Keeping the "manga is porn" stereotype alive
News and updates on the glory that is we
Yes, still alive. Had to take a month-and-a-half-long sabbatical for some personal reasons (I was only half honest about not covering that scanlation crackdown thing too much.) Will try to get back to regular pace, have a few items from before the break I need to cover, and some press releases. Be back in a bit…
Oh, and if you’ve emailed me sometime between June to now, and haven’t received a response, please do so again.
Newhalfs get some love on AnmeOnDVD as Kelly Edgecomb reviews Read Me!.
I think there is a disconnect between sales of Read Me, and the popularity of futanari on the internet. Perhaps futanari lovers still aren’t ready to be public about it. Then again, if the net was in any way indicative of market potential, then our books would be outselling everything.
Maybe you all just have the scanlation already. You jerks. =(
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ANN has transcribed a survey by Tokyo Polytechnic University on what the Japanese public thought best epitomizes “Japan Cool.” Anime and manga handily trumped music, fashion, even video games, and were among the top five picks for all age brackets.
The survey also asked respondents which anime and manga properties should represent Japan to the international public. Pardon me, but their choices only serve to prove that the average Japanese would run a US manga and anime company into the ground.
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The last of the last CMX links of note…
Perhaps what CMX was really missing, was a charismatic evangelist. Someone around whom CMX could build a cult of personality. Would TenTen literalists have held onto their grudge if CMX’s public face had been, say, Carl Horn? (I don’t see people boycotting Dark Horse for NaruTaru.) And making editors into celebrities is actually something the traditional comic industry does very, very well.
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Jason Thompson profiles Ippongi Bang, simultaneously getting into the sordid histories of some of the earliest US manga publishers. Juicy.
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A Taiwanese writer was held by (Mainland) Chinese police at the World Expo in Shanghai for 40 minutes because he wore a shirt emblazoned with the words “Otaku Rebellion Army.” Cannot make this stuff up.
Also, I want that shirt.
Edit: Via ANN, the blog of the detainee in question, plus photos of the shirt.
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Spotted via Journalista… the Korean domestic manhwa industry is “on the brink of collapse,” and fingers are being pointed at online piracy. This has lead some to abandon print altogether in favor of webtoons, as they apparently call them in Korea.
Wasn’t the manhwa industry supposed to be an early adopter of online comics sales? Is it mere coincidence that print comics everywhere seem to be crashing? Does my constant stream of rhetorical questions annoy you?
Ooooh… that was fun. 9_9
So, the WordPress installations on Icaruscomics.com were hacked on 5/17. Thanks to everyone who sent me emails about the site. We caught it in early morning and took it down on same day, so hopefully it didn’t cause any damage to users.
There was actually a wave of WordPress hacks affecting certain hosts, and we were likely caught up in it. The problem seems not to be any particular flaw in the WordPress installation, but security issues at the hosts. So rather than waiting for the host to fix this, we decided more drastic action was warranted. The WordPress installation directory was wiped. Posts and comments were recovered from the database, but all users were deleted. Things might look slightly different here and there. We can only hope our host is more vigilant now, but if you suspect something weird happening on this site, please let me know at simon (at) icaruscomics.com.
Back to blogging. It seems a lot has happened in these last couple of days…
This morning, it was discovered that this blog was hacked sometime between 5/16~5/17. It appears to be some kind of injection attack… I don’t actually know what that means, but I’ve been told that’s what happened. Google detected one compromised javascript file, and I’ve replaced it. The hack created an iframe that pointed to a php file at hingham-ma.gov – the official site of Hingham, Massachusetts (looks lovely, btw.). The php file itself no longer exists, and based on some googling it had infected some other sites this month. I’d recommend running your usual antivirus/rootkit programs if you’ve visited during this time period. Also, look for cookies from the higham-ma.gov domain and delete them.
Apologies for the problem, and some time away from posting until I can be sure the hack has been thoroughly eradicated.
Edit: The culprit is some kind of webshell, and infected pages attempted to download the Clagent B Trojan. We are in the process of reinstalling WordPress. This appears to have been part of a larger exploit affecting our hosting provider.
Edit 2: Testing new WordPress installation.
Update on Cheerful Eros Project… apparently, the cargo ship that had our books also carried something that is, I quote, “materials that are bad for baby.” Tainted baby formula? Lead-laden toys? Unsafe phthalates in teething rings? I don’t know. But that’s what’s holding things up. I also don’t know how long it takes customs to do a thorough inspection. Hopefully, they have our books sitting in an air-conditioned warehouse somewhere.
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Anime Vice spots what could be the first Japanese manga to be released on the Kindle by the Japanese publisher. The book is, unsurprisingly, a yaoi title: Delivery Cupid by CJ Michalski, from Libre Publishing.
