OEL books in particular. Original English Language. Or, Original Graphic Novels. I prefer 'OGN' myself, since I don't fancy the word 'manga.' Face it, people in Japan call comics "comics" too, manga is just a fancy word we use to market the translated books here in the US.
So we're seeing this huge boom in "OEL" books right now, believe me I think it's great. Many people are seeing more publishing opportunities and this 5x7 format has really taken off (my favorite size is still 6x9 for gn's though). But I have a bad feeling about it-- some people say the market is getting over-saturated-- and I agree to a point. However, I feel that the biggest problem is that most artists weren't meant to work this way, that is drawing 150+ pages at a time.
"But look at all the graphic novels coming out from Japan!" Yes, look at them! And they are all first published in small, 10-20 page chunks in a weekly or monthly magazine. (Not to mention most artists have assistants there-- hmm it's not much different than the so called "assembly line" production you see on mainstream American comics.)
So now all these kids (and adults alike) are rushing to start their graphic novel without realizing that nobody really DOES it like this. Except maybe Craig Thompson, and if you ask me he's crazy for it!
I don't think that there was an industry that started producing GN's en masse without serializing them first in shorter form. Maybe the Korean comic market? I'm not sure how their market worked, if they published straight to graphic novels or not. I've heard comics aren't doing so well there anymore, weird since so many Korean books are being translated into English these days.
My point (and I do have one!) is that I'm afraid the creators in their rush to produce books trying to replicate the Japanese industry are going to find that it's going to take much more than a shitload of 5x7 OELs. One person can creat maybe two 150 page graphic novels a year, but who can really do that? A lot of us are working on two books at once, or take up freelance jobs to pay rent and bills because (let's face it) the comic biz aint exactly a gold mine.
I've been working on an OGN for Tokyopop and a monthly book for Vertigo. The monthly book, though it's a lot of work is much more satisfying and less strenuous overall. My second East Coast Rising will probably come out later this year, about a year and a half from when the first one came out. Kind of crappy for me, but if it were solicited in smaller chunks in a bi monthly "shonen jump-esque" anthology then there would be less time between installments and I might not feel like I'm working with no short-term payoff besides a paycheck.
A lot of times it feels like I'm working for nothing, and then when the book hits it seems like nobody even knows it's out. Is that due to Tokyopop's marketing and distribution or the fact that I've been working mega-hard for the past x months on a book that I feel hasn't gotten the attention I had hoped it would considering the hours I put into it? Who knows.
Anyway, I think a lot of creators are coming or will come up to this wall fairly soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a turn in the industry. At least-- I hope there will be a turn, I'm sick of drawing long comics and I'm sick of waiting for a year for my favorite graphic novels to come out. After East Coast Rising I doubt I will do another OGN of it's length (170 pages!! Phew).
My dream size would be a 6x9 short graphic novel. I think it would be long enough to feel like a GN (and have a spine hehee!) but short enough that I wouldn't feel exhausted by the end. I'd like to try this format out in the future.
A lot of my friends are doing work in the book industry now that more publishers are getting involved in comics, but I really don't want to give the monthly format up. Maybe if there was a way to get monthly distribution as well as a graphic novel with a book publisher, but I doubt it. I love my floppies, I don't care what anybody says!!
Well that was quite a rant. Maybe next week I'll talk about "women in comics" ha ha that's quite the can of worms. I wish I had some cool art to post too.. I'll dig something up.
Here's a panel from my upcoming short story "GOLONOVSKI" for the Meat Haus S.O.S. book. It'll be pretty fun. Its six pages and it's about a space captain, a werewolf and a desert shaman.
And to end, here is my dream-team black and white shonen jump-esque monthly anthology lineup- I'm including myself cuz I wanna be in it!! Ha ha! Plus my list is long but there's like a million titles in shonen jump. Whatever!!!
And uhhh James Jean and Moebius would do covers??!! Haha! Yeah!!! Like that will happen anytime soon. Our comic industry might be getting older, but mentally it's going through puberty ha ha!
What's your fantasy shonen jump? And any OGN or OEL'ers out there who want to share how they're coping with the workload? And now-- speaking of work-- Time to get back to it!
