Time to cue up the Death Star theme music again. Viz has expanded its partnership with Simon & Schuster, giving the publishing giant control over Viz’s domestic sales. From the press release:

“The new agreement expands the relationship to utilize Simon & Schuster’s Sales and Distribution Division to further raise the visibility of the manga genre and continue to grow revenue streams from traditional book retailers as well as from newly emerging channels. Manga is now the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry and VIZ Media titles like FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, NARUTO and INUYASHA regularly appear as top sellers on national retail sales charts.”

I’m a bit curious as to what those “emerging channels” might be. Discount stores like Target? When I hear “emerging channels,” I generally think of things like downloadable comics for cell phones and the like, and then I feel very old, because phones are for talking to people. Back to the release:

“‘The vast reach and sales expertise of Simon & Schuster will play a key role in our strategy to be the dominant manga publisher in North America,’ says Liza Coppola, vice president of sales and marketing for VIZ Media. ‘The success of Simon & Schuster overseeing our domestic distribution operations will now be bolstered further by the talents of their sales personnel. We look forward to their efforts helping to raise the profile and revenue for manga in North America to an even higher level.’”

Okay, so it isn’t exactly earth-shattering news. It’s more like a couple who’s lived together for a few years deciding to get married because one of their employers doesn’t provide health insurance. Still, I can’t help but wonder how this will actually shake out in terms of Viz’s sales, which I hear are reasonably healthy.

The announcement makes a recent thread at The Engine even more interesting. In it, folks are discussing a strange development that Jog noted: manga shelves are eating up all the graphic novel space in chain bookstores. Various reports from the front emerge:

“I felt the pinch on my DC tpb sales almost the minute manga started flying off the shelves.” (Warren Ellis)

“Even our books that could be called ‘manga-ish’ like SCOTT PILGRIM and SHARKNIFE are often racked with the superhero books, even though they are the exact same digest size as the TOKYOPOP books (mass-market paperback). We are told that since they didn’t originate in Japan, they should be shelved with the rest of the American comics. Oddly enough, TOKYOPOP’s and SEVEN SEAS’s OEL books, which are also made in North America, manage to get shelved with the rest of the manga.” (Randal Jarrell, Oni’s managing editor)

(Actually, every time I’ve seen Scott Pilgrim in a bookstore, it’s been shelved with the manga.)

“Part of the problem (as I saw in Kingston Borders yesterday) is that the TPB section is just thrown together – no order, just a jumble of books big and small. It looks so utterly unappealing.” (Jamie McKelvie)

“But all 3 of the shops I go to for comics, one of which is a major bookstore chain in Canada ( The previously mentioned Chapters ), have all reduced space for other types of comics and increased space for manga.” (Scott Keating)

I’ve seen this happening to various degrees. At the local Barnes & Noble, manga is kind of creeping into the graphic novels section. It’s mostly displacing DC and Marvel stuff, which has its own bank, and not the books from smaller publishers. And the sale table is still entirely non-manga, with Persepolis sitting nervously next to Sin City. (There are always at least two stand-alone manga racks or cardboard pop-ups, though.) The space for non-digest-sized graphic novels is the same at the local Books-a-Million, but the digests are expanding in the other direction. The manga offerings at my favorite Borders up in Pittsburgh seem to have at least tripled in the last year, but space for the other graphic novels has, too.

I wonder if book chains have ever considered coming up with some kind of subscription service for manga buyers. I thought about this the last time I was in B&N and saw a new volume of Othello, a title I reserve through my local comic shop. I do that partly because I like to support small businesses when possible and partly because I like to know for sure that I’ll be able to get my hands on a certain book.

While I can be reasonably sure that Othello will show up in at least one of the local bookstores, I have no idea how many copies will arrive and if any will be left by the time I get myself together for some retail therapy. Some retailers already send out author alerts, letting me know when, say, a new Yû Watase volume is coming out. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch for them to develop some kind of reserve service as an extension of their special orders, but it might be much more work than I suspect.

I’d feel badly about cutting the quantity of manga I buy from the LCS, but I’d love to get the discount from the chain store. I’d also love the quicker gratification, as many titles seem to show up at chains weeks before they get distributed through the direct market. I’ll probably always buy at least some manga from the LCS, especially oddities or titles from smaller publishers that haven’t breached the bookstore walls.

Anyway, for some commentary on the business of manga that, unlike mine, is actually clear-headed and intelligent, take a look at Pata’s Year in Review at Anime News Network and ICv2’s look at the Suncoast situation.

There’s some very interesting discussion going on over at Colleen Doran’s blog about the Buzzscope column read ‘round the world. In the comments, Doran offers some clarification on the details of the incident as they were originally described, based on her conversations with the victim:

“Case in point: ‘the head of an organization’. That’s not only not true, that is going to make a lot of people start looking at the roughly, oh two or three people in the industry that could mean. And it’s none of those people.

