all three brothers. The panel included a belated awarding of the inkpot award to forgotten Hernandez bro Mario.

As well as the few panels I went to, I also took part in the Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog Singalong which is always fun, took in a performance of the nerdcore band Kirby Krackle. And was in the audience for a recording of a Kevin Smith Podcast Fatman on the Batman, in which he interviewed Batman: the Animated series producer and designer Bruce Timm.

Most of my time I spent in the exhibit hall where I met some of my favourite Comics artists (some of them for he manyith time) and admired cosplayers. Amongst the artists I met where Terry Moore whose Rachel Rising is a current favourite, Jaime Hernandez, Jamal Igle (of whom you'll be seeing a video interview soon), Bernard Chiang, Adam Warren, Bruce Timm, Frank Cho, J. Scott Campbell, and some of my favourite guy's Reed Gunther's Shane and Chris Houghton.

Oh and I nearly puked in my mouth when i saw the line for commission pickup for Rob Liefeild.

I can't say I really had any complaints about the con this year. But I do have to praise one thing. Comic-Con got rid of the unfriendly and useless  Elite Event Services. I had grown quite displeased with the staff over the last couple of years and it was good to see them go. In their place was not one but two staffs one for the exhibit hall and one for the rest of the center. I found that plus a staff of friendly volunteers efficient and as pleasant as a group of people looking after a large crowd can be.

Overall I really enjoyed Comic-Con 2012, and if the new pre reg system works out in my favour I hope to keep enjoying the con for the first time in years I don't feel like that shoe will drop any time soon.

Into the Breach! David Reads Digital Comics

I recently got an iPhone. I resisted for quite a while but the time was right. And since I got an iPhone and with the whole comics community going on and on about digital distribution, I figured I'd down load the top two digital apps (I've no interest in single company apps) and give it a go. Both out of curiosity as well as a future avenue for the distribution of my own comics. But first a bit of a disclaimer, I am very fond of print, I like the act of holding a book in my hands, the size of it, the smell of it, and all of that. Also I've never had much love for reading comics on a screen, and despite being a web comic artist, I've never been able to really get into reading them, unless of course it is a trade of a web comic. So there you know my biases.

Comics X by Comixology.

The first comics reader app that got was Comics X. This if all the chatter is to be believed is the most popular comics reader. And it shows their library of comics is extensive and deep. And the shop is easy to navigate taking it's cues from the iTunes mold. And as easily as I could think it, I had found the free sample comics and had downloaded a couple. I downloaded the first Wonder Woman story as well as Chew and Supergirl Cosmic Adventures in the Seventh Grade. These where chosen for their variety as well as being comics I've been wanting to check out. And then came the first hurdle, Guided View. Comixology Has created an interactive feature that guides you through the page, zooming between panels. And I hated it, at first. At times it was so touch sensitive that I’d be going to the wrong panel and other times I wouldn't be able to get it to change, This would not be a problem at all if I was using a tablet, I'd just turn the damned thing off. But without a good magnification function, guided view was the only way to go, on a phone. After a while though I stopped being an old phogey and came to terms with Guided View and am now working it like a pro. As to the reading experience, as mentioned before I don't care for reading from a screen, but the line work was represented well and the magnification that Guided View provided was big enough for a good reading. And the colours where of a richness I am totally unused to in comics. I'd say it was quite good not for me but I can see the appeal, plus I have some cool comics with me all of the time. The only flaw with Guided View is you can't really take in the page as a whole while reading it, but this more of a iPhone screen size problem than a problem with the app. If I was using a tablet, there would be no issue at all I'd turn Guided View off. With the comics I chose, I found that the reader worked best with the old and children's comics, due to their use of a stricter grid. I found many of the nuances of the modern art of Chew to be lost in Guided View, again only a problem on the Phone.