33 comments:
I'm fairly certain that Korean comics are published the same way Japanese ones are. I recall Amy having some comic magazines.
The big problem with monthly comics vs. graphic novels is price. I don't buy monthlies because they're like $3+ for a 22 page comic, while most graphic novels are $7-$20 for 100-200 pages. Monthlies should be a more disposable, less expensive format, I think. I might be more willing to pick up monthly titles if they were half the price, and I could just trash them in favor of the trade later with little guilt. The manga magazines in Japan are something like under $5 for 400+ pages. They're printed on really shitty paper, and people just wind up throwing them away and getting trades of the comics they like. American monthlies are meant to be kept in little plastic bags in a box under your bed. It doesn't make any sense.
I'd like to think our countrie's ready for a Japanese style monthly anthology, but I'm not sure if we are. Shonen Jump does well, (I think? Maybe I'm making that part up.) so you'd think that Americans would be willing to buy a magazine like that with domestic artists. But I think for the most part, the people who buy Shonen Jump aren't the people who buy Superman. They have a different mindset.
(For the record, I wasn't playing Mario Kart, I was sleeping. But I needed to get up anyway. =_=)
And I spelled "country's" wrong (and God knows what else). Maybe I shouldn't write long replies at 4 in the morning. Ha ha ha...
well vanessa, don't you know that the problem with 400+page disposable comics is that WE WON"T HAVE ANY FORREST LEFT IN FIVE YEARS??!! jeez!! plus I keep all my monthlies in the bathroom-- no need to throw them out!! ha ha! i think i like reading them in the short form best anyway... WHO KNOWS. and also... splell chekc yur etnry nxt timey u poste inn mie blohg. OKAAYY??????
That's what recycled paper is for. No need for that glossy shit. I like the long format best, even though I haven't made time to read a comic in months.
The funny thing about monthly books is that the format got started in the 19th Century by Charles Dickens. He used to write those long-ass stories, but they'd get printed in chapterbook installments. And I agree; chapterbook installments of long-ass OGNs is an excellent idea.
We should start a thing. ;-]
hi guys, first post here and all that. becky u rul btw
"WEEKLY shonen jump" (ie an issue a WEEK!!! 20pp a WEEK-becky, you are likely the only one out there who could rock that) is totally the equivalent of x-men meets cartoon network to me, so in some senses, i gotta admit the current 'OEL' group aint up to the task yet. the american scene is closer to something like IKKI, a monthly, which is where matsumoto taiyou published No. 5.
Anywho, indy shonen jump, lessay a roster of 10 major titles->
1Becky Cloonan-> ECR
2BLO'M-> Scott Pilgrim
3Brandon Graham->Space Trukkerz in Denial/Cat Master/Anything
4frank quitely draws anything for 20 pages a month
5John Pham-> super angst city squad from EPOXY
6andi watson doing comedy
7corey lewis->ninjas fighting all the time (with some interludes for eating)
8ADAM WARREN-> super funny violence hijinx!!!!!...!
9um...
10um...
ok yeesh im out of the loop, i dont even know half the people on your list becky. been in japan too long...
still, at 10 peeps, that is only 200 pp a month, not enough, and therefore necessitating shorts from others. jump typically cloks in at about 450pp a week for ¥240 (yep, 20 comix for 2 BUCKS!!!)
I don't see why DC hasn't started a digest sized reprint series of their adventures material with maybe 20-50 new pages of material a month. that would be enough to rope in the fans, and im sure they could sell that in the disney adventures/readers digest retail space for the kids, right?
what i honestly wanna see is a mag where we can publish hand in hand with folks from around the globe. shorts by herpich, david b, and yoshiharu tsuge in the same mag floats my boat...
i like the 60pp 6x9 idea tho too:)
I started to make up a dream team list and realized that you'd pretty much covered it with yours, except that I'd add Corey Lewis and Andi Watson to the roster.
I definitely see your point with the long-form comics as such. I eagerly await the next volume of East Coast Rising, Scott Pilgrim, or West Moon, wishing they'd come out sooner, but it's easy to forget the amount of work that goes into producing a project that large without the waypoints provided by a monthly release schedule. When I do think about it, though, it makes me very grateful that you're willing to put in the effort to make it happen.