“I was originally given the impression that the man had a good deal of power and influence and was an ‘elder statesman’, but that is simply not the case. My principal concern is how this matter is being framed, and how this will be dealt with in a court of law. If we devolve into hyperbole and statements are made that cannot be verified, then this is going to be an utter mess that will do no one any good at all.

“Whether she decides to make a public statement later or not, in the end, the lawyers are going to handle this and they are going to be picking over every single comment made on the internet and attributed to her as the source.”

That’s what I was worried about. That and speculation as to who the perpetrator was, which is already underway at a couple of sites, in spite of the fact that the “clues” from the original column may be inaccurate. For example, there’s this part of a comment from Katherine Keller of Sequential Tart:

“Interesting. Because yeah, based on the phrases about major comics charity which helps artists and head of organization, I’ll just go ahead and say what everybody else who knows anything about comics was thinking based on those statements about major charity:

“The FOL, ACTOR, and the CBLDF.

“Based on the fact that the initial report said “man”, we can then rule out the FOL, which cuts the list of heads down to (edited by Colleen> I don’t even want anyone naming any names as a matter of conversation. It’s making my hair go the wrong way).”

Mine, too. But Keller brings up a number of good (and often depressing) points, not least of which is:

“Because in addition to skewing the case, this is exactly the sort of thing the asshats of the world will seize on to ‘prove’ that sexual harassment reports are just a bunch of hysterical histrionic Chicken Little women crying out that the sky is falling.”

If you’ve been following this story, you should definitely take a look.

Another popular young-adult franchise is breaking into graphic novels. Following The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Baby-Sitters Club will be Degrassi: Extra Credit, based on the popular Degrassi: The Next Generation television series.

I have a certain fondness for the television series and found myself intermittently hypnotized by a marathon of episodes that ran over the Near Year’s weekend. It really makes most other teen soap operas look anemic and timid. Each episode contains what feels like the content of four or five After-School Specials. Bullying, sexually transmitted diseases, body image, cutting, sexual identity, substance abuse, school violence, and unplanned pregnancies all barge their way in amidst the usual interpersonal drama. It’s crazy, and it doesn’t always work, but it’s hard to turn away.

According to the press release, the graphic novels will take an “Untold Tales of the Degrassi Community School” approach, “weaving new adventures, challenges and life experiences seamlessly into the DNG story.”

“‘We work tremendously hard to ensure that Degrassi is relevant to the lives of teens,’ said Degrassi creator Linda Schuyler, president of Epitome Pictures. ‘That’s why being at the forefront of the English-language manga movement is incredibly exciting — it’s an art form that kids everywhere are embracing.’”

While I understand the sentiment, Degrassi rather missed its shot of the forefront a while ago. (I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen a Degrassi character carrying around a manga digest. They don’t really seem to have time for hobbies, what with the gonorrhea, shootings, bipolar episodes, etc.) But forefront or catch-up lane, it makes sense. There’s a natural crossover audience, I think, and good for them for pursuing it.

The OGNs will be written by J. Torres, and he seems like a very smart choice. He’s experienced with adaptations of television series (Teen Titans Go! and Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi), romantic dramedy (Love as a Foreign Language), and young adult stories (Alison Dare, Sidekicks). I’m a bit less convinced by the preview art from Ed Northcott. (It isn’t final, though.) Northcott’s take seems to be halfway between Neal Adams and Kaori Yuki, and I’m not sure the influences sit together very comfortably. We’ll see.

One of the weirder collections of comics you’ll ever see arrives on Wednesday. It’s Essential Avengers Volume 5, and it’s quite a snapshot of a book in transition. The Kree-Skrull War is over, and Steve Englehart’s reign of weirdness begins.

Of particular interest is material that establishes Hawkeye as the least desirable man in the Marvel Universe. In the collected issues (Avengers 98-126, Daredevil 99, Defenders 8-11, Captain Marvel 33, and Giant-Size Avengers 1), Hawkeye’s romantic advances are spurned by the Scarlet Witch, the Black Widow, and Valkyrie. If Marvel had a sense of humor, they would come up with a cover image of his personal ad with a big red X through it.

But that’s not all. There’s also a Harlan Ellison story, the introduction of suicide bombers into the Marvel Universe, the Avengers-Defenders War, Black Widow officially joining the team (for about a day), Swordsman joining for a slightly longer period, the arrival of Mantis (who would become the most hated woman in Marvel Comics, entirely by design), and a quantity of guest-stars that boggles the mind.

It’s not Englehart’s best work on the book (that would come later with the Celestial Madonna story and even more in the Serpent Crown arc). But as a curiosity, this collection is pretty darned curious.