Libre has quite an interesting history, and so does yaoi publishing in the US. Despite a seemingly dedicated fandom, several yaoi publishers have faltered, licenses have been pulled or exchanged hands several times. Publishing the Kindle edition directly saves both disappointment and licensing headaches, without the kind of commitment that launching an overseas print publishing operation requires.
It should also be noted that Amazon has a relatively easy to use publishing system, open to basically anyone, and documentation (translated into Japanese by the online community) is robust. This is a feature that Barnes and Noble has yet to match, and it remains to be seen how Apple’s iBooks will handle submissions.
Curiously, as of this writing, the book is not actually available for purchase. Did someone have a change of heart?
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Daily Finance reports that book chain Borders will have to repay a $42.5 million loan on April 1st. The article dreadfully notes that Borders can still make or break bestseller books; a bankruptcy would have huge ripple effects across the entire industry.
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Spotted via MangaBlog… Paul Gravett relates a discussion with an illustration student about her perceived limitations of manga, which arose out of the misconception of manga as a style. Gravett then goes on to suggest several titles that do not adhere to the popular image of how manga should look.
If one wishes to move even further away from stereotypes, one simply has to look at the manga strips that appear in Japanese newspapers and general interest magazines. But those don’t get licensed for Western publication all too often…
Must read of the day… Tsurupeta has a great check list of facts on the recent legislation in Tokyo targeted at anime and manga. The article also highlight the continuing campaign by religious interests (apparently Christian) against free sexual expression in the country. Guess I was wrong… the Christian right was behind this after all!
Semi-related… even Shigeru Miyamoto, famed Nintendo designer who takes great pride in his family-friendly opuses, seems to express quiet support for the anime and manga industry in this interview at the Economist.
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The Beat reports that Yen Press’ Twilight graphic novel moved 66,000 copies in its 1st week, or just under 1/5th of its first print run. Which, according to Yen, is some kind of US record. Be sure to check out the comments section for some insecure, passive-aggressive, to somewhat wacky statements, all of which appears within the first 3 posts! That must be some sort of record too.
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Spotted via Robot 6… Mark Evanier thinks a Creator-Con is not feasible at a large scale, its ideals already represented by existing smaller cons, and that movies are now an integral part of the comics industry (or the other way around). Completely sound arguments, which mirror some of my own initial impressions… but hey, all the true geniuses of our world simply tried to do something everyone else said was impossible. Don’t let the naysayers stop ya…
That said, we must recognize that there is potential value in reaching out to movie and TV and video game fans, to bring them into comics. Those other media all have audiences in the hundreds of millions, while the best-selling comics generally top out at around 150K, and self-published creators have a tough time breaking 2,000. But outside of singular events, this multimedia synergy (yuck) hasn’t produced any real long-term benefits to comic sales as far as I can tell (yet many webcomics about movies, TV, or games have a great deal of readers. Perhaps print is the problem.) And whether CCI would still see the general promotion of comics as its primary goal 5 years down the road is a valid question.
No doubt everyone and their mother is talking about Apple’s iPad this morning. Thankfully, Paperless Comics has done a fine job of rounding up the reactions from the comics world, so I don’t have to. (But give this ICv2 article a good read, too.)
Honestly, I haven’t given the device much thought yet. What I can say now is this – the hardware presentation was neither revolution, nor evolution. It was a revelation. We now know clearly the next destination on Apple’s technological road map, their next target for conquest: Amazon. The gaming, multimedia, and net functions were no-brainers… they are well-traveled roads for the mobile tech giant. What should be catching everyone’s eye, more than the sleek (albeit slightly underwhelming) hardware, more than the screen size, even more than the surprisingly modest (for Apple) $499 asking price, is the iBook store. We know next to nothing about it, except that it exists. Yet that fact alone, combined with Apple’s track record, should be enough to have everyone salivating at the possibilities. Apple is taking eBooks seriously, and that commitment will stretch far beyond the life of any single generation of hardware.
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Jason Thompson’s 365 Says of Manga, hosted on Suvudu blog, has a review of Yamatogawa’s Aqua Bless. Us, getting a mention on a Random House web site… seriously, how cool is that? (Thanks, Chloes_fork)
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ANN translates a report about the arrest of a Japanese man for allegedly sharing illegal copies of anime via the peer-to-peer software Perfect Dark. In Japan, downloading copyrighted material is not illegal, but providing it for download is, and there has been successful prosecutions of uploaders previously.
It is not stated whether Japanese police forces have compromised the Perfect Dark software, or if they used more traditional investigative techniques, such as social infiltration, in this latest arrest.