Before I forget, here's what I'd like to see in a Shonen Jump-esque monthly anthology. 400 pages minimum, so some would be in every issue and some would be rotating. And black & white!
Becky Cloonan
Takashi Miyezawa
Ross Campbell
Brandon Graham
Bryan O'Malley
Dan Hipp
Dean Trippe
Lia Fengo
Drew Weing
Chip Zdarsky
Bannister
Les McClaine
Neil Babra
Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba
KAKO
Rafael Grampa
And covers? I'd pull in the heavyweights from inside and outside comics. James Jean, Moebius, Drew Struzan, Paul Pope, Barry Windsor Smith, Gipi, Travis Charest, Range Murata and others.
When the stories were finished, they could be collected. First in just the B&W tankobons. Then if popular, maybe expand to a "color" deluxe edition on nicer paper.
But the hesitation for American comics to do it is that doing the Shonen-Jump style anthology would mean going back into the newstand/magazine market, which they got severely burned by in the late 70s and early 80s.
And the long-term planning. Most comic companies in the U.S. are used to making their money back from the creative costs with the first printing (singles). It's hard for them to think of the serialization (singles, anthology) as a marketing cost for the collection down the road.
And trying to get the cost down of single issues in America is hard. The industry was built on the collectibility factor. It was the sole impetus for comic stores to start up in the 60s and 70s.
My monthly b/w anthology dream team (minus people you chose so's not to be a copycat, although most of them are obviously good choices, I mean... Guy Davis, goddamn):
Myself (duh)
Mike Hawthorne
Andy MacDonald
Danijel Zezelj
Farel Dalrymple
Dave Crosland
Paul Azaceta
Jason Pearson
Darwyn Cooke
Takeshi Miyazawa
I'm going for variety and y'know, half those dudes are my buds so that might be cheating, but... it's my dream team, so... yeah. If I were to add writers to this list as collaborators with these artists, I'd say Rick Spears, Matt Fraction, Ivan Brandon, and Miles Gunter. I am kinda bummed by the lack of ladies on my list, but at the same time I'm not gonna stress about it. The other thing about this pipe dream is, could that all these people do consistent monthly works and have it all on time and ongoing? I don't think I could keep that schedule. Maybe if a book like that kept it's contributors paid and making money, that would be more incentive to meet a tight deadline.
hmm. sometimes i think monthlies should be abolished, or if they're going to stick around, they should be marketed better or something. i know they sell them at newstands in grocery stores and those little stands at bookstores, but who actually gets comics from there? i really like the comics-in-bookstores thing, and i like how people seem to take comics more seriously when they're in book-form rather than the monthly. and i get as many monthlies as the next guy, so whatever, heh. i've also never drawn a monthly book, so maybe it's a blast and i'd totally agree with you if i did. but it seems scary to me, i don't like the idea of a bunch of deadlines instead of one big one at the end.
and i like working on a big book in one swoop for months at a time, and i don't think my work would work if serialized, especially nowadays where it seems like writers are expected to "write for the trades." and with monthlies it's tougher to get people to stick around if you have a slow first couple of issues for set-up or whatever. people would pick up Wet Moon #1 and absolutely nothing would happen the entire issue... and nothing would happen for #2... and #3... haha. and so then people start dropping the series because it's so slow with no pay-off, the publisher cancels the book, it never gets it due, it ends prematurely, etc.. but if it had been a whole book to begin with, readers sit down and read the thing instead of stopping after the first 25 pages and then never coming back. but of course some books are great for monthlies (all-star superman, say, and other books written with story arcs), so i guess it just comes down to whatever method you like or whatever publisher you're working for or whatever works for the material. anything goes, i suppose.
i don't mind the wait between books, either. it really lets the prior book sink in for me, and i have so much other shit to read in the meantime that it's okay. i'm biting my nails over what happens in the next Scott Pilgrim, too, but i can also wait a year+ for it and it's a-okay. but i think if someone did put together a shonen jump-style thing, i might be interested, heh heh.
god, and all the trees... i think about that a lot, too. like how much my profession/art depends on death, and if nobody was felling mass trees then i wouldn't have anything to draw on. maybe everyone should go digital just to save the fucking planet. but of course then you're using so much power to run your computer and depleting oil reserves and busting up the ozone and shit.. god i just don't know!!! ART = DEATH. comics is causing animal extinction! comics melts the ice caps! oh my god women in comics
Re: mmmMike: Yeah an international monthly phone book size compilation magazine would be awesome! First the global comic market needs to step up. I think the time could be close though, and we could use something like that. Vis could pull something like that off, since they are owned by kodancha or something right? It'd take an international publishing company to start the ball rolling. Or maybe an inspired group of international artists.. hmm!
