The Manga Curmudgeon

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

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The view from the plateau

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Brian Hibbs covers the 2007 BookScan graphic totals in the latest Tilting at Windmills column at Newsarama. The figures provide an interesting snapshot of the mainstream retail market (chain and independent bookstores, online vendors and some other outlets like Target) for graphic novels, and instinct tells me that they’re as good an overview as one can reasonably expect.

Some immediate questions and reactions:

  • It would be interesting to get a sense of the volume of graphic novels returned by outlets reporting to BookScan. That might provide a useful factor in measuring the overall health of the bookstore market. I have no idea how those numbers might be assessed, but returnability is always cited as a key difference between the general market and the Direct Market.
  • I agree with Hibbs that it would also be valuable to see who’s reporting now, and if the pool has grown since it was first identified. What kind of impact would WalMart have on the final numbers, if it isn’t already there?
  • I wonder if inflation in other areas (fuel prices, food, and so on) has caused a general hit in entertainment/recreation purchases that might account for the slower growth Hibbs notes. Or has the mainstream retail market established itself sufficiently that it’s reached a plateau? And what, if anything, can publishers of graphic novels do to reignite that sector?

    • Hibbs, a Direct Market retailer himself, emphasizes the apparent disparity in graphic novel sales growth in comic shops versus mainstream outlets:

    “What’s most curious about this to me is that the Direct Market is said to have had an 18% growth in 2007 in GN/TP sales – and the DM is a mature and very established marketplace, while the Bookstores really should still be in their ‘honeymoon’ phase with comics material, and should, in my opinion, be seeing greater growth. Obviously, I have no real information of the overall levels of growth in bookstores in general (doing a GN-driven report is difficult enough, thanks), so the book market may still be looking at this as excellent growth, but in relationship against the Direct Market, they’re growing at a significantly slower rate.”

    I’m deeply suspicious about the comparisons here, which seem less like apples and oranges than maybe grapes and beef. For one, I wonder about the plateau question earlier, and an associated question is whether the Direct Market is just investing more in graphic novels and trade paperbacks to compete with the bookstore market. One person’s “mature and very established marketplace” could easily be perceived as another person’s ocean liner… steady and seaworthy but incredibly slow to change direction. From my anecdotal observation, there do seem to be more specialty comic shops investing in the trade end of the market, but is that a response to their wider availability in other outlets or just a reflection of the fact that there’s much more of this kind of product than there used to be? Again, I don’t know, but I don’t think the 18% growth in the DM compares quite as simply to the 5.27% growth in the bookstore arena. (There are also questions of volume, selection, casual-versus-dedicated consumers, and tons of others that I haven’t thought of yet. And according to this source, graphic novel sales in the Direct Market where fairly static when comparing 2005 — $45.84 million – and 2006 — $48.45 million.)

    Manga numbers are intriguing. The number of placing volumes in the top 750 are identical for 2006 and 2007, and while nobody could complain about owning abut 77% of those slots, the relatively stagnant numbers of units sold, dollars earned, and properties represented is maybe troubling when you consider the volume of new titles that came out in 2007. (I wish I could find a source, but I swear I saw one that compared the number of volumes shipped between the two years.)

    It’s not surprising to me that Marvel and DC’s best-selling books in the mainstream retail market aren’t based on any of their super-hero properties, or that the best-selling book in the Direct Market was from that niche. As much as I might wish I could find every comic I wanted in every DM shop, specialization is an advantage when you’re competing with generalists.

    And really, Hibbs can’t be blamed for crowing about the apparent strength of GN sales in the DM:

    “And, as noted above, we’re virtually always selling more copies of ‘Western’ comics, often by factors of 3 to 5 times larger, with well below half of the number of venues that report to BookScan.”

    Still, I would find this argument more persuasive if there were better numbers from all quarters. The Direct Market sold $57.15 million worth of the top 100 graphic novels and trade paperbacks in 2007 (about a 15% growth from 2006), compared to $95.17 million worth of the top 750 graphic novels in venues that report to BookScan. I’d be very interested to see the numbers for the top 750 graphic novels distributed to comic shops via Diamond, because it would probably close the gap even more.

