Worlds Within Worlds...

So, David Taylor mentioned the Book Standard's Bestseller Awards.

The interesting thing for me isn't so much the category splits (overall, manga, and superhero) but the fact that it gives hard sales numbers. So, over the course of about a year:

Comics & Graphic Novels
In the Shadow of No Towers, Art Spiegelman (49,000)

Comics & Graphic Novels – Manga
.hack//Legend of the Twilight, Vol. 3, Tatsuya Hamazaki (45,000)

Comics & Graphic Novels – Superheroes
Batman: Hush, Vol. 1, Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Scott Williams (20,000)

Just to compare a little, I also looked at ICv2's estimation of sales in the DM. Hush seems to have sold around the same amount during that period (around 22k).

In the Shadow of No Towers is pretty dramatically different. It showed up for 2k in the month of its release in the DM and then dropped off of the radar after that. It is similar with .hack, which did 4k when released and disappeared.

Just goes to show how different the markets really are. Also, I've seen comments on forums sometimes asking just how well GNs actually sell in the bookstore market. This gives us at least a bit of an idea.

It seems like all the news is at The Engine lately. This thread has produced some interesting things lately. The first of which is C.B. Cebulski's news of a new comics+manga anthology starting up:

There's currently a new comic/manga anthology in the planning stages actually. Ideally, it will include short stories from Japanese manga-ka, pro and amateur, as well as an international line-up of comic and OEL artists. All non-superhero, of course. The plan is for an English version to come out in America in late spring 06, with a Japanese version to follow soon thereafter. (Yes, a Japanese publisher is already onboard.) Both editions will hopefully include a survey card where readers can write in and rank their favorites. There will also be a website set up with an online summary card, as well as blogs and forums for the creators worldwide.

The working title we're using now is JETLAG, given that creators from around the world will be sending in their work.

We're still wortking out the final kinks and contracts, but several of the Japanese artists are already lined up and excited. I'll have more news on this soon to share here. Thanks for your patience and hopefully future support.

then Heidi asks:

Who's "WE"?

C.B. again:

"WE" at this point are me and the few crazy, more globally-minded creators that cooked up this scheme. It's been an exciting but maddening experience so far, with so may ideas coming out of it that focusing gets difficult at times. We were planning on 128 pages to start as a test, but now I think it's easily going to grow beyond that rather quickly. Oh, and quarterly for now. We'll see...

This sounds like it could be really cool. Anthologies seem notoriously difficult to start up here, but I hope it works out! The aspect of its possible printing in Japan is a different dimension from normal as well.

It can't be explained in words. Just go look!

I just happened to notice this from the Engine:

(Just as a side note, Barnes & Noble recently ordered a bunch of SCOTT PILGRIM, both volumes. I don't know if they're going to shelve them with manga or what. They don't have B&N's up here, so I can't check.)

Good news! It'll be interesting to see both how it is stocked and how well it sells. Best of luck to you Bryan!

I've been reading Ellis's new forum The Engine a bit lately, and the combination of limited membership (basically creators, publishers, etc) and focus on non-superhero topics makes for an interesting perspective. For one thing, a combo of regular indie creators and OEL ones without the friction you might see in other areas.

So, one of the more interesting topics has been started by Dirk on what lessons the US industry might learn from manga. Of course this springboards from his Journal editorial. There was some decent topics brought up as a result of Pat's response in here and here, but so far I'm really liking the Engine's take on things.

Everything from the Japanese industry, cherry picking, emotions, decompression, and Takuhai come up. Besides, any thread that brings up Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has to have potential, right?

So, ICv2 mentions that Sgt. Frog Figures are coming. They mention there are different faces and accessories, but you might not realize just how cool these things are.

I happened to read a Millarworld thread which linked to a great gallery of these figures in action. Check out this page. If we seriously get all that, it'll be great! Japan knows how to make good action figures.

Also of interest is these other Sgt. Frog figures (though I doubt we'd get these) and a Yotsuba figure. Yotsuba & mecha = big trouble!

Am I right in thinking we're going to see some frog figures appearing on some comics blogs in the near future?

As I mentioned in my post about the new house, I also went down to Orlando, Florida for the World Yo-yo Contest. Lots of people put videos online from the event, notably Boxthor who had freestyles and clip videos up on Bittorrent very quickly.

The latest video, though, is an epic 24min view of Worlds created by Andrew Lin from Singapore. Though he points out that it isn't a documentary, it is still a nice overview of a lot that went down, including such things as the Iron Modding Contest and Wheel of Penalty. Not to mention a feel for some of the crazy characters in the community. ;) Way too much happened to be contained in any one video, but this a good start.

It is a bit over 200megs and is mpeg-1, so just about anyone on broadband should be able to grab and watch it. Just be sure to right-click on the link and do Save As, since it'll probably work better than trying to stream it.

Download from rednuht.org
or
Download from atomictoyguy.com

Well, a couple of days ago, David mentioned Sho's new series, called ME2 coming out from Tokyopop. However, I haven't seen anyone else talk about it yet, or even comment on his entry.

I don't much about the story, but I have to say that the artwork looks like it'll be great. Like some mad combination of Frank Miller and Ai Yazawa. Also interesting is that it looks to be done as vector artwork (that's how it seems anyway), which certainly gives interesting options for resizing and recoloring.

At first, I was worried about if this thing would be difficult to read due to the complexity of the images, but I'm thinking those splash images are probably a bit more extreme while the following looks more reasonable for a standard style (or at least for the supporting characters?):



Anyway, I have to say that the style has got me really excited. I hope that the story can live up to it. I haven't read her both book Sei yet, but I've been curious about that also. Can see some of her other work on her homepage and she also seems to have a blog.

Anyone know if there's been any interviews about the book yet or preview pages? I guess maybe it isn't that far along yet...

I couldn't help but be hearted by this ICv2 article:

Several new exhibitors were announced, including manga publishers Tokyopop, Viz, and Del Rey; games powerhouse (Hasbro subsidiary) Wizards of the Coast; book houses Simon & Schuster and Pantheon; and Dreamworks.

Manga and book houses? With all the complaints of Hollywood taking over that con, it is nice to see more companies come in on the comics side of things.

To tell you the truth, I never really checked out the Millworld forum. Between Fanboy Rampage and other sites, I avoided it as a bastion of insular superhero readers. It seems like I wrongly dismissed it, or at least things are changing even there.

It started off innocently enough with a Yotsuba&! thread (and we all know Yotsuba is innocence incarnate!). When I saw a link to that, I was like "Yotsuba and Millerworld?! I have to check this out." I was pleasantly surprised by lots of positivity and more people checking it out as a result of the thread and liking it also (for the most part).

That lead directly to a thread on Scott Pilgrim. From there, I decided to just surf around and bumped into Sharknife. Then there was a long thread on manga and anime and comic shops. Even MBQ makes an appearance.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm going to have to register for Millerworld so I can participate in some thoughtful comics discussions! I better do it quick before the internet breaks in half...