A lot of the weekly/monthly anthologies switch off artists and stries too I think, that'd be cool. The global comic industry is growing though, I hope something like that happens!
Re: Chris: I think if there was more money in the comic industry in general people would take more risks on something like this. As it is nobody in the right places knows how to market something like this. A book company might be able to swing funding for a project like this. It'd probably rely mostly on bookstore sales I think, I dunno how newstand comics would do these days.
I mean, what monitary incentive does a publisher have to take on something like this? They'd have to do it for the "love" and perhaps risk losing tons of money? Everyone knows that the cash comes from the GN anyway, so I can see why it's logical to just jump directly to the last step. (ugh) The b/w monthly anthology probably isn't appealing to most publishers although I think it's a cool idea.
I would have loved to see Marvel publish all their Civil War and House of M backup stories in big monthly chunks, instead of a bunch of issues. Frontline was kinda like that i guess, but i was thinking bigger. Seemed like a good opportunity if any.
John- let's combine lists. Heh, it's all about the benjaman's anyway, or in the comic industry it's all about the washingtons. Yeah I think the point of something like this is to make tons and tons of comics and money. i'm getting my mini comic comic ready to print, i'll send u the cover when i get it done!
Ross- I think a huge compilation of monthlies is kinda like a book though, it'd be impressive on the shelves anyway. I guess Wet Moon works really well as a whole book. But if you had to write it as a monthly would it be different? Maybe you'd be forced to make stuff happen in the first 20 pages ha ha! NOO ross tons of stuff happens in your comics. The Abandoned would have been a great monthly book.
Well whatever. Comics... Mostly they're awesome!!
Man, if you ever pulled together a monthly anthology with that creative roster, I'd edit it. Though I'd have to throw Corey Lewis, Felipe Smith, Christy Lijewski and Svetlana Chmakova onto the list as well.
The whole serialization thing is tricky, because I'm starting to like it less and less as a reader and fan, but I could see how I would want it as a creator. When it comes to serialization, I really like when each issue of a series is standalone, like Demo or the above mentioned All-Star Superman. That can be tough, though, and it doesn't really make for the best trade paperback collection. Still, I've found that with everything that's going on in my life right now that when I do get to sit down with the latest issue of a monthly comic that I read, I've usually forgotten what happened in the issue before, and have to reread that, and often the issue before that, and before that...all the way to the start of the arc. I've found that I've been waiting for trades more and more frequently for books, or holding on issues until I have a complete arc, so I can read the whole thing in one sitting (in which case, I may as well have just waited for the trade).
And as an editor, I really like working on graphic novels. I don't think I'd like working on monthlies as much. In fact, I'm not even sure I could handle it. The stress that I experience editing graphic novels is bad enough, I can't even begin to imagine what it's like when you have monthly deadlines. I'd probably be much more highstrung. Anyhow, I guess I'm a bit more welcoming of the OGN trend, but I would definitely not want the monthly floppy to go away. I think serialization is important and can make for great storytelling. And I completely understand how for some creators, working in the monthly format would be the only way to go.
By the way, there IS a publisher launching an American monthly manga anthology in the Shonen Jump vein. It's Yen Press, and they announced it at NYCC. The lead story is Svetlana Chmakova's "Night School," which is her follow-up to "Dramacon." Considering Yen Press is run by Kurt Hassler, who's Melissa DeJesus's collaborator on "Sokora Refugees," I wouldn't be surprised if he's asked her to be involved.
Yeah, Yen press' anthology should be interesting. I did a Q&A with Ken that should be running on Newsarama this week.