Graphic.ly

I also tried the increasingly popular Graphic.ly. This reader was of interest to me as it is the big time reader for Indie comics (aka me). I'll admit that I haven't really tried out this one as much. Firstly it's a social network as well as a store and I didn't find the search functions quite as user friendly as I'm accustomed to, but after a while of trying to find something good that was free (didn't want to be bothered with signing up credit card info I have no issues paying for comics) and having a hard time finding anything, I remembered my table mate from last year at A.P.E. Tom Ramirez had his first issue on Graphic.ly for free, So I downloaded Fighting Yamako Chan. And well I didn't really like Graphic.ly very much, on an iPhone. To be perfectly honest I loved a lot of things about the app. It presents itself in landscape as two page spreads. But there is no magnification feature other than the iPhone two finger technique. And I just found it a cumbersome read. And since I found it unpleasant on the Phone I left it at that. That said if I was using a tablet I think Graphic.ly would be my preferred app. As it presents comics the way I like to experience them.

So that's my opinion of the top two comics apps (at least as far as I hear about them) I probably won't fully embrace them, but they are good products, if you are inclined to use them. And I probably would if I didn't have access to good comics shops. I also checked them out to see if they where good at representing the comics themselves, and both did that in spades and I would be more than willing to put any of my comics onto either of these apps. In fact after using them especially Comics X, I'm willing to believe the hyperbole that “digital is the new newsstand.

Remember These.

Hey remember these, it's a "DC Comics Blue Ribbon Digest" I used to love the crap outta these when I was a kid. I had a number of them, the infamous Superman Red and Blue, a Batman villain collection, and one where Batman supposedly killed some chick (edit note I have since found out it was Tahlia Al Ghul), They where awesome. You used to buy them from the grocery store, y'know by the weekly world news and Cosmo. I'm also pretty sure that people especially kids would love the crap outta them today. But only Archie still makes them. Why they're brilliant, relatively inexpensive to buy, and inexpensive to make. They where the best deal in comics, usually re print material, and priced and placed for the impulse buy, perfect for the mythical "new reader" hell it's where I started. So why on earth aren't DC and Marvel making these!

Just something to think about.


Edit: Changed picture from that old chewed up Warlord to the cool beans Supergirl Blue Ribbon Digest I scored at Wondercon.

How to Make Mainstream Comics Mainstream Again. Part 4. Continuity and Fans.

Another thing that excludes new readers is a slavish devotion to continuity. I've been over this in an earlier post so I won't harp on about it. But Mainstream comics today, spend a devastatingly inordinate amount of time on what has happened in the past. Often at the expense of the current story. And if mainstream comics wish to be relevant this needs to stop. Comics don't need to have re boots like The New 52 to “clean up” continuity. They just need to keep moving forward instead of back. Look at the other major form of serialized storytelling TV. You only ever see a TV show go on and on about what happened before when it's relevant. If even then. Comics should do the same. If you keep the story moving forward every book will be a “jumping on point” I'm not saying comics shouldn't be consistent, you should be able to keep consistency of character and plot without a million call backs to the past. Forget continuity aim for consistency.

The overuse of story continuity has led to an epidemic in the world of mainstream comics. Potential (usually adult) readers fearing that they will need to read a lot of comics before getting on board the current story. These fabled “jumping on points” have been a rallying cry of both large publishers. This used to never be a problem. Part of it I think is that new readers in the past where children, and children don't tend to need explanations of characters and motivations. If Batman punched the badguy it was good. Well as mentioned before new readers aren't kids these days. Another part of this is that back in the day both companies had editorial policies like Marvel's “Every comic is someone's first” policy. That is the reason for the famed expositional “comic book style dialogue” (I'll blast him with my optic blasts for example) but as comics grew more adult and sophisticated, the readers didn't want this “clunky” dialogue. The results are “mainstream” comics that are impenetrable to a reader with no familiarity with character or concept. To go back to my three tier publishing approach. Use expositional dialogue on kids and all ages books, and leave naturalistic dialogue for the sophisticated adult offerings. Believe me adults read comics when they where all written that way they probably will today. True some fans will complain which leads me to.