Edit: According to welcome datacomp, Perfect Dark had already been cracked, making this arrest an inevitability. Also, in my haste, I had skipped over ANN’s contention that unauthorized downloading of copyrighted content was made illegal in Japan at the beginning of this year, rendering my above recollection outdated.
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Tomohiro Kato, the man who murdered 7 people and wounded 10 others in the otaku mecca of Akihabara in June 2008, has plead guilty to all charges against him. Kato faces the death penalty.
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Manga.About.Com has the results of its reader poll on the best manga of 2009. There is no category for best ero manga… surely a compassionate gesture to save all other publishers from the embarrassment of a thorough and crushing defeat at our hands.
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They’ve done it again! Another Australian man has been prosecuted for having pornographic images of fictional children from The Simpsons, Powerpuff Girls, and The Incredibles. There’s one difference between this and a previous case involving Simpsons porn… this man had a prior conviction for possessing sexually exploitative pictures of actual children. (But doesn’t that make this an improvement?)
You know what, maybe The Simpsons is the real problem. Why, oh why must you make Lisa’s jaundiced, pentagram-like forehead so irresistible, Mr. Groening? You’re leading people astray.
Oniichan no Ecchi, who is obsessed with futanari penises, reviews Read Me, by a mangaka obsessed with futanari penises too. Hilarity ensues.
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In Tilting at Windmills, Brian Hibbs questions the attention given to e-books, and extols the virtues of print and the existing physical retail infrastructure.
A couple initial reactions…
1. Hibb’s warning of a retail crash sounds a lot like a Cold War-era threat of mutual annihilation. It’s also something comic publishers, especially the large ones, have been well aware of; it’s why the online initiatives from the majors have been rather tepid. But we’re also working in the post iTunes era. The conventional wisdom is that the music industry, in trying to protect existing retail infrastructure, moved too late into the online business, resulting in not only the entrenchment of piracy, but also lost leverage against Apple, now the biggest music seller online or off. It’s a mistake the publishing world is eager not to repeat, so all the attention e-books have been getting is justified, even if current e-book sales are still minuscule compared to print.
2. Hibbs claims that even just a 10% shift of readers from physical retail to digital may completely gut the direct market; in other words, the entirety of comic shops is operating at 111.11% of the critical mass required to sustain it. Of course, Hibbs uses the 10% figure to mean 1 out of every 10 Marvel and DC reader (or 1 out of every 10 books), but let’s apply this number another way. Looking at Diamond’s 2009 sales figures, the top 11 comic publishers (from Marvel to Avatar Press) combined equals exactly 90% of the direct market in dollar sales. Hypothetically, if the DM loses every comic publisher outside of those top 11, it would crash, according to Hibbs’ 10% claim. This is pretty significant, because a.) smaller publishers are more likely to see immediate benefit in digital sales versus established publishers, so they are more likely to put a bigger effort into e-books, and b.) Diamond’s higher sales threshold means print may not even be an option for growing numbers of small publishers. Could e-books plus the oft-neglected bottom of the direct market, those publishers that don’t even break the top 300 list, have a disproportionate effect and hold the entire industry by the throat? Eh, who knows, but it’s a funny thought.
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Related to the above… an RR Bowker survey found that 20% of people who have e-readers drop print books completely. Which means that 80% still buy physical books… a good thing for print (but I suppose a bad omen for comic shops, if a 10% conversion rate is all it takes to crash it.).
Personal anecdote: for all the faults of the nook, the amount of reading I’ve been doing on it in one week roughly equals what I had been reading in one month. About one-third of the books I’ve purchased on the nook are books I’ve read before, or for which I already own a physical copy. Why the four-fold increase? Because e-readers make reading an even lazier activity than ever before. Incredible, but true.
Hey, it’s the first day of 2010, and I’m sitting in front of my computer in nothing but my underwear. It’s off to a sensational start.
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Writing for Robot 6, Brigid Alverson picks out the top manga-related news stories of 2009.
For me, there was only one story that mattered, by sheer weight of its ramifications that go far beyond manga… the persecution of Christopher Handley. This is the story we’ll be talking about years from now.
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Anime On DVD reviews Scarlet Desire, and finds it completely repulsive. Ero manga niches have a tendency to polarize.
One note on missing words… in most instances, this is intentional. Japanese dialogue often literally ends in mid-sentence. Sort of like you’re biting your tongue, or you’re deep in thought when something distracts y-
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According to Good Smile, the most popular figure of 2009 was Max Factory’s Figma Drossel.
FYI: Bandai will be releasing a 7-inch, die-cast version of Drossel in February 2010.