But the packaging of it for an anthology I think could be done in the United States if a more long-term strategy was taken out on books. In Europe, panini reprints Marvel/DC type books in anthologies -- there's a Batman book running there now with the Jim Lee batman as the lead, and then 2 or 3 other batman issues all in one lump book.
To me, I see it this way. Look at the PREVIEWS book. crappy paper, color printing, listings of comics, a couple hundred pages. Imagine if you did comics in that format, monthly, like they do. THey charge under $5 for PREVIEWS -- they recoup some of their costs in the ssales of the book, but it's mostly looked at as a marketing expense to get people to order.
The printing of the monthly comics antholoy in the PREVIEWS-type book would be alot. Defrayed some by advertising and individual sales. Then the comics inside would be run "as an advertising expense" that doubles as serialization. For your lead story you'd want a known name to sell the book, but the rest could be up & comers and people that should be read.
If you keep the cost around $5 or $6 and pushed hard enough, you could probably get newstand/magazine acceptance. But I'm just a writer, so I don't know it all.
It seems everyone here is in a similar mindset we all wish that this would work.
As far as costs, it wouldn't be that bad, especially if you went with a low grade cover and low grade paper B&W. They're ridiculously cheap.
A Bi monthly would be the best shot in my opinion, as a month from the get go might be too ambitious.
Do a bi-monthly and it would have the possibility of doing well if, and the biggie here is... there was a guarantee of continued stories. I buy anthologies and collections up like crazy, so I know how lacking continued stories are.
A few years back I looked into doing this, but wrangling the artists to set forth the commitment, coupled with initial costs (at the time I had 0 income behind the company) were too daunting.
I'd love to give it a shot or see SOMEONE give it a shot. I'd love to know I was paying 10 bucks a month or every other month for 100+ pages of goodness from multiple creators.
I suggested something like this to Image a while back, but they were sure it would not sell and nobody would buy a newsprint book again. I think the 6x9, 64pg book at $5.99 is the way to go, personally
Gotta be:
Richard Corben
Ross Campbell
Cory Walker
Becky Cloonan
Frank Quitely
Jason Pearson
Brian Stelfreeze
Sean Murphy
John Paul Leon
Tommy Lee Edwards
And a Travis Charest cover would top it all off nicely.
Also, I would damn sure have Seth Fisher on my list if it was still a possibility. The guy was a genius.
my dream team is my mom + my dad. making 150 page babies.
yeah the biggest problem with getting a project like this together is WHO WILL ORGANIZE ALL THESE ARTISTS ha ha omg hardest job ever. Oh well, whatever. Comics comics comics!
5 words:
Webisodes 'Til Print Is Feasible
wasnt warren ells working on something like that?
rian, half those dudes put out 90 pages last YEAR, am i not correct? i love pearson too, but id rather see darwyn cooke and have a guarantee of a page count or alan davis with a good writer doing something not capesy. thats whatll get the kidz. but yeah, while we're daydreaming, right?
Becky (and any other artist/writer that wants to chime in), there's a Q then, if something like this were to be done, what kind of pay would be looked at as good?
We've already established that the publisher would have to be doing it out of love for comics, so there's a high loss potential for them... So while I'd jump to say "Give the contributors an up front advance and then a % of the sales of the issue's profits" advances would be taxing if you had a lot of people contributing.
This has got my desire to start hunkering down to oversee a new project, as I'm only about to take my GREs and LSATs, why not load on the production of another book?! HAHA! For Cosmic/Comic Justice!
The best scenario is to get a book publisher that has connections on every major continent interested so there is serious financial backing. There would be a shitload of advertising, that's how the book would make it's money back. And ideally it's have cheap printing to keep cost low and a gigantic distributing range in multiple languages. THAT IS MY IDEAL MONTHLY COMPILATION!!!
There would be a ton of creators on board. Most would be on for long term stories, but some would do one shots. It'd be black and white, each creator would contribute between 15 and 30 pages or something. I think a page rate would be best, so depending on the caliber of the creator, I'd pay anywhere from 150 a page to 500 if the person was impressive like, i'd pay moebius a thousand a page haha! Avrage would be about 250 a page. That way you could make a living.