Comic publishers need to stop caring what fans think. It may be hard to believe, in this day of message boards and twitter feeds that there was once a time when the only thing the comic companies knew about what fans thought was how much a book was selling. They made their books sold them and the readers read them. And we call the comics from this time classics. Today, the creative teams, editors and publishers Are constantly hearing and thinking about what the fans want, and the comics from today are considered mediocre at best. You can see where I'm going with this. Today mainstream writing comes mostly into two camps, writers that pander to fans and writers that try to piss off fans. Neither one is good storytelling, because they are both made for a very specific demanding, to the point of impossible to please, audience. Mainstream comics should be made for a mainstream audience. Write good stories regardless of what the fans may think. Fans respond to pandering but they will always appreciate care, why do you think indie books sell so well to comic fans?

Pandering to fans also has a marked affect on new readers as it pushes away diversity. In both it's readership and it's creators. Fandom of mainstream comics is largely white and male. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that pandering to this base will largely exclude women and minorities. The depiction of women and minorities in comics has become a hot button issues that are to big for this post but I recommend the excellent DC Women Kicking Ass blog for much better coverage of women in comics than I can give. Now I'm not saying to make quotas and token characters. What I'm saying is when writing and drawing a comic just think. Would a woman find this depiction of Catwoman offensive and off putting. Would a person of color like to see a hero nobler that Luke Cage. And if a potentially racist or sexist depiction of a character where right for a story. Is it worth the backlash to proceed, I'm sure there are places were it would be. It won't fix all of the problems but it will be a better start than what we have now.

So here we have just a few ways to make mainstream comics strong again, There are other problems that are more far reaching. Lack of a variety of good female and minority characters. The lack of the same females and minorities in the creative teams. Creative teams that are consistent and on time, a broadening of Genre, the list goes on. But the thing is all of the ideas I put forth in this series are things that can be done today, with the system that exists now. None of these ideas are changes of the business, but changes of attitude. Mainstream comics are struggling today but the companies that make them have all the tools at their disposal to make them great. They just need to use them.

How to Make Mainstream Comics Mainstream Again. Part Three: Readership

But the business is just a part of the problem, mainstream comics are also suffering on the creative side.

People are still reading Comics in droves, and the super hero genre has held the movie box office as it's plaything for years now, but for some reason mainstream Comics have been on a decline. Both the medium and the genre are currently winners but the comics are floundering, partially this down to the economics mentioned above. But partially it comes down to content, mainstream comics are no longer made for a mainstream audience. And they totally ignore new, especially young readers.

I like most of my comic reading peers began reading comics when I was young. Super hero comics where for kids, though in the early eighties that was changing. As super hero comics move form the newsstand to the comic shop. More and more emphasis was place on making super hero comics more mature. This I believe was a misstep. Now I'm not saying that there should not be super comics for adults or that they should be made exclusively for children. But I have to note that Comic fans when I was growing up had no problem reading and enjoying kids books, in fact I believe that comics being kid's books was a great deal of their appeal. And times have not changed as far as adults enjoying good kid's books, look at the success of Harry Potter. But in the last decade, mainstream comics have gone from being Kids books that adults could enjoy, to books I have to think long and hard over whether I'd let a kid read. And this I think is bad for business. Engaging comic books for adults mainstream and independent, require a knowledge of a sophisticated visual language, a language that used to be learned at younger age by reading mainstream super hero comics. Sadly the primary titles in mainstream comics today all are engaging comic books for adults. With kids series' being the exception not the rule. It's too late to make comics for kids again. This would also be a stupid move as there are so many adult readers. But I think that the main titles of a line should be for as broad an audience as possible, Make the stories for that lost idea of a family audience. Think PG, super heroes have kid appeal, but they can work on an adult level, and best yet there are many adult elements that could be put into the books that would go completely over kids heads. And the thing is both parent companies of the big two already are doing this to great success, with the same characters, in the form of DC and Marvel animated shows, learn from your own people guys. DC is so good at it that the DC Animated Universe is the definitive version of these characters to many people. With this all ages line in place with full advertising force behind it. Adults only and kids only comics can fill in the gaps and every audience can be pleased, which isn't that what mainstream means?