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The Financial Times, of all places, has a review of the Secret Images exhibition, and discusses the influence of Japanese porn on 19th century Parisian art scene. Looking at Picasso’s interpretation of Japanese porn, I can’t help but think that, if he were transplanted to more modern times, he’d be called a wiiaboo hack artist by a certain contingent on the net.
Of course, Japanese manga is influencing the West once again, although this time around its erotic contributions are more far-reaching and proletarian, yet they see little acknowledgment from the establishment.
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Siliconera has a candid interview with a marketing distributor for PC eroge and visual novels, although there are no revelations to be had here. What has transpired in the eroge market is happening more or less in every type of traditional mass media entertainment. I imagine there’s a tendency to blame the downfall in anime, manga, and eroge on poor, stale product, but that’s contradictory in the face of the reality that more people are consuming these products than ever before. They just aren’t necessarily paying for the privilege. Publishers are not failing to attract more fans, they’re failing to attract customers. Why should people, who themselves admit that they will never be customers, matter? And how?
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Kindle is not only the most gifted item ever for the online retailer (I gifted a couple myself), but sales of Kindle ebooks surpassed print books on Christmas Day. That means… somethin’. (Spotted via Slashdot)
No similar claims by BN, likely because the nook network was so overwhelmed by traffic that it was unreachable for most of Christmas Day.
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Fun: Canned Dogs has a photo series of mangaka in their native habitat. Takao Saitou looks as slick as I’d always imagined him to be.
In about a month, you will be holding the last issue of Comic AG in your hands.
All things considered, it was a good run, eh?
Yes, we will be ending our magazine with issue 110. There is a multitude of reasons behind this decision, the biggest of which being merely happenstance, fate that all the various factors should come together in a single point in time. But this was also inevitable… Comic AG has, in my view, lost purpose by doing what it was supposed to do: it got our foot in the door of the comic industry. Publishing porn manga at the time we started, amid lower sales and the explosion of interest in the internet (and the Pandora’s box that unleashed), was very risky. We needed a product that was a great deal for readers, with a format that comic shops were familiar with and could take a chance on, but also be different enough to stand out from the crowd, and Comic AG was it. We wanted it to be an exceptional value, so it was priced to break even. That’s all it ever did; when we changed to a more economic printer, we passed those savings onto readers by upping the page count from 64 to 80 while still keeping the $4.99 price point. That’s how much faith I had in the magazine, how much I wanted to get this stuff out to fans, how much I wanted it to work. And it did… that we’ve hit triple digit issue number is proof.
Comic AG is still breaking even, but that doesn’t mean it is without cost… it takes time and energy to put out issue after issue. So it was still a drain on our resources, if not financial, then spiritual. With each release, we were slowly marching toward an event horizon, a place of no return, where we’d have to ask ourselves the hard question: is this worth it? The answer is “no.” The answer was always “no.” The variable was when we’d reach this conclusion, not if.
As much as I still consider Comic AG a personal success, by being a comic, it had built-in limitations. For the most part, it wasn’t sold outside of comic shops… essentially all the energy we placed into it were going into one market. Now, this market is unlike any other, and it provided opportunities that no other can provide. Of those shops that do support us, they seem to do pretty well with Comic AG. But most shop don’t, or can’t support us. We’ve long plateaued in terms of how much further we could grow in the direct market, how many more new stores would pick up Comic AG. Sales had long reached stasis, and that’s not a good place to be, especially when the primary distributor of that market is slowly moving away from the bottom publishers, closing the doors on the format that defined the industry. As has often been said online, this shift was not made in malice, it was just the natural ebb of business. And with sincere apologies to those shops that have helped us throughout the years, we too must make business decisions.
We are a boutique book publisher. Our “trades” are our bread and butter. It is now the time for us to focus on them.
Despite the current hiccup in the release schedule, we *will* be releasing more trades in the future. We will be speeding up our releases. We already have enough licenses to last us well into 2011. And even without Comic AG, the direct market will still be a major part of our business. So I want to give a heart-felt thanks to all the retailers and readers who have made Comic AG possible, who have supported us from the beginning. The last two issues are fantastic, and I hope you’d remind your local comic shop that you definitely want them. We will still provide a cheap (or free) option for fans in the form of Comic AG Digital, which we will be making available via torrents and direct downloads, and perhaps even other formats too soon for me to discuss. We do not forget our friends.
When we published issue 100, we did so quietly, anonymously, without fanfare from either fandom to which we are affiliated. Perhaps in the distant utopia where everything is free and the printed paper is but a relic, a scholar may come across an old issue of Comic AG, and marvel, for the briefness of sparks from a match, that an unknown indie publisher was able to release so many comics in the time it did.
That would be pretty sweet.
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