Anyway, the comics would eventually turn into graphic novels. I think the best chance at an endavor for this to succeed is with a book company at this point. Or if a comic company really wanted to go out on a limb. Tokyopop should have done it.
Flight is the closest thing to what I'm talking about!!! Kazu's taken this idea and made it a lot classier than I could ever manage.
Vertigo does something like this with publishing a bunch of first issues in a big compilation pretty cheap too. It's called Vertigo #1 i think.
The biggest problem about doing it on your own is organizing and motivating lazy artists!!! ha ha!! The best thing is to talk it up and get it to a publisher, I really can't stand organizing artists, it's the worst.
George- Let's have coffee soon, we need to talk about this more. Friday or Saturday? I was thinking of going to Astoria or Flushing too. Maybe both, Vasilis has never been. Hah.
Yeah, Becky we just moved into the studio!!!
Our friend who has a music magazine was telling us the process of getting a real magazine made. The initial money investment is HUGE, and the risk is also gigantic. It would be helpful to have serialized GN's for publishers too because then it would take some of the pressure off them. It would be like a testing tube for the books, whether or not they'd be worth continuing.
I also think Tokyopop wouldve been the one to do this, since they dumped so much money into their "manga magazine" which they gave away for free...
Anyway, if I had the answers I would've made an anthology a long time ago. In japan the anthology thing happened naturally, didn't it? Out of a reader demand, not the creator demand.
I think another solution to doing these books is hiring more assistants, to create a studio team. I'm going to attempt this with my next book (if I get another deal!). We'll see how it goes. It'll take more time for this industry to come to maturity, to a level where the general public actually WANTS to read millions of copies of comics.
I can say that something very similar to this has been discussed in the Tokyopop office, but has never really moved forward. (Which isn't to say it never will. It just hasn't yet.) It is a huge risk and for an established publisher to all of a sudden take it on would require a pretty major internal shakeup within the company. Likely a new division would have to be created and organized, and I'd have a hard time believing it could be done without hiring additional employees. All this is added expense prior to the expense of actually paying for the book.
I think it would likely have to come from a new publisher, which is why I'm particularly interested in seeing how Yen Press's performs. By setting groundwork within a company that includes a monthly anthology, they're set to adapt in whatever way they may need to.
I'll be honest, as cool as it would be to see one, I'm pretty skeptical that a phonebook-like anthology can work in our market over the long term. I don't think it could justify the cost. Keep in mind that manga is mass media in Japan. It's read by EVERYBODY. Out here, comics are growing in popularity, but when you get down to it, they're still a niche form of entertainment. Even the most popular characters who are known to everyone aren't actually READ by everyone. And a huge, intimidating looking anthology that comes out every month and has a bunch of different stories in it at different points in their narrative isn't going to entice new readers. It'll probably scare them away.
Of course, I've been wrong about things far, far too many times to keep count, and I'd love to be wrong about this. However, I think those are some of the reasons why it hasn't happened yet. It's not that it hasn't been discussed by publishers.
oh yo, totally remembered one of my two blanks from back up there...d-pi!!!
Yeah I was actually thinking today about how since I only get four monthly titles and since they seem to come out nearly the same time as eachother, I always seem to end up waiting a month for about half an hour's worth of entertainment. And whenever I wait around for yours or ross's or o'malley's graphic novels, it's like "YES! It's here! *four hours later* Well that was fun... while it lasted." Reminds me of movies. They take a year ot more to make and only last two hours. Unless Peter Jackson makes them.
Re: the intimidation of many stories in their mid-points:
My understanding (and I don't read Japanese) is that Shonen Jump and many other manga magazines contain various one-shot feature stories in most (or every?) issue.
So that there is something for the casual reader. However, people are right to be cautious because there IS the cultural habit of buying and reading comics in Japan that isn't as culturally ingrained in the States.
-Ayo
Ayo- WE'LL HAVE TO FIX THAT, WON'T WE!??? XD
Maybe an anthology would be useful to chech if artists can endure the work load that means to do a full-lenght graphic novel. Also, a monthly poll would help publishers to decide what series are worth to be compiled or not. Hey, they have done it in France!
