Forum - View topicNEWS: Megatokyo to Publish in Japan via Kodansha
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Akukaze
 Posts: 185 Location: Stony Brook, NY |
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"Built-in fanbase"? You mean because it's about American "otaku" every American anime fan is going to run out and buy it? Is that like saying a comic about a loser guy surrounded by robotic ninja vampire chicks who pilot giant robots and live on the moon five hundred years in the future after the apocalypse would be popular because it has a "built-in fanbase" of anyone who ever liked Love Hina, Evangelion, Naruto, or Chobits? Or that a show about someone who just sits around watching anime and playing video games would be immediately adored by anyone who'd ever done just that? Books, television, movies, or comics, things don't get popular just because. Whether you like Megatokyo or not, there's obviously something about it that works. It's funny, or it's interesting, or it's something new to some people.
Oh, wow, I totally had this weird deja vu thing where I thought that Dark Horse had been publishing comics for decades, and DC for more than half a century. But, I mean, if they didn't know anything about the book market, neither would've lasted for than a few months. Oh, wait, I see, you were talking about buying and selling bookstores , of course. I like Megatokyo, I don't read it religiously, and I've never bought any of the TPBs, but it amuses me. It aligns with my hobbies, but it has an American sense of humor. There aren't many things I can say that about. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15306 |
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I'd probably exclude Naruto from that list, but yes.
Yep. Look at Genshiken or Otaku No Video.
Comics for comic stores, not comics for bookstores.
DC and DH have money to burn. If they didn't, they'd probably go the way of Raijin. |
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Yes, it's not so much Fred as his fans Those rabid Japanophile fans. I've seen them at cons and they're just so loudly immature and uninformed. They toss around words with no idea what they mean. They rave about MegaTokyo as their favorite manga. It makes me sick to think people can be that loud and still not know what they're saying. Then again, why is he being published by the CMX manga imprint over at DC Comics? http://www.dccomics.com/cmx/?action=on_sale&i=5407 http://www.dccomics.com/cmx/?action=about
Of course this is the same company that sold us Tenjo Tenge edited to an unheard of degree and didn't bother telling consumers or retailers it was edited. DC doesn't know a thing about what they're doing with this CMX line. (Not that their mainline comics are doing much better. (Damn you, Jason Todd.)) Meanwhile they said, " 100% the way the original Japanese creators want you to see it." They are so full of crap/ Between that and having MegaTokyo under a manga label, why even bother with CMX as a manga publisher at all? CMX is a garbage manga publisher and I'm not surprised they cashed in by grabbing MegaTokyo. I don't know the details why Fred left Dark Horse, but Penny Arcade sure seems to be sticking with them. Maybe it's because Dark Horse actually knows what it's doing when it comes to manga and comics. They don't use the terms so cheaply to feed the ignorant masses. It looks like DC/CMX is so desperate to get a crack at the 'manga' buzz, they wanted to grab all the rabid Japnophiles that read MegaTokyo. Bonus Rant! Let me add some real Japanese influenced recommendations from DC's Vertigo line. I was reading the new issue of the fantastic American Virgin. In the latest issue the ultra conservative Christian main character visits Japan and it's brilliant. (Having gone to the bathhouses myself, that scene of awkwardness was all too familiar. ) Oh and this is drawn by the amazing Becky Cloonan, who has a wonderful 'OEL manga' over at Tokyopop in addition to her comics work. I even met her one year at Otakon. Then there's Crossing Midnight which is set fully in Japan and involves real Japanese locations and mythology. Very interesting book. Oh and then there's David Mack's Kabuki. It's not Vertigo, but it's very vested in Japanese culture and just a plain brilliant book. Mack also does amazing things with the storytelling aspect of comics language. Those American comics are more authentically Japanese, intelligent, and mature than the goofball stuff MegaTokyo cranks out. As for web comics, I haven't picked up that Penny Arcade yet. I have picked up books at conventions from Mac Hall and Schuster Award winner Dan Kim (manga.clone-army.org). Yes, I know Dan's a weaboo who uses the term 'manga', but I still like the sick /b/tard. Okay, I confess. I also am involved been involved with some artist friends on a webcomic or two, so maybe there's a wee bit of jealousy to see such hype over another webcomic. Then again, there are plenty of other web comics in my books marks that I like more than the ones my friends and I have worked on. (Shh. Just don't tell them.) Last edited by The Xenos on Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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RagnaBlade
Posts: 2 |
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Early Megatokyo was actually pretty good in my opinion. However, after Gallagher gained full creative control over the damn thing it pretty much shot straight to one of the deeper circles of Hell meant just for crappy webcomics. You know the one reserved for lukewarm art styles, crappy dialogue, half-assed plot devices, traitors, etc.
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RagnaBlade
Posts: 2 |
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I mean, how can you beat Oscar worthy writing like this? http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=1023
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Wow. Yeah. It sounds like a badly fan subbed dramatic anime.