Next week Continuity and fans

How to Make Mainstream Comics Mainstream Again. Part Two Distribution

A huge problem with mainstream comics is their current form of distribution and sale. Mainstream comics are sold virtually exclusively via an scheme called the direct market at comic specialty stores. Traditionally a publisher sells their books to book stores and newsstands, the books then stay the shelves of the store for a prescribed time after which the unsold books are sent back to the publisher for credit or replacement. If you've ever seen the folks at your local bookstore piling up books this is most likely what's happening. The direct market is a system that came about in the '70s. The comics publishers noticing that Comic specialty stores where popping up all over the place decided that they would strike a deal with these stores, they would buy the comics direct at a lower price, but the stores could not send unsold books back for credit, the books where theirs for good. Everyone came out a winner, the publishers got some guaranteed sales, and the comic shops got a better profit. But it didn't last. The direct market began to be handled by distributors and as comic shops became more prevalent. The comic companies began to focus solely on the comic shop and less on the newsstands or markets that where once it's bread and butter. Eventually the direct market distributors came and went leaving a single direct market distributor, Diamond, which rules the comic shops and publishers with it's strict ordering and selling rules. Even mainstream books stores use Diamond now to stock their comic books.

So by clinging to the direct market for their sales the major comics publishers are limiting themselves to selling primarily in comic specialty stores. Now the problem with this is twofold, one the modern comic book store is often a very uninviting place. Sure there are many good ones, don't get me wrong but the cliché of the “Simpsons” Comic Book Guy didn't spring from thin air. Comic stores are often smelly dark dens of geeks that actively exclude “outsiders” and can sometimes be quite rude to their customers. These shops tend to sell to collectors and not readers so having a flip through the comic that your interested in buying is vehemently frowned upon. Which leads to the secondary problem. Few people other than active comic book readers can impulsively buy a comic book. Periodicals sell primarily two ways impulse and subscription. Impulse being the primary, this is why markets and books stores place their magazines on the way out. Comics companies have done themselves the “service” of eliminating what should be their primary source of income.

So comics need to get out of the comic shops and back into regular stores. The direct market needs return to being an option of how to sell comic books not the option. True the mainstream publishers don't have a distribution apparatus, but the big two comics publishers are owned by two of the largest media corporations on earth (Marvel by the Walt Disney Company, and DC by Time Warner) they in fact already own traditional publishing arms (Hyperion and Time Life respectively) So this should be a no brainier.

Another option which we have seen take it's next major steps with DC's New 52, is digital distribution. The publishing world is changing and the change is occurring on hand-held devices such as Kindle's and Nooks, and that is the digital distribution of books. And this is a perfect way to make mainstream comics more mainstream. One it circumvents the direct market all together, and it also enables the reader many options of reading. Downloading a single chapter, subscribing, or buying the final collection. It has all of the benefits of direct market, you can by an old issue at any time, and a newsstand, you can check it out on a whim. The only problem right now is price point. Most same day digital releases are price the same as a print issue, and if a single issue is overpriced on paper it's criminally overpriced in pixels. Digital distribution is possibly the answer to comics returning as a great option for cheap entertainment. The comics companies should price them lower, and take in the close to pure profit possible with digital. Apple made millions if not billions by selling songs at 99 cents, Marvel and DC could easily make that much by doing the same.

Next Friday: Readership

How to Make Mainstream Comics Mainstream Again. Part One: The Comic Book Business

Recently DC comics has had a company wide reboot re numbering scheme, the so called “New 52”. Although it has in the short term raised the profile of so called mainstream comics in the short term. I believe that it has brought to people's attention many of the problems of the current comic book industry. The major problem is that “mainstream” comics aren't mainstream anymore. They are a niche hobby enjoyed by a small elite that tends to keep any but those fans out by catering to them and them alone and to top it all off, you can really only get them in specialty stores for the most part. So here my idea's as to how “mainstream” comics can be brought back to mainstream entertainment.