Also arriving tomorrow is Yuri Monogatari Volume 3 from ALC Publishing. It promises “manga by some of today’s hottest yuri artists and writers in this 100% yuri original English-language manga anthology.” I’ve only read one of ALC’s books so far (Rica ‘tte Kanji!, which I liked a lot), so an anthology seemed like a good way to sample various takes on the genre.

Poor little Case Closed Volume 9 seems kind of run-of-the-mill compared to the other two, but it’s a reliably entertaining mystery manga with a cute premise. (The book is always better when the Junior Detective League is in action, but I can’t seem to find any solicitation information for this installment, so I don’t know if they’ll be around.) As Johanna Draper Carlson put it, it’s “the equivalent of watching a decent sitcom, a bit of entertainment to distract you temporarily with goofy events.”

Cleverly waiting until everyone was sick to death of year-end wrap-ups, I take a look back at 2005 in this week’s Flipped.

Okay, maybe not, but I do remember her mentioning this.

I submitted my ballot for Chris Tamarri’s Comic Bloggers’ Poll 2005, and a question came up over Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat. I put it in the Best Collection of Previously Printed Material category, because I remembered JennyN mentioning that it had originally been released as three individual comics (and that a fourth installment had just been released).

Can anyone help clear this up?

I liked Peter David’s Madrox mini-series, so I picked up the first issue of his new X-Factor series. It’s a lot of fun, and I decided to make the title an exception to my fewer-floppies rule. The second issue reinforced my decision, because it introduces Monet, a refugee from Generation X and a profoundly unpleasant young woman.

Does anyone write well-intentioned misanthropes better than Peter David? Take this bit of dialogue from Monet:

“I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic… Not that I am sympathetic. I’m not. I just wish I hid it better.”

And with that, I’m in love.

This isn’t the first time David has taken one of the surlier residents of the Marvel Universe to a slightly different, more entertaining place. In his run on a previous version of X-Factor, it was Quicksilver, who had gone from hero to villain and back, with several stops at jerk along the way.

In one of the best issues of David’s run on the series, the team goes through psychological debriefings. During Quicksilver’s session, he succinctly describes the reason for his aggressive unpleasantness: the nature of his mutation makes it seem like everyone around him his moving at a crawl. They can’t possibly keep up, and crankiness just naturally ensues.

It’s a great bit of characterization, not excusing so much as explaining. Quicksilver is still a jerk, but he isn’t an irredeemable one. (Unfortunately, just as David’s take on the character was gelling, Quicksilver got swiped by Bob Harras to mope around as a noble cuckold over in Avengers.)

David did something similar with Moondragon in the first chunk of his run on Captain Marvel. Even more than Quicksilver, Moondragon had always been portrayed as the ant at the picnic – difficult, conceited, manipulative, and, from time to time, outright evil. The shifts always seemed rather utilitarian, though. As a C-list dragon lady, Moondragon tended to serve at the whim of the story, so her contradictions never really cohered into a character.

David took a more focused approach, finding ways to portray Moondragon that were consistent with previous portrayals but were more specific. She was still unpleasant and controlling, but David managed to highlight some of her vulnerabilities without undermining her authority, for lack of a better word. She was a person who had been plucked from her life, trained to be a paragon of physical and mental perfection (to no end, ultimately, as she was just a back-up), and jerked around by forces beyond her control. She could be excused for being a little bitter.

But she wasn’t completely, corrosively so in Captain Marvel. Under her self-imposed purpose (training the clueless novice super-hero) was a desire to learn how to connect with people in more normal ways. She wasn’t very good at it, but the layers were welcome. (Again unfortunately, David sidelined her and most of the supporting cast when he revamped the series, taking the protagonist from hapless to crazy in the space of an issue. I didn’t think it made the Captain any more interesting, and it washed a lot of the color out of the book.)

And now David has added snide little rich girl Monet to X-Factor to spike the punch with her honeyed meanness. (She’s the Cordelia, if you will.) I’m looking forward to seeing more of her.

One of the recurring agonies of watching soap operas was the certainty that a smart, mean, funny character was destined for one of two depressing fates: they would become so evil that their usefulness on the canvas would run out and they’d be dumped to the nuthouse, prison, or morgue, or their rough edges would be sanded off in some brutal way to make them sympathetic. As the Witch put it in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, “You’re so nice./You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice.”

I’m glad to see that David still has a fondness for the jerks and can portray them in imaginative, entertaining ways.

In this week’s Flipped, Bryan Lee O’Malley mentioned Dragon Head as a title he’d love to see in translation. Shortly after the interview went live, we realized that Tokyopop had released the first volume this week. Behold the power of O’Malley! (Now do Japan Tengu Party Illustrated and Otherworld Barbara!)