Hey! I was randomly clicking to check out the artwork and I finally found some MegaTokyo I like... kinda. Guest strips by Hawke from AppleGeeks. Rent-a-zilla. Nice. http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=1006 |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10420 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Dark Horse has been placing graphic novels in book stores since before you entered pre-school , and you say they don't know the market? Megatokyo has sold more than enough copies to be a good investment. I have no idea why it moved from DH to CMX. Paying your bandwidth through DVD sales? That's not very impressive. It takes a lot more than that to be "big." I certainly hope that they have managed to make more money than that. With some 50 000+ copies sold, Broken Saints is indeed successful, but it should be noted that the total sales of Megatokyo volume 1-5 exceed 50,000 copies as well. -t |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10420 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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You shouldn't hold Megatokyo's fans against it. Megatokyo isn't manga in the strict sense of the word, and Fred Gallagher has never claimed otherwise. The fans don't matter. In the past, there were a couple Anime on DVD and Anime News Network fans that had rabid hatred of the other site, but their opinions were in no way reflective of the people who run the two sites. Chris Beveridge and I get along reasonably well, and we even occasionally collaborate (although it's been a while).
Demographics. CMX obviously sells to manga fans. And so does Megatokyo. Regardless of whether or not it is a "manga" it would be absolutely retarded to for DC to market Megatokyo outside of CMX. It should be noted that in the link you provided, CMX does not call MT "manga." It's not as if CMX was stamping the equivalent of Tokyopop's "100% Authentic Manga on Megatokyo, it's merely marketed under the same line as CMX's manga products. As I said, doing otherwise would be stupid, since Megatokyo is geared towards anime/manga fans, it should be included in a line-up that they pay attention to. CMX's treatment of TenTen, which I highly disapprove of, is pretty much unrelated to this issue. If you want to hate a company over their treatment of 1 product, that's your prerogative, an entirely reasonable one, but don't bring that product into arguments that don't relate to it.
So you have very different standard when it comes to Megatokyo and Mac Hall. Rather than being a hypocrite, why don't you just say "I don't like Megatoky," instead of "I don't like Megatokyo because it's fans call it manga and its marketed to manga fans by the publisher, even though the publisher and the writer never call it manga, however I like Mac Hall, which the writer openly call manga even though it isn't"
... 
The irony of this discussion is that I agree with you entirely about the hordes of creators that cheapen their own creations by improperly calling them "Manga." I just don't see Megatokyo as an example of this because neither Fred, nor any of his past publishers, have ever called MT "Manga." Personally, I wish he'd completely remove the "manga doujinshi" from the heading, but... -t |
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KyuuA4
 Posts: 1361 Location: America, where anime and manga can be made |
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Quick question: So, what's the "proper" way? Does a creator with a Japanese citizenship with a Japanese name have do with it?
Is that a reaction to "blasphemy" that I'm seeing? To some degree, the term "manga" is an accolade; and Fred deserves it. He put a lot of work getting this far. If the fans call it "manga" -- they have the Right to do so.
Um. Can you do the same thing and succeed? I doubt it. For one summer, I've done a job in sales. It wasn't fun. It was difficult. Here, we have Fred creating his own product, marketing and selling it. Doing something like that takes guts - the kind of guts 95% of us do not have. |
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DKL
 Posts: 1945 Location: California, USA |
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Yeah...
I sold anime at an anime store; you'd be surprised at how hard it is to get anime fans to buy DVDs. So, all things considering, Fred does have his work cut out for him. As for the "manga" thing... dudes, seriously... I find it hard to believe that people are actually debating over this; people should just call it whatever the hell they want to and not get up in each other's faces about it. ... Though, again, this just proves that we have a lot of free time on our hands. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10420 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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There's no "proper" way to call something that isn't manga, manga. It's like calling expressionist-inspired art "expressionist." It isn't. The names have technical meanings, expressionist art was by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Otto Mueller and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and no one else. Manga is "Japanese comics." Obviously there are gray areas, a white person living in Japan, a Japanese person living in America, etc... But these are beside the point right now. We're arguing about people who do not fall into those gray areas.
As an editor, it's extremely important to me that the proper words are used to refer to things. As an individual, if I tell someone that I want X, and they bring me something like X that isn't X, I'm not pleased. As someone who understands the English language, how the hell are we supposed to be able to communicate if people use the wrong words? You can call things whatever you want, but if you call a car a bus, people are going to think you're an idiot. -t |
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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When I spend a good deal of my income on manga and comics, I think have some right in debating how we talk about it. Never mind that friends and I have interest in getting into the field ourselves. I know I'm influenced by manga. Yet I can't see having the arrogance and cheapness and lack of nationality to call my work manga. We're talking about a million dollar industry, a growing industry. This isn't some trivial matter.
