The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

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Friday conundrum

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Here’s a thinker. This piece by Tom Spurgeon on DC’s refusal to allow a Batman story by Paul Pope to be included in the next Best American Comics anthology from Hougton Mifflin has two competing effects. On the one hand, it makes me want to read Pope’s Batman: Year 100. On the other hand, it makes me not want to give any money to DC because… well, because that’s really dumb. I mean, people were complaining about how narrow the focus of last year’s Best American Comics anthology was, and here’s a gift-wrapped opportunity to partially reverse that while showing that DC can produce interesting, innovative stuff, even with one of its cornerstone trademarked properties, and they not only decline, they take forever to do so. Oh, work-for-hire… you’re not having a good week, are you?

So can anyone recommend some Paul Pope books that won’t involve giving any money to DC?

Upcoming 6/25/2008

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Some of the highlights from this week’s ComicList:

Sometimes a quantity and quality of hype make me abandon my normal standards. The latest example of this phenomenon is Oku Hiroya’s Gantz (Dark Horse), which promises much higher levels of gratuitous violence than I can usually tolerate. But it sounds cool.

Del Rey offers lots of goodies this week, but I’ll single out the third volume of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s excellent Pumpkin Scissors for special attention. It’s about a squadron of soldiers working on post-war recovery, and it’s a really successful blend of adventure, suspense, and comedy. Fans of Fullmetal Alchemist would do particularly well to give it a look.

Fresh manga from Osamu Tezuka is such a gimme for makers of lists of this sort, because it’s always, always worth a look. This week, it’s the second volume of freaked-out shônen quest Dororo (Vertical) about a guy trying to get his body parts back.

And before I forget, I wanted to point to a couple of reviews with which I agree entirely. At Manga Recon, Kate Dacey looks at Fuyumi Soryo’s smart and satisfying ES: Eternal Sabbath. In a recent Right Turn Only column, Carlo Santos asks this important question: “Why is [Kitchen Princess] not as popular as Full Moon or Fruits Basket? The level of drama is just as good, and this heartbreaking A- [sixth] volume proves it.”

Pardon my dwelling

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So today I woke up in a world where Tove Jansson’s timeless gem Moomin (Drawn & Quarterly) can be nominated in the same award category as the Witchblade Manga (Top Cow). I’m not comfortable with this, obviously, and I’m even less comfortable with the possibility that I live in a world where the Witchblade Manga could possibly beat Moomin for that award. Because the pool of people eligible to nominate works for the awards is identical to the pool of people who decide which of those nominees will receive Harveys:

“Nominations for the Harvey Awards are selected exclusively by creators – those who write, draw, ink, letter, color, design, edit or are otherwise involved in a creative capacity in the comics field. The Harvey Awards are the only industry awards both nominated and selected by the full body of comic book professionals.”

Greg McElhatton notes that the Harvey nominations are “SO easy to stack,” and if anyone was on the fence about that, well… Witchblade Manga. The prosecution rests.

This is a problem. It’s not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, obviously, but it’s a problem for the Harvey Awards, because the possibility of shoving a piece of crap into the field of nominees unfairly casts the worthiness of everything on the slate into question. If I can conclude, not unreasonably, that a bunch of people who work for Company A sat around the break room and decided to force a piece of crap onto the ballot, then I can conclude just as reasonably that a bunch of people who work for Company B sat around the break room and decided to force something brilliant onto the ballot. A desirable outcome doesn’t make a leaky process any more ethical.

Of course, it’s a universal problem for awards programs of any sort. All of them have to decide where they want to land on the continuum between potentially out-of-touch gatekeepers and a democratic process that leaves itself open to abuse. I think the simplest solution would be to use precisely the same pool of potential nominators but to prohibit them from nominating any work published by the company that employs them. (That’s how nominations work in the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens program.) That would still leave open the possibility of collusion among publishers, obviously, but that seems less likely than self-promoting ballot-box stuffing.

There is the remote possibility that what one might consider counter-intuitive nominees (some listed here by Dirk Deppey) wound up there as the result of an entirely democratic groundswell of support, heretofore unexpected by the casual observer. I’m cynical, so unless I get a bunch of e-mails or comments that support that optimistic possibility, I’m going to suggest that the Harvey Awards nomination process is broken and needs to be fixed if the sponsors want to cultivate a reputation for promoting meritorious work. Because there’s plenty of meritorious work nominated, and it’s not fair that it stands a real chance of losing to something awful because the system can be massaged.

For further reading, please see Brigid Alverson’s noble attempt to list more award-worthy works. I thought about doing that, but then I decided that the bar was set so low that I’d never stop.

Mongering

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There’s a new Flipped up over at The Comics Reporter, and it’s dedicated to rumor and misfortune.