Speaking of Dragon Head, Rose Curtin takes a look at that title and Viz’s excellent Death Note over at Peiratikos. So yes, I will be swinging by the store at some point this weekend to buy Dragon Head.

From a purely selfish perspective, MangaTrade is going quite well so far. I’ve already arranged to swap two volumes of Negima! for X-Day and an extra copy Genshiken for an Iron Wok Jan! X-Day wasn’t a title I had on my want list, but it’s one of those books that’s been buzzing around the margins since I read about it in Paul Gravett’s Manga book. I think I’m going to be much more inclined to try books on a whim for a couple of bucks of postage than for the cover price. Thanks to everyone who’s joined so far, and to everyone who’s mentioned it on their blogs.

Now, on to the unpleasant topic of comics I’ll actually be purchasing. Once again, I’m forced to ponder the mysteries of the Diamond shipping list with regards to Viz’s monthly output. It’s enough to know that new volumes of Death Note and Ultra Maniac will be showing up sometime this month, though precisely when is anyone’s guess. (Seeing those titles side by side fills me with all kinds of horrible crossover ideas, but they’re best left unspoken.) The second issue of Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein shows up today. I really enjoyed the first. (DC’s site says it comes out next week. Diamond says it’s today.)

Speaking further of manga, which apparently is a natural side effect of my sexual orientation, David Taylor has a wonderfully thorough and interesting look at ICv2’s Manga Awards. Some quick reactions:

• I agree wholeheartedly with David that a Top New Manga Publisher of the Year Award would have been welcome. While Go! Comi is still very new, I would probably have sent the award their way just for the quality of their product. (And really, Del Rey didn’t have that many titles in circulation when they won last year’s award.)
• I’m actually a bit surprised that Fullmetal Alchemist beat Naruto for Manga Release of the Year. I like Fullmetal better, but Naruto seemed more like a phenomenon.
• As impressive, even insidious, as Tokyopop’s marketing for its OEL titles has been, I have to wonder when it’s going to help generate a hit title.
• It’s kind of unsettling how easily Tokyopop and Viz have replaced Marvel and DC when I think “Big Two.” That isn’t necessarily a good thing for either of them.
• Viz is a logical choice for Manga Publisher of the Year for the reasons stated and for the launch of its Shojo Beat anthology and line. Even if this line doesn’t achieve the level of success of Shonen Jump (home of Naruto), it’s still noteworthy. (More stories by Ai Yazawa and Yû Watase? Viz wins.)

I’m a little unnerved at the moment. It has to do with the column at Buzzscope where Ronée Garcia Bourgeois relates a tale of sexual assault perpetrated by someone in a leadership position at “[a] fine upstanding group which works diligently to help creators in need.”

At the request of the victim, who has reported the incident to the police and approached the organization in question with her story, Garcia Bourgeois has related the tale without naming any of the parties involved. This has led to some heated discussion in the comments thread following the article and at Chris Butcher’s blog.

The burning question seems to be whether or not an anonymous retelling of this incident has value. Garcia Bourgeois explains her decision in the column:

“I just want this organization and the man behind all of this to be warned. This WILL come out and I am gunning for him.”

She adds in the subsequent comments:

“Just know that steps ARE being taken by this person to hold the man accountable and things are under investigation. I wrote this to hopefully force the organizations hand on firing the asshole. As soon as I know me running my mouth won’t ruin the investigation I shall sing like a canary, with a vendetta. trust that.”

I’m unnerved because, nobility of intentions aside, I think Garcia Bourgeois’s warning shot fires too widely and has the potential to strike innocent bystanders.

There’s more than one “fine upstanding group which works diligently to help [comics] creators in need.” By writing about this before receiving permission to identify any of the parties involved, Garcia Bourgeois does more than just put the squeeze on one organization. She casts a pall over any number of perfectly blameless groups that need and deserve public support to do their work.

I’m sure that isn’t her intention. She wants to drive the bad organization towards transparency and action, which is noble, and her column may well have that effect. But I just wrote a check to a “fine upstanding group” like this a couple of weeks ago. And I can’t help but wonder if I wrote it to the wrong one.

That’s where I think Garcia Bourgeois’s efforts falter. Not in her desire to cast light on an awful set of circumstances that may reflect a depressingly pervasive attitude in the comics industry. I’m entirely behind that kind of discussion. I just worry that, in trying to squeeze decency out of one group, she’s put undeserved pressure on all of them. And that’s counter-productive.

And, if I look back a couple of weeks, I find I’m guilty of it myself. That non-profit organization I mentioned who made unwarranted assumptions about my marital status in their mailings? It’s the Humane Society. And they never did sufficiently address my concerns regarding their assumptions, so they probably won’t get any money from me in the future.