I feel the same as you, it's hard to be working on something for a whole year that can be read in about an hour... and then the readers say "we want to see more, work faster!" >_< I think it would be much more encouraging for the artists' feelings if those pages were serialized in shorter periods of time before compilations. Let's face it, artists need feedback, it's fuel for their soul!
Good job on East Coast Rising, btw, it's very inspiring. I'm very intrigued by the characters personal backgrounds, their designs are so cool (Love Lee) and hope to see more soon!
Damn, gotta say that you really nailed it with this post, Becky... This is something that's been bothering me quite a bit, of late: the fact that would-be “mangaka” in North America face the worst of all worlds in the current business model.
I received an advance (upon completion, you’ll note) from Dark Horse for my latest book, EMPOWERED, that was really quite handsome et generous, especially compared to what most indie companies or TokyoPop could offer... But even that amount still pales in comparison to what I could’ve theoretically made from individual issues even at old-skool indie page-rates, let alone far higher mainstream-company rates. It’s a tad discouraging to think that, when I first starting doing DIRTY PAIR at Eclipse Comics waaaaay back in the day, I was earning more per 24-page issue than most of today’s OGN/ OEL stalwarts would receive per 160+ page VOLUME. (And that’s not even factoring in inflation!) This isn’t a huge problem for me, as I’m in it for the long haul, and generally have enough mainstream work, however sporadic, to defray the financial hit I’m taking on my OGNs... but I shudder to think of the young ’uns struggling under such a system without the benefit of pagerates and/or periodic serialization.
Then again, I was doing individual issues of DIRTY PAIR back when a very different (and much larger) direct market existed, when individual issues of a clearly manga-influenced comic (albeit of a shonen flava) could still pull some halfway adequate sales figures. Nowadays, it’s abundantly clear that the Simpsons Comic Book Guy et al. is extreeeeemely unlikely to support anything along those lines (to understate things quite a bit)... So, monthly issues are really not a viable option for most such artists, particularly if they work in a non-shonen style.
To partially regurgitate something I wrote for the MANGAKA AMERICA forward (if you’ll pardon the unappetizing figure of speech): I suspect that artists emerging from the vast talent pool of today’s heeeeyuge manga readership may well represent the only hope for the long-term survival of the American comics idiom, given the dwindling and aging demographic represented by the poor ol’ direct market. But how the hell are talents of this sort supposed to emerge in the current climate of “crank out 160+ pages for a not-very-large advance”, which is far more economically challenging and artistically demanding than even the indie-comics milieu of recent decades? No idea, I’m afraid.
The anthology concept is a very interesting one indeed, but the term “herding cats” springs to mind when one thinks of trying to coordinate the work of that number of freelancers... I’m just not sure that the equivalent of the infrastructure, work ethos and sheer effing terror that makes Japanese anthologies possible could exist over here.
Well, that was certainly depressing... Wheeeee!
BTW, the 6” by 9” format is indeed pretty sweet (we used such a format on EMPOWERED, more or less); I’d love to see some of your work in that size!
-Adam Warren
Nice post, Becky! :D I've been flogging the idea of an anthology since the beginning of time, so I'm glad that other folks working for TOKYOPOP agree with me on this. :D
That said, while printing an anthology may be really expensive in America, perhaps digital distribution is possible. I wrote an article on this a while ago, imagining how a digital distribution system for anthologies may work. The article is here:
http://queeniechan.livejournal.com/27225.html
If we lack anything at this moment, it's the hardware for digital books. :(
Well, if you're talking about short graphic novels in the global scene... Germany seems to be one step ahead of you (well, barely... these just came out two days ago). Check out http://www.carlsen-chibi.de/ - manga-influenced b&w 64 pages stories for about $2.50 each.
France also has http://www.shoguncity.com/ , which follows the Japanese monthly anthology system pretty closely.
So who knows...? I guess America just has to get in on it.
Oh man I just wrote a nice responce and it got deleted!!!
Adam- I'm geeking out that you posted on my blog. I read Dirty Pair and Gen 13 while you were on it!! :D Anyway...
Comics have been going through some huge ups and downs, the ups in the 90's i guess were so rapid that they didn't last, and things kind of collapsed. Right now I think there's a steady climb of comic readership that might not be as noticable yet but it will!! In time this anthology thing could work with enough creater and reader demand.