Note I have never worked a day in my life for a mainstream comic publisher or for a comic store or a distributor. All of my knowledge on how these things are run is from other peoples experiences, and all of my ideas come only from common sense thinking, and my experiences as a comic fan.

The first aspect to look at is the business side of things. Mainstream comics has to have one of the worst business plans that anyone who has taken 12^th grade economics has ever seen. The most visible problem is the comic book itself. A modern “mainstream” comic book is a 20-35 page color pamphlet that sells for between $3 and $4. And a comic book with a modern sensibility takes about 20 minutes to read. Now I'm no math whiz but that does not exactly scream bang for buck. The mainstream publishing houses really need to address this disparity. They need to make the books longer or make them less expensive. And I believe the second route is the way to go, because, most mainstream comic companies do not have the periodical comic as their ultimate goal. The ultimate goal now a days is the trade paperback, a collected edition of an entire “story arc”. Trade paperbacks have been selling well, so the companies have been emphasizing them. And who can blame them, the value to entertainment ratio is great, you have the whole story, and it allows the writers to really stretch out. Since the end goal is a slick high quality book, then why does the periodical serializing the book need to be? Comics weren’t printed on good paper or with fine printing until the late nineties and no one seemed to care then, why is it so different now? My suggestion is to print comic books on a lower stock of paper, and get that per unit price down. With this idea, simple economics tells us, that more people would be willing to check out a comic book on impulse. That is if they could.

Next post Distribution.

The New 52.

In just a few hours, the world ends. Well not really, but the DC universe, which has stood as "cannon" (I hate that term) since 1986 is coming to an end and in it's place shall rise the so called new 52. And I have to say I have not been more excited about DC comics in a long time. It is a great opportunity to throw off the shackles of extremely convoluted continuity, and start new and fresh and allow new ideas of these Iconic characters flow. That said I also have misgivings. I as a reader don't give two shits about continuity, true I know a lot of it as a comic reader for at least 26 years, but I really don't care if my continuity is gone, or as some fans (melodramatically) put it none of it counts. I am a little miffed that my beloved Supergirl has ended just as I believed it was getting good. My worries are one, they won't go far enough and two they'll get just as convoluted just as fast. As for one, they only seem to be going bold with Superman and by extension Supergirl and boy. And a lot of he differences seem to be in the "darker and grittier realm" which I don't go for in super hero books. But I promised myself I won't prejudge any more than I would with any new comic. As for two, it seems that they are picking and choosing which character's are getting new origins, for instance Superman is all new, Wonder Woman seems to have newish bits, but Batman isn't changing at all except a condensed timeline, oh and Barbra Gordon can walk again and is going to be bat girl pissing off handicapped people the world over. This bothers me because I've seen it all before.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was this comic company that told stories about guys and girls in tights that saved the world. this company was of course DC and they didn't really care about. how these stories fit together. Then one day they found out their readers did. And to preserve the old stories people liked without getting in the way of the new stories they wanted to tell, they had an easy answer. "it happened one Earth 2" for years after DC had what came to be known as the Multiverse. And in retrospect I thought it was a good way of handling continuity the writers got to tell cool engaging tales and the continuity nerds got to keep track of their well ordered "Cannons". But later, I don't know DC history well enough to know if it was editors or Fans, but the Multiverse was deemed too complicated. I don't get why people are so scared of continuity a comic is just like any other book you read it if you like it keep reading it if you don't try something different, but I digress. It was determined that something had to be done to simplify it. So they destroyed the Multiverse in the epic "Crisis on Infinite Earths". leaving only one continuity, made of elements of all of the "earths" tailored to fit together. Sound familiar? Well it worked quite well at first, Most notably in the updating of the characters it's never a bad idea to do that in fact I believe that the big characters need a shake up every ten years. But after a while the continuity got just as convoluted if not more than it was before "Crisis" leading to a number of events in the last decade that where completely about continuity. It was a mess, and it didn't even last half as long as the Multiverse. So here DC is again re starting their line and streamlining the continuity.

