Article 10: Another Year Older

Another year wiser? Paul O'Brien looks back at the lessons learned in 2003, the year in which manga dominated the bookstores, Marvel's Bill Jemas was shown the door, and CrossGen crumbled.
22 December 2003

Ah, Christmas. That glorious time of the year when families gather, children sing, and columnists write reviews of the year.

This time last year, I predicted that the most important story of 2003 would be the increasing domination of manga. At that point, it was already dominating the graphic novel shelves in American bookstores. We appeared to be witnessing the emergence of a completely parallel market for comics - one that featured different readers, different creators, different genres and different stores. Oh, and one which was almost exclusively Japanese.

And that's turned out to be pretty much correct. In 2003, the manga publishers cemented their position in the bookstores, and established themselves as a permanent fixture. Meanwhile, the squabbling of American publishers, and their sporadic efforts to get back on the newsstands, were put in sharp relief by the astonishing success of SHONEN JUMP. That anthology has come from nowhere to achieve the sort of sales that are supposed to be the relic of a bygone era.

This was the year of manga. While the American publishers continued to fight over the same audience, the Japanese just pitched their tent down the road and invited in the public. And, in doing so, proved what some people had been saying for years - the approach of the American industry must, on some level, be fundamentally misconceived. Granted, the manga audience was drawn in partly through links with anime fandom, but that's not the point. Here is a mass audience who want to spend money on comics. And other than the reprint houses, how much success have American publishers had in reaching them? Next to nil.

At one point the bookstores were seen as a great breakthrough marketplace for American publishers. But anecdotal evidence is starting to circulate that American trade paperbacks are being squeezed off the shelves by the manga juggernaut. And why not? People actually want to read manga. You only have to skim the sales charts to see how the Japanese imports are dominating the bookstores. For years it's been argued (with some justification) that people don't read American comics because they don't have access to them. But when readers are presented with the choice, in the bookstores, it's the manga that sells.

The unavoidable lesson of this story is that American publishers are going very, very badly wrong somewhere. A ground-up rethink is required. As I've said before, I see a very real possibility that the medium-term future for the American comics industry is one dominated by Japanese imports, with the domestic publishers more or less sidelined - as happened in the UK.

At the very least, a major area of focus for American publishers in 2004 must surely be how they're going to reach this new audience - an audience who read comics, but only if they're translated from Japanese. Recent attempts have seemed haphazard at best. Marvel's ill-conceived Tsunami line looked dodgy from the start, and gimmicky SANDMAN spin-offs are never going to get the job done for DC. At some point, an American publisher is going to have to bite the bullet and do a proper digest format. When even Archie is looking at manga for the way forward - hiring the manga-inspired artist Tania del Rio for SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH - you know there's a sea-change happening.

That's the big news for 2003. Still, if you're not interested in manga, there's always the direct market. (For the moment.)

Marvel had a particularly interesting year, albeit more in terms of news stories than actual published output. Bill Jemas started the year with his pet projects in full swing, continuing to inflict MARVILLE on a dumbstruck public. As that came to an end, in May, Jemas announced the all-new Epic line - a device to let Marvel publish inexperienced writers and artists who would make low-selling books. And the doors were opened for submissions. By anyone.

The rationale of Epic always seemed questionable. From a commercial point of view, it was far from obvious why Marvel should want to publish a bunch of low-selling comics in which fanfic writers would try and bring back D-list characters from the mid-eighties - which was effectively what MARVILLE #7 advised readers to submit. Marvel claimed that Epic books would have no editorial involvement, leaving creators to edit their own work. This may have enabled the books to balance, but the policy was completely divorced from reality. If any creative team needed heavy editorial supervision, it would be the novices Epic set out to recruit. Of course, the reality was that heavy editorial supervision was exactly what they got.

Then again, so did everyone else, as Jemas reputedly began to interject himself into editing the whole line, and bizarre sweeping policies were handed down. (No flashbacks, no exceptions.) Given that the success of Jemas and Quesada's overhaul of Marvel had been based on at least the perception of creator-driven comics, this seemed a very strange direction in which to go.

