Lay-offs at comic pubs | Mugen Pop Pop in US!

Remember back in high school there was always this one kid in class, a brainiac who gets perfect scores on all his/her tests and ruin the grading curve for everyone?  Maybe you were that braniac (you bastard).  Expanding on the PWCW manga industry article, Kai Ming Cha thinks Viz, specifically their best-selling Naruto, is doing just that… it, along with a handful of top properties, may be so disproportionately inflating the numbers that our perception of the true health of the industry is being distorted, and manga may be in worse shape than it seems.  That’s a scary implication, but Cha asks an even more important long term question, one that’s been asked many times before, but has a greater urgency in today’s climate: What happens when Naruto ends?

In Japan, the peaks and valleys in manga sales correspond with those seminal superhits that happen every decade or so… Ranma, Naruto, Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star (oh yes).  The Japanese are used to cycles of booms and busts, and they ‘ve always managed to produce that next big hit… rest assured, there will be life after Naruto in Japan.  In a way, the situation isn’t much different in the US; certain manga pubs with huge catalogs seem to get by on the strength of only a handful of books.  But the current iteration of the US manga industry has not experienced such a transition from the Japanese end.  If the valley period is extended, would manga lose the ground it has gained in retail bookstores?  And what if the next big thing in Japan doesn’t find an audience in the US, or if we embrace a book that was a failure in Japan?  It’s an odd position to be in, to be simultaneously not big enough, and not lean enough to survive a long dry spell.  But that might be a place where a few manga pubs are headed right now.

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Heads up: the du9 interview with Tori Miki, the Mitch Hedberg of manga, is now available in l’anglais.

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Ooh… the bubble wrap-popping simulator that was all the rage in Japan is now in America.  I actually saw a TV commercial for this.  For some reason, instead of pushing the pure, universal appeal of bubble-popping, the ad made it out to be some kind of beat box, and showed a bunch of kids breakdancing.  Bad marketing department, bad… talk about missing the point.  (I wonder how they’re going to market the follow-up pea-squeezing and package-ripping simulators.)

In any case, I need a few of these.  It should net us a 50% reduction in wasted bubble wrap.

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Last Train to… Gropesville?

Godammit, cut that out!  Is nothing sacred?

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Comic Book Resources reports that Devil’s Due has laid off some staff, plus a major upper-level shift at the publisher… CEO PJ Bickett is stepping down.  Devil’s Due had a previous relationship with Udon, having published some of their Capcom-licensed comics before Udon’s own publishing ambitions grew.

See, see?  Comics is falling apart!  It was all just a fad!

Oh… umm… I can’t say that?  Shucks.

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The Beat meanwhile relays a completely unverified rumor that Tokyopop has also let go employees.  Since this is The Beat, and the rumor is rather specific about the positions of those involved, I’m inclined to give more weight to this than I would if it had come from any other source.

See, see?  Manga is falling apart!  It was all just a fad!

…I’m sorry.  It’s a slow day around here.