They have the right to take words from another culture and toss them around ignorantly? Let me try another example. A bunch of white suburban kids are into rap and hip hop. They're blissfully ignorant. They listen to some low brow music. They go around calling themselves by 'the N-word' with no real concept of its history. They go around saying they're from 'the street', when they're really from the suburbs. Do they have the right to do that? While it's not quite as bad as that, some of these self proclaimed 'otaku' seem to be doing the same thing. They want to be different from the culture around them, so they hijack someone else's, usually getting many things wrong. I think it's wrong not to correct them,
True. Fans are kinda like Frankenstein's monster. The creator creates the work and the work creates the fans. If the fans go on incoherent rampages, you can't directly blame Dr. Frankenstein.
I have to disagree with you there. Though I admit it's debatable. I argue that by including MegaTokyo in CMX , they are indirectly labeling it manga. Yes, again, this isn't Fred's fault. Not directly anyway. This is myself seeing CMX as a giant mess. So I'd also argue the Tenjo Tenge issue is involved in this. CMX is DC's flailing attempt at cashing in on the manga market and demographic. Yet I really don't know if anyone there gets it. Rather, I don't know if the people in charge do. This also extends to DC as a publisher as a whole. They got some good writers, artists, and even editors there. It's just the people running the show have their head so far up their butt, it's amazing they stay in business. Also, why does Megatokyo get coverage on ANN meanwhile DC's new Minx imprint of comics for girls doesn't? Minx is clearly another attempt, like MegaTokyo, to get the attention of manga fans. Specifically, it's DC comics trying to make their own shojo line. Of course they can't do anthologies, so they do graphic novels because collections are how the majority of shojo manga sells in America. Why is there a double standard there? MegaTokyo doesn't directly call itself manga, but it gets covered. Minx doesn't call itself manga and it doesn't get covered. Both are aimed at the manga reading demographic. Then again, while you said both Fred and CMX don't directly call MegaTokyo manga, ANN's own encyclopedia does? I just found that while looking it up. What's up with that? manga#2535 I don't want to be a thorn in your side, but I want to see American creators treated equally. I really enjoy ANN, but I cringe when I keep seeing MegaTokyo get so much hype when there are tons of other creators out there not getting equal coverage. Why is Becky Cloonan only listed for her direct Japanese manga translation work yet her 'OEL manga' East Coast Rising from Tokyopop isn't listed? I did find a story that talks about it. Plus there Tokyopop calls it manga. I disagree with it and how it's treated, but that's what they're saying. I do really enjoy her work and that book, not matter what the company calls it. Similarly, why do I find Drama Con from TokyoPop (listed as 'US manga'), but not Go With Grace from TokyoPop or Scott Pilgrim from Oni Press? I'm just not understanding the discrepancy. edit: I should add that I understand none of this is easy. Deciding what to cover and what not to cover and list on your site must be quite a task. Anime and manga coverage is at quite a crossroads due to the current number of American creators and companies cross pollinating. Tokyopop I see as the most troublesome. They slap the word 'manga' on everything. Hell, they create new words with the word manga in them. (I'm just waiting for "Manga the flamethrower!") It's hard to keep up that that one company alone, never mind all these other US publishers. |
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pluvia33
 Posts: 194 Location: Dayton, OH, USA |
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From what I've read, Dark Horse was only printing Megatokyo on a volume-by-volume bases. They were free to say "we don't want to publish your stuff anymore," and not print any future compilations of the series if they wanted to. Apparently CMX offered a deal for the series as a whole and also opened up the possibility for Fred to publish other works under them, such as his Warmth series. But considering the fact that DH seems to have been instrumental in getting Megatokyo licensed in Japan, there doesn't seem to be any hard feelings between them and Fred. As for the rest of the debate, I really don't care. I've stated my view already and how other people see it is mostly irrelevant to me. Have a nice day. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10420 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Because Megatokyo is about, geared towards, and of interest to anime and manga fans. Minx isn't about anime fans, Minx isn't geared towards anime fans (where'd you get that idea) and our readers have not expressed any particular interest in Minx. Software bug. "Webcomic /" was entered in the admin-only field called "not manga." It's supposed to give a result like this: Dramacon. The bug will be fixed later this year.
When other creators create titles that are relevant to our subject matter, and achieve similar milestones, such as being translated into Japanese, we will cover them. If we'd a new volume of Adam Warren's Bubblegum Crisis were to come out, we'd cover it.
World-manga is a secondary section of the encyclopedia. We only include them when we write about them. You'll notice that there is no index page for world manga.
-t |
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DKL
Posts: 1945 Location: California, USA |
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Yeah, good point (both of you). I guess I'll back down on this one. EDIT: Actually, this thing is confusing as hell, so I'd better leave you guys at it... Though, I'm actually kinda wondering what they call American comic books in Japan now. |
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