    Getting the milk for free

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    Apparently, HarperCollins is of the opinion that letting consumers enjoy content for free on the web will actually help sales. According to this piece in The New York Times, the publisher will be following in comics’ footsteps:

    “‘It’s like taking the shrink wrap off a book,’ said Jane Friedman, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. ‘The best way to sell books is to have the consumer be able to read some of that content.’”

    They’ve picked five very different books to launch the initiative, including fiction for adults and kids, a cookbook, an election guide, and a book about sports. The freebies will be downloadable for a month at a time.

    Neil Gaiman is playing along, and a certain comics hybrid is being cited as evidence in favor of the project’s aims:

    “‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid,’ a children’s novel illustrated with cartoons, was published online three years ago at Funbrain.com, an educational Web site. But the physical book has spent 42 weeks on the New York Times Children’s Chapter Books best-seller list.”

    Beaten

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    You know how you’ll be making a grilled cheese and waiting to flip it and you’ll pass the time by thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and making a list? I’d be willing to swear this turn of events has actually been a recurring item on those lists. It’s just 31 flavors of awesome.

    On the other hand, I was just in Washington. My hotel was like three blocks from the Kennedy Center. Couldn’t they have bumped this event up a little? (By the way, the Kennedy Center has a really good cafeteria, so if you go to the exhibit and you’re hungry and need a break, it’s upstairs.)

    Hell is for children!

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    It’s a rather slim week in the comic shops, so I thought I’d cast an eye on one release in particular that seems to be racking up some fairly divergent reactions, as Katherine Dacey notes in the latest Weekly Recon. Here are a couple of other opinions on Miyuki Eto’s Hell Girl, in addition to the ones Dacey cited:

    Blog@Newsarama’s Chris Mautner is unequivocal in his dislike:

    “Here it is, not even the end of January, and what will surely be regarded as one of the worst manga series of the year (at least in my house) comes tromping through the gates.”

    Johanna (Comics Worth Reading) Draper Carlson suspects the story might work better in a different medium:

    “This was an anime series before it was a manga, and I think it probably works better that way. By the end of the book, I found the stories getting shorter and more repetitive, which would be less of a problem if they were stand-alone episodes.”

    Julie at the Manga Maniac Café gave it a B:

    “There were five chapters in this first volume, and they were different enough to hold my attention. Though the outcomes were predictable and the characters were two-dimensional, the cutesy, detailed art helped to keep events moving along.”

    At ComicMix, Andrew Wheeler wonders if it’s being pitched to the right age group:

    “Hell Girl thus gets quite repetitive, and I have to admit that I was losing interest as I went along. The art style is full-blown shoujo, with immense eyes devouring entire faces with their dozens of points of light and welling tears. This is very much not for me, but – since it’s rated for teens 16 and up – it also seems aimed away from its natural audience, the overly dramatic young teen girl. There are still some of them at ages 16, 17, and 18, but they’re much more common at 13 and 14.”

    I’m kind of indifferent to the charms of Hell Girl, so I will veer in an entirely different direction with a recommendation for the week: if you’re determined to spend money on manga but find the new releases uninspiring, go score yourself a copy of Osamu Tezuka’s totally insane, pansexual thriller MW (Vertical). It’s by no means perfect, but I can swear to you that you will not be bored for a single moment while reading it. How much more crazy-ass Tezuka gekiga is out there waiting to be licensed? I want more, because watching the God of Manga get his freak on is always worth every penny I pay. Both MW and Ode to Kirihito have been revelations, like finding out your kindly uncle was a cross-dressing jewel thief who dabbled in fomenting political unrest.

    Language linkblogging

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    I got an e-mail from a retired educator named Thomas Hanson pointing me to three blog posts about comics as teaching tools over at Open Education.Net.