Like I said I think this is a good idea, but I'm hoping this new continuity stays cleaner and easier for the easily daunted new reader than the "Post Crisis" era was. Look at Ultimate Marvel that's what this could easily become. I have high hopes and a lot of excitement.

So here's the books I'm looking forward to.

Batgirl: Even though I'm not fond of oracle not being around anymore, Gail Simone was the best writer ever on Birds of Prey and it's worth the $2.99 just for her writing Barbara Gordon again. Plus it looks like it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Action Comics: It's always neat to see new takes on Superman, and Grant Morrison is just batshite crazy enough that even if it sucks it'll be worth the look.

Supergirl: though I hate her new costume and the aggro "all his powers and none of his compassion" stuff in the press releases. Supergirl is my favourite DC superhero if not favourite superhero so y'know hopeless fanboy.

All Star Western: I'm interested in what a 21st century western comic will be like.

Swamp Thing: He's been gone for a while it's time.

Wonder Woman: though it still seems that the people at DC still don't have a handle on what Wonder Woman is, they are at least giving her a niche having her fight the paranormal/ macabre. It looks like it'll be fun. As long as they don't portray her as a "man hatin' bitch"

Though not interested in "Grifter" "Stormwatch" or "Voodoo" I am really stoked that the Wildstorm stuff is being brought into the DCnU.

well happy Wednesday and welcome to the new world.

So Long Tokyo Pop

It's actually a bit old news but, as of May 31 Tokyo Pop manga is no more. They've closed shop after 14 years, in which they nearly defined the market for manga in the United States. Tokyo Pop began in 1997 as Mixx Publication, they launched in a bold fashion with Mixx Zine an attempt to make an Japanese style manga anthology for america, down to the paper stock (they upgraded to glossy on issue 2) and colored pages. The big coup was that Mixx had procured the rights to Sailor Moon, then the biggest thing in Anime and Manga. Though manga had been published in the America since at least the 1980's Tokyo Pop changed the model of sale from the standard monthly comic book, to the now standard first run trade paperback model. This is the model of comic sales that it still changing the face of comics to this day.

The official line, is that Tokyo Pop suffered from two major things. One was the bankruptcy of Borders, the other was the loss of their licenses with the publisher Kodansha the owner of many of their titles. Borders bookstore has been in a lot of trouble for years, and apparently they where Tokyo Pop's biggest merchant. The falling of Borders led to mass layoffs including many key people. Last year I had heard that Tokyo Pop had lost all of it's Kodansha titles. I thought then "whoa that sucks we'll never see the end of (X) series" but little did I know of Kodansha's motives. You see Tokyo Pop made manga Mainstream. In fact they did so well at this that Kodansha the largest publisher in Japan decided, "if manga is mainstream in america, why do we need a middle man". Thus Kodansha is launching it's own line of manga in the States later this year. Starting with ironically enough, Sailor Moon.

But I have a few reasons that I think came to play in Tokyo pop being the first to fall from the first manga boom. First as mentioned above they are a victim of their success. When Mixx became Tokyo Pop and discontinued their magazines and comics in favor of first run trade paper backs. They took comics out of the comic book shops and the direct market, and put them into the mainstream book store. This led manga to higher exposure and it also led to the Graphic Novel sections in bookstores to increase. And the publishers noticed. Starting with Del Rey, mainstream publishers with all of their power and knowledge of the book store system started publishing comics as well. Leading up to Kodansha's decision to publish in america for themselves.

