Monday, September 22, 2003
News of the Day...
Dirk points out a couple of interesting links today.
The first is an column with a possible reason for manga's current popularity. I have to agree with Ms. Bundy that at least part of the success with different kinds of readers is that they actually target these different readers. Looking at the titles out these days, at least a third of them, and perhaps as much as half has female readers as their target audience originally. Combined with price, format, visibility, and anime tie-ins, this makes for a pretty powerful combination.
In sadder news it sounds like an attempt to make a new comic anthology for newstands has failed. IMO, the only real chance these days to have serialized comics present in a newstand is by way of an anthology magazine, so it is always disheartening to hear projects like this fail. There's no garuntee this would have worked out if it made it to stands, but I think the current climate out there is certainly more favorable than in the past.
And for something I don't think anyone has posted about yet, it seems like DC is looking to publish more manga. They've done some things in the past like Gon and Akira (before Dark Horse took it over), so they aren't total newbies to manga. Some other manga fanshave some opinions, but I'll just be cautiously optimistic for now. Perhaps if DC is ssuccessful, they'll get a bit more money in and it'll encourage them to branch out some more in their own stories...
The first is an column with a possible reason for manga's current popularity. I have to agree with Ms. Bundy that at least part of the success with different kinds of readers is that they actually target these different readers. Looking at the titles out these days, at least a third of them, and perhaps as much as half has female readers as their target audience originally. Combined with price, format, visibility, and anime tie-ins, this makes for a pretty powerful combination.
In sadder news it sounds like an attempt to make a new comic anthology for newstands has failed. IMO, the only real chance these days to have serialized comics present in a newstand is by way of an anthology magazine, so it is always disheartening to hear projects like this fail. There's no garuntee this would have worked out if it made it to stands, but I think the current climate out there is certainly more favorable than in the past.
And for something I don't think anyone has posted about yet, it seems like DC is looking to publish more manga. They've done some things in the past like Gon and Akira (before Dark Horse took it over), so they aren't total newbies to manga. Some other manga fanshave some opinions, but I'll just be cautiously optimistic for now. Perhaps if DC is ssuccessful, they'll get a bit more money in and it'll encourage them to branch out some more in their own stories...