    The first entry is an overview of the mediums potential, particularly for teaching reading and writing. (I hadn’t given much thought to the latter, but it makes sense.) The second offers an interview with Chris (The Graphic Classroom) Wilson, covering the subject in more detail. The third lists “The Twelve Best Comic Books for the Classroom,” which include some challenging, sometimes controversial books.

    The subject of manga in the classroom doesn’t come up, and I was kind of surprised that a web search of the phrase didn’t yield many results. There are lots of sites that include Japanese comics on their lists of recommendations for younger readers, but there isn’t a whole lot that specifically addresses the category as a teaching tool. It’s not a criticism, just something that struck me as curious.

    (My teacher education ended during my first year of college after a classroom observation course that convinced me that I would be eaten alive daily if I continued down that particular path.)

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    At Shuchaku East, Chloe takes a fascinating look at the comparative qualities of language as they relate to manga in and out of translation.

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    And speaking of translation (well, in a tangential way), Mely responds to the final volume of Kaori Yuki’s Godchild (Viz) in a hilarious, spoiler-filled essay. If you’re like me, you’ll happily read Television Without Pity recaps of shows you’d never actually watch because of the wit and enthusiasm of the writers. Even if Godchild doesn’t interest you in the slightest, go read.

    (Prior to its actual publication, Godchild did interest me a great deal, but the script was so dire that I couldn’t actually read much of it without grinding my teeth to stumps.)

    Tuesday linkblogging

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    Lots of people have posted really interesting pieces lately. I wish I could say I was one of them, but at least I can point in their direction.

    Paul (Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics) Gravett contributes an appreciation of Tove (Moomin) Jansson, also reprinting a heartfelt introduction to a 1957 collection of Jansson’s comic strips from novelist Margery Allingham:

    “On the Moomins themselves I find myself uncharacteristically reticent. Their appeal is so personal and so intricate that I feel chatter about them is like gossip in public about friends.”

    At About.com, Deb Aoki conducts a lovely interview with Keiko (To Terra…, Andromeda Stories) Takemiya, covering her early days as a manga-ka and her views on how the industry has changed since she and her pioneering peers were turning everything on its head:

    “Manga has become too much of a big business, which perhaps means that artists get pushed out into the public eye before they’ve achieved artistic maturity.”

    Chloe (Shuchaku East) Ferguson launches a new column at ComiPress with a look at cover design and manga packaging:

    “Part marketing compass, part demographic indicator; how manga is packaged can often tell you more than any press release ever will.”

    Jason (Manga: The Complete Guide) Thompson launches a new column at Comixology with a look at manga of an historical bent.

    And happily, The Overlooked Manga Festival hasn’t gone on hiatus just yet. Shaenon K. Garrity offers up The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse) for your consideration, and offers the following pearl of all-purpose wisdom:

    “I’m not the kind of reader who’s impressed by gimmicky characters. I get enough of that in webcomics, where people are constantly pushing me to read some unfunny thing that ‘you HAVE to love, because one of the characters is an ANGRY ZUCCHINI who works as a HITMAN and likes PLAYSTATION, and isn’t that ORIGINAL and BRILLIANT?’ No, it’s not original and brilliant. A regular old human being with an interesting, well-written personality would be original and brilliant. Wacky gimmicks are easy.”

    Glossies

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    I really enjoyed Tom Spurgeon’s piece on comics coverage from mainstream news outlets. I thought this sentence from the concluding paragraph really hit the nail on the head:

    “At some point, however, comics needs to stop being flattered and start being covered, pulled apart, questioned, challenged and dissected.”

    It’s weird to see excitement about an outlet like The New York Times covering comics terribly, just because it’s the Times doing it. And while it does get kind of irritating to see reporters swap “manga” and “anime” in those smaller-market papers that write stories about clubs at libraries and high schools, I would rather read a hundred of those articles than some strangely condescending piece on comics growing up and getting serious that uses Marvel’s Civil War as an example.

    It seems like the larger and better resourced the outlet is, the more likely they are to swallow a publisher’s agenda whole, which is precisely the opposite of how it should be. To keep harping on the Times, it’s exceedingly strange to me that there’s such a disconnect between their critical standards (publishing comics from interesting talents and reviewing books by Adrian Tomine) and their willingness to commit accessory to hype when Marvel or DC has a story of questionable merit to flog.