So in October, Jemas was duly kicked out. That brings to a close a very significant period in Marvel's history. For all Jemas' curious policies in 2003, the health of the company and the quality of its comics improved tremendously while he was in charge. And if Tsunami was a wrongheaded attempt to get in to the manga audience, at least it was an attempt, and recognised the major challenge for the company.

Jemas' successor, Dan Buckley, has only been in office for a couple of months - and given the lead-in times for comics, it could be a while before we can really judge where the company is going now. However, the initial signs are far from encouraging. Marvel has announced six new titles launching March 2004, including such thoroughly unnecessary endeavours as relaunches of SHE-HULK and ALPHA FLIGHT (both twice-cancelled in the past). No doubt the periodic CLOAK & DAGGER revival can't be far behind.

Granted, Jemas might have swung Marvel a little too far from its hardcore audience, almost eliminating titles aimed at them. There are arguments for catering more to that neglected audience. The problem is a seeming lack of any other agenda, as Marvel seems to be taking refuge in old ideas. Recent mention of a line of newsstand titles aimed at younger audiences, under the "Marvel Age" banner, may suggest that there are ideas in the pipeline that simply haven't come through yet. But until it becomes clear what - if anything - is on Marvel's creative and business agenda, it's impossible to avoid scepticism.

Meanwhile, Image has been downsizing, as several studios decided that the Image Central deal wasn't quite working out for them. Many of them have decamped to Devil's Due, which inherits a number of reasonable-selling titles. They may well be right about the unsuitability of Image Central for a studio operation. The question is where all this leaves Image, which is settling into a curious business model that might almost be described as assisted self-publishing. Still, Image is serving a valuable function by offering those terms. Books like PARADIGM are always going to be cult successes at best, but at least they get more attention through their association with Image, which gives them more of a chance.

According to the business plan, CrossGen should be a dominant player in the industry by this point. Instead, the publisher has had a truly disastrous year, plagued by financial problems. Failing to pay its freelancers is bad press in itself. But CrossGen only made matters worse with its clumsy handling of the situation.

For all that CrossGen likes to put on a brave face, and its fans still stubbornly insist that it isn't over yet, its problems are clearly very severe. When CrossGen fails to produce the final issue of one of its core titles, and is reduced to posting the script on its message boards, it's clear that the vultures are circling. (In fact, the issue is eventually going to be produced, but only because a foreign licensee is prepared to pay for it.) It's hand-to-mouth at CrossGen, and things have got to come to a head soon.

It remains possible that CrossGen might survive. But if it does, it'll be in a drastically slimmed down form, bearing little resemblance to the business Mark Alessi originally envisaged for 2004. CrossGen has failed in its goals. Of course, in all fairness, those goals were incredibly ambitious. We shouldn't disregard how well it did. Still, CrossGen as we know it is effectively over.

DC... To be honest, when I wrote the first draft of this column, I couldn't actually think of anything DC had done this year. Six hours later, as I trudged through the snow to visit a mate, I remembered: they'd signed a bunch of people to exclusive contracts, and they'd done really well with BATMAN. Well done, DC.

For all that, my impression is that DC stuck to its usual policy of keeping its head down and ploughing onwards. It's produced some very good comics, of course. But the company as a whole has kept to business as usual. DC is consistent, but hardly trendsetting.

DC's first main push for 2004 is the DC Focus imprint, which sounds suspiciously like a 21st century version of the New Universe. God knows we needed one of those. Then again, there are some decent creative teams involved, so you never know. And at least they're pushing some new titles, rather than the same old back catalogue characters. That's always something to be welcomed.

That's the major players in the direct market. But all of this is pretty much beside the point unless these publishers can get out of the direct market ghetto. One of the most interesting things to watch in 2004 will be Tokyopop's plans to produce more original material. Tokyopop have the bookstore market penetration to get away with this. It's already one of the most important comics publishers in the US on the strength of imports alone; it's also perhaps the publisher best placed to produce American comics that American kids actually want to read.

Is Tokyopop, the emerging model for original American mainstream comics? By the end of 2004, we may have a good idea.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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