One thing that seemed to tangential to bring up in the column came from the historical analysis of Tokyopop over at The Anime Almanac. It’s a really solid piece, but I did find myself disagreeing with one section:

“Earlier this year, Tokyopop released an completely unique Japanese title called Manga Sutra. This ‘guide to getting it on,’ as the company puts it, has been a huge hit in Japan for many years and is completely unlike anything out right now in the American market. As I wrote in a piece earlier this year, the title has the potential to make it big in America because of its novelty. However, Tokyopop squashed all hope for it reaching a wide audience by not selling the book at national book chains and hiding it from the general consumer. If you wanted to get the book, you would have to activity look for it online and have it mailed to you.”

I actually did purchase this at a Borders store. It wasn’t in the graphic novel section, but was shelved with the human sexuality books. That struck me as sensible at the time, because one of the things you hear pitched by various folks is the shelving graphic novels by category (mystery, science fiction, romance, and so on) where people uninitiated with the medium would find them next to stuff they’re already reading. (And frankly, no good could come from shelving Futari H right next to Fruits Basket.)

Just from a personal perspective, I thought the novelty of the book only went so far. Aside from the amusing weirdness of its premise and the odd contrast it provided to most of the licensed titles that are readily available, I found the book pretty boring, which doesn’t seem like a good thing to say about a sex guide. Again, that’s just my reaction, and aside from liking weird, off-brand manga, I’m not really the target audience.

Holy crap

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You go offline for a freaking day because you don’t feel like giving a downer hotel one more red cent than you have to, and this happens. In addition to Brigid’s excellent coverage and link-tracking, I’d point with particular admiration at Chris Butcher’s analysis, and note that Heidi MacDonald succinctly underlines Tokyopop’s hyperactive unveiling of initiatives. And then there’s Tom Spurgeon:

“In fact, you could look at Tokyopop as another specialty publisher having to make changes or risk dying off altogether, and not much of a unique news story at all.”

For realz

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Everyone’s weighing in on The Pact from Tokyopop. (I feel compelled to capitalize it, because it sounds like the title of a Japanese horror film.) For a solid link round-up, check in with Lea Hernandez, who broke the story in the first place. Brigid Alverson stakes out the middle ground in the argument over at Digital Strips, suggesting that it is possible to enter into the contract with eyes open and take advantage of the opportunities The Pact does offer.

I remember the first time Tokyopop’s contracts with global creators came up and a generational argument between veteran creators like Hernandez and newcomers who took Tokyopop up on their offer. The newcomers tended to insist that of course they knew what they were getting into, and that they had carefully weighed the pros and cons of whatever ownership they were sacrificing for exposure. (This contentious dialogue primarily took place over at Warren Ellis’s The Engine, and the archives are no longer available, so I’m reluctant to rely too much on my memory of the specifics of the discussion.) Since then, the tunes of some of the contracts’ staunchest defenders seem to have changed in the face of laboring under the contracts provisions, which only goes to show that you can carefully consider the pros and cons of a professional opportunity that has some pitfalls, make an informed decision, and still end up dissatisfied by circumstances you couldn’t predict or control. (Johanna Draper Carlson does a fine job of pinpointing some of the conflicts that have arisen for creators.)

Here’s my take: If I were a creator, I wouldn’t sign The Pact, nor would I advise a creator of my acquaintance to do so. If I were a teacher of art or creative writing who worked with budding comics creators or the advisor of a manga or anime club, I would print out a copy of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s reaction and keep it on file in case I heard my students considering the possibility and wanted them to be well informed. Because really, The Pact’s “accessible,” “hip” language is a screaming red flag. That approach may a sincere attempt to clarify legalese, but it’s not that hard to decipher legalese on one’s own. I’ve written about legal disputes that were stacked with this kind of daunting verbiage, and there are plenty of on-line resources that help you translate it into human language and teach you a bit about the process along the way. The outcome reads as a cheap attempt to manipulate inexperienced creators who want to be reassured that their interests will be protected. Like most attempts at hip marketing, it ends up seeming skeevy and predatory, even if that was never the intent.

And since I’m on the subject of creators’ rights and ethical dilemmas, I’ll point to Danielle Leigh’s latest Manga Before Flowers column at Comics Should Be Good, which takes a frank and comprehensive look at unauthorized, fan-created translations of manga and anime that are available online. I don’t know if I’ve every really articulated my position on those translations, so now’s as good a time as any. It’s kind of absolutist, which I’m sure shocks you all.

I don’t read them or view them, primarily because they deprive creators of the opportunity to profit from their work. I know the argument that the existence of these translations can present the abstract possibility of an official license and profit for the creator by drawing potential licensors’ attention to demand for the properties, but I can’t personally draw that direct line based on anything I know to be absolutely true. The “hack job” argument doesn’t persuade me either. If a reader thinks a license-holder’s translation and adaptation of a work is profoundly inadequate, I think the ethical response is to inform other consumers of those failings and to attempt to raise the production standards of the publisher in question.

I’m not going to think less of you if you consume scanlations and fan-subs, especially if you confine yourself to as-yet-unlicensed properties. But I do think that if you care about creators’ rights in the context of The Pact, then you should feel at least a little uncomfortable about consuming work with the knowledge that the work’s creator isn’t getting any compensation for it.