    Maybe it’s because I spend so much time reading the comics blogoshere where these spandex event comics are routinely recognized as ghoulish, franchise-prolonging stunts even by people who like them. Maybe I’ve bought too much into the concept of high-profile journalistic prestige and recoil when I see the Times or Newsweek looking dumb in easily avoidable ways. I’m not really sure, nor do I really have many ideas as to how to ameliorate the state of affairs. Cordial, constructively critical letters to reporters and arts editors? Consistent use of the “super-hero” modifier before “comics” when it’s appropriate?

    I think I must be one of six or seven people who actually read Entertainment Weekly, because I don’t remember seeing anyone mention a piece by Jeff Jensen in the January 11 issue about how much he’s always loved Marvel comics. Seriously, that’s the beginning, middle and end of it for five heavily illustrated pages. With everything that’s happening in comics as a medium, EW’s big comics think piece comes down to how Jean Grey made some guy feel squishy when he was 10 years old?

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    Updated to note: Kate Dacey-Tsuei has posted an excellent comic wish list for the new year, including some helpful suggestions for print outlets trying to cover the subject.

    Random Thursday thoughts

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    I’m in one of those phases where reading comics and writing about them seem to have overtaken me a bit. There are three or four reviews I’ve got drafted in my head, two or three column ideas bouncing around up there, and feedback overload from all of the good “best of 2007” lists floating around. The best thing to do would be to just sit down with these various books and get to writing (after I read Rutu Mordan’s Exit Wounds again, because critical consensus has me feeling like I’m missing brilliance and just seeing general excellence), but I keep getting distracted by new comics that show up.

    As expected, Nextwave: I Kick Your Face (Marvel) was very, very funny, and I’d love to see more of it (collected in paperback). There was one sequence that was kind of jarring, featuring some perhaps-too-astute parodies of the kinds of spandex stylings that normally exhaust me. I recovered, obviously.

    I’m still not quite sure what to think of the preview copy of Hell Girl that Del Rey sent me. It’s shôjo comeuppance theater by Miyuki Eto where terrible things happen to horrible people after good people prone to immediate gratification consign their tormentors to hell with the help of an urban legend with a web site. I think I need to read more of this before I render any kind of verdict, but there are some really discordant things going on here.

    And a whole bunch of Viz books I really like have come out lately. I like Naoki Urasawa’s Monster so much better when it doesn’t focus on plaster saint Tenma, and I’m constantly and pleasantly surprised by Urasawa’s ability to structure a thriller in surprising but entirely coherent ways. I sense a whole lot of Tenma on the immediate horizon, but the book’s pleasures will definitely outweigh the dullness of its protagonist. More Nana more often makes me happy, even when the story itself makes me very, very sad. I love how Ai Yazawa is playing with and rebalancing the naïve/worldly dynamic between her two leads. And the handy thing about having the kind of large, well-crafted cast that has assembled in Fullmetal Alchemist is that you can do an entire volume where one lead barely appears and the other doesn’t show up at all and it will still be riveting.

    And now, some links:

  • Christopher Butcher takes a very thoughtful, well-informed, in-depth look at some of the items from my 2007 manga news round-up.
  • Johanna Draper Carlson rounds up some recent manga news items and offers her own thoughts. (Pop quiz: Does Dark Horse actually publish any shôjo, or just manga titles from other categories that people who like shôjo might enjoy?)
  • The Occasional Superheroine looks at Newsweek’s discovery of women who write comics and finds it wanting. (When I read the piece at Newsweek’s site, there was this horrible sidebar ad about some wrinkle cream showing a woman who had been retouched to look like something just this side of moldering, because physical representations of life experience are apparently to be fought with all the vigor science can muster. It seems to have been taken out of the page’s ad rotation, and while the replacements are surprisingly low-rent for an outfit like Newsweek, none seem to be actively thematically opposed to the page’s main content. Yay?)