Next, Tokyo Pop wasn't actually that good at what they where doing. They may have been one of the biggest publishers of manga in the United States but, they where largely held up by the massive fad that manga had become in the first decade of the 21st century. As much as you like manga you have to admit it was a major fad, and as it has gone back down to just another form of entertainment Tokyo Pop has just not delivered as good a product as their competitors. The print quality is okay at best, the translations are known to be a bit off (more on that later), and Viz's Shonnen Jump line has been doing far better in terms of schedule. Also from the very beginning, one never felt that Manga was what they where interested in promoting, in fact they called it "motionless picture entertainment", not manga for most of their early days. Not that long into the first year of Mixx Zine, they where already branching out into dating sim video games with "Graduation 2", as far as I can remember it bombed, correct me if I'm wrong. Then MIxx Zine started to evolve into a Japanese and asian pop culture magazine with manga. Then the magazine took the name Tokyo Pop and the manga was demoted to a second feature, presented in landscape two comic pages to a page. This is where I ended my subscription, I hated seeing the manga anthology being changed into a low rent teen magazine, but I could not forgive having to turn my the magazine on it's side to read miniaturized versions of the comics I was getting the magazine for. Some leading light in manga publishing. However it was around this time that they began their publishing of first run trades we forgave them a lot because hell we didn't have to wait for serialization to finish to get the next book. But just as they where getting good at this they branched into Anime, fair enough, but they where no where as good at this as at manga so the video label faded relatively quickly. But what happened is that they stopped looking back as well as forward when choosing titles to license, a problem in all of american manga, and instead of publishing the classics that fans where after as well as the hip and new, they chose to make a market out of the burgeoning Original English Manga (OEL). I have no problem with OEL in fact many of my favorite comics have been OEL. But it distracted from their supposed agenda of bringing us the best manga. Tokyo Pop then got into Television with "Worlds Greatest Otaku" basically Tokyo Pop Became a Lifestyle company and manga got left behind.

And last was Scanlation. Scanlation is where fans scan, translate and post Manga on the internet. And this argument is not about the right and wrong of downloading, it's about the fans and Tokyo Pop's relation to them, and the way the world is changing. Tokyo Pop has been plagued since the beginning by "loose" translations. At the very least they Americanize the shit out of everything they publish. Usually in the form of colloquialisms. In the case of Sailor Moon they chose to keep the much maligned American names of the characters, and with Initial D a much anticipated series at the time actually got into censorship. These things combined, and fans no longer "trusted" the integrity of Tokyo Pop's translations. To the point where it was assumed that Tokyo Pop would "ruin" any series that they would bring out. So these fans turned to Scanlators for these series' out of a belief that their translations where better or at least truer to the original. Now a cynic would say that they just did this because the scanlations are free, but I personally know many people that would read them for this exact reason and would still buy many dollars worth of books from other publishers. Now this was not a problem for Tokyo Pop when Manga was a fad, but once the fad had died down and the fans where the backbone of their market. It had to have hurt.

Another effect scanlations had and still have is that, they dull the cutting edge of many a manga. You see, since manga is a translated and repurposed product, many of the series already have a following when they arrive in an "official" capacity in the US. As scanlators don't have to worry about publishing rights or print houses, as soon as they've bought scanned and translated it, it's up on the inter-web for all to see causing "new" series' to be old hat buy the time they "oficially" come out.This has recently been exemplified by the series Hetalia. Hetalia, has been the darling of fan sub Scanlation series' for the last couple of years, it's been huge. But now as the trend surrounding the series has been winding down, Tokyo Pop has finally gotten the series out "officially". Because the speed of the internet, Tokyo Pop has released one of the biggest new books, after it's audience has moved on! Maybe it would get big again after a mainstream audience reads it, but that's all academic now. It's cancelled now that Tokyo Pop has closed shop. Of course scanlation is going to be a big problem for anyone planning to make money off of manga for the above reason, but it should not be the end for any of them as long as they pick good series' that have "legs" and can be bigger than a trend. Scanlations and what they mean for comics will have to be and deserves to be a subject for another day.

But all that said. The late great Tokyo Pop manga deserves our gratitude. because it was they that redefined how manga was perceived and sold in our country. And as a direct fallout, the position of comics in bookstores was greatly improved, helping to lead us to the current age of the comic business.