I think the key is in advertisements ha ha! Make it more like a magazine and it will pay for itself!! What do I know though, I'm just guessing. I like tossing this idea around with friends like it's the holy grail or something. Kazu Kibuishi keeps saying "Short format! That's why people love Sunday comics!" He's so right.
I still have to pick up a copy of Mangaka America. I've been menaing to for a while!
Queenie- Those are some good ideas!! I prefer my comics to be analog though ha ha! Digital works good, but I always think of it more as marketing tool then serious comic medium. That's why all the webcomic guys are printing their comics... ha ha! XD
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There's so many good ideas popping up here, I'm thinking of consolidating them into a larger blog entry later! I didn't realize there was so much interest in anthology format! Or at least, I didn't realize how much people like to talk about it!!
:D
Hey Becky, late to the discussion, but here’s my 2 bits.
RE: The OGN ‘slog’. Yeah, you’re not alone in that (although, buried in the middle of it, there are certainly time *I* feel that way, so I can really relate.). The OGN I’m doing for Image is 150pgs + a few pages of extra stuff, and while I appreciate very much Eric and the guys at Image saying ‘hey rather than rush this, let’s put it out in 2008’ because it takes the deadline panic down a few notches, at the same time there’s a HUGE part of me thinking “Dear fucking god… I’m going to be doing this FOREVER!!!” Derek and I had actually gone back n forth quite a bit on the OGN vs ‘floppy’ first publication, since the book is in 3 50 page chapters, but in the end we both agreed that the nature of the story was better told in one big package. My biggest struggle is knowing, almost a year away, if I am ‘on schedule. I know how many pages I need to get done every month, but without the monthly, or short-term deadline, it’s (for me) easy to just see this wall of pages that are due ‘someday’, rather than discreet chunks. What I am *trying* now is setting up each of the chapters as if they *were* being published in floppy format, and trying to work on three separate deadlines (four if you include the promo book for SDCC). So far it seems to be going well, but with over 100 pages, I tend to feel like, even if I got 6 pages done in a week (which I don’t), I’d still feel like I’m not doing enough. *sigh*
But yeah, I’m going to be looking for shorter/serialized projects after this, unless there is major upfront cash involved LOL.
RE: The anthology idea. Yeah I could make lists for ages of ‘dream teams’ I’d like to do serialized stories and content. As has been noted, it’d take someone with deep pockets and a pretty significant resource/marketing department to successfully launch it in America. Shonen Jump has kind of set the bar in terms of length, and I think you’d have to have that kind of heft to get newsstand distribution and pickup. They get very sketchy when you mention ‘comics’. Because of that, I think it’d be a project better undertaken by a magazine company, instead of a book publisher. That way, they can get ‘bulk distribution’ rates and deals and have the muscle to get on the stands (i.e. “Our new line up is Details, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Cosmo and our *new* “Comics Magazine. In order to get one, you have to order a quantity of *all* of them.)
The first comics I worked on were actually an experiment by CFW publishing (the company that did a bunch of Kung Fu and Karate mags back in the day) to do something similar. They had 2 martial arts anthologies and a ‘Skateboard’ anthology that were monthlies. The deal that the newsstand distributors insisted on was that it could not be ‘comic book sized’ so instead the size was the same as the old Marvel B & W comic magazines. The books were actually on a shocking number of stands, 7-11, grocery stores, etc, but then the publisher decided that he wanted to hit the comic shops (this being the late 80’s and the height of the B & W comics boom) and chose to reduce the size of the book to ‘normal’ comic size. The co-editor and I thought it was great (because we wanted the book in shops and didn’t know fuck all about what impact it would have on the newsstand) but after they changed the format, newsstand distributors started dropping the book like crazy, which (in terms of it being profitable enough for a magazine publisher to want to do it) killed the books off.
Shonen Jump gets around that by merit of its size/thickness, so I think you would have to do some format that would distance it from ‘normal comics’. The other advantage I’ll mention about the magazine publisher bit is that if they are paying a page rate, then it makes it a hell of a lot easier to ‘herd cats’, and get flaky artists to deliver on time.
Wow, this was a fuckload longer than I expected… I just meant to say one or two thing…sheeeet.
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