Dirty mouths...aka Comic-Con Report, Day 2
Today started and ended with inappropriateness...From Shin Chan at 10:30 a.m. on, I felt like I was inside the mind of a pre-pubescent male.
The Shin Chan panel featured the writers of the [adult swim] version of Shin Chan. For the uninformed, Shin Chan is described as a Japanese version of The Simpsons, starring Shin, the main character, as a kindergarten version of Bart (or say the gang on South Park). The panel started with a sneak preview of episode 22, featuring vignettes of Shin's teacher avoiding him and his family while on vacation in Australia, how Shin gains and loses weight for his lady, and a Charlie's Angel-ish story featuring Shin's teachers. During the last "shortie," this line is said (and was in the running for the "best line of the day"):
"It's better to choke two chickens by the neck than to toss your rocks into a bush."
Now, for context: some older kids throw rocks into the bushes, hoping to hit a kindergarten student that they think is hiding in the bushes. Instead, there are two chickens in there and they proceed to chase the kids. The teacher grabs the chickens and tells the kids some words of wisdom.
The rest of the panel was filled with laughs, including the use of spray bottles squirting water by panelists as their cohorts said something wholly inappropriate (aka negative reinforcement usually seen used against dogs or cats). The writers talked about the inherent challenges in creating scripts and jokes for a beloved Japanese cartoon, all the while paying attention to not only the liberal use of humor, but also timing it to "mouth flaps." Season two looks like it will be filled with more inappropriate humor, dirty jokes, and big reveals for secondary characters!
Now, for the manga! TOKYOPOP's panel was, unsurprisingly, filled with tons of new manga licenses, as well as an introduction to their Web site redesign and (what I call) their e-products. Now, I won't go into listing all of their new manga releases, I'll just provide some highlights...
There are a few interesting licenses to speak of, including not one, but two .hack spin-offs: .hack//G.U.+ (Feb. 12) and .hack//xxxx (June 10); the release of several Taiwanese titles by Park Hee-Jung, such as Fever (March 11), Hotel Africa (April 8), boys' love anthology Martin & John (July 8), and Too Long (August 12, 2008); The Third, which will follow closely on the heels of the RightStuf anime; two Selena Lin titles, including White Night Melody and the "how to draw manga" book, Selena's Comic School; some German titles from the TP office in Hamburg; a TON of BL titles for their BLU and regular lines; and, last, but not least, TOKYOPOP Ultimate Editions or omnibus presentations of popular manga series, including Fruits Basket, War Craft: The Sunwell Trilogy and Battle Royale. The Ultimate Editions, similar to those presented by Viz Media yesterday, will contain color pages, a larger format, and will contain about four volumes each (if I remember correctly).
The digital stuff from TOKYOPOP is interesting, but I'm not sure that I want to dedicate any more of this post to the topic. They have a lot of cross-promotional "e-products" that are interesting, but moreso because I work in marketing...If anyone's interested in hearing about it, let me know and I'll decode my notes on this portion of the panel into another post.
So, speaking of TOKYOPOP, they also did a little "convention within a convention" at their booth, presenting panels with their many artists and writers. Having read and loved Gyakushu!, I decided to take some time away from the Comic-Con panels and sat down on the carpet in their booth to listen to a panel discussing the difference between writing for comic books versus manga. The panel featured the authors/creators of Gyakushu!, Pantheon High, Earthlight, Poison Candy, and Dark Crystal. It was a really interesting panel and I got Dan Hipp to sign my copy of Gyakushu!...Oh, and Dan Hipp is HAWT!
As you can see, he looks pretty silly posing with my book (he posed that way all on his own), but he's very handsome for a high school graphics teacher...Although I was disappointed he took of his glasses to draw and sign my book, as I thought he looked even cuter with them! XB
Anyway, it was great to hear everyone's perspective on what it's like to write for comic books and manga!
After the TOKYOPOP panel, I headed over to room 10 to check out two of the three small publisher panels scheduled (Broccoli Books had their panel during the TOKYOPOP panel I was at). The two panels included staff members from OEL- and yuri-loving Seven Seas and newcomer Yen Press. Seven Seas was interesting...they invited three guest panelists up from the audience and had a surprise visit from their colleague with MediaWorks. Predictably, they talked about how OEL Hollow Fields' creator, Madeleine Rosca, won one of four of Japan's first ever International Manga Awards. They also talked about their many OEL titles and the SLEW of yuri titles they'll be bringing to market. In contrast to the Yen Press panel that I'll describe later, Seven Seas really focuses on a specific part of the manga market. While they had started as an OEL company, they've heavily branched off into yuri with their "Strawberry" line and their BL line, simply dubbed "b." EDIT: It's actually called "beeline" and will feature a little honeybee on the spine. They also grabbed the license for an original OEL storyline for Speed Racer, which, at the time they garnered it, was not known to coincide with a film adaptation.
While Seven Seas is about niche markets in manga, Yen Press is about finding quality titles that appeal to a broad swath of the market. Their first big-name license is for Zombie Loan, which is currently running as an anime in Japan. They've also got a more mature title in With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, which will be shelved in bookstores not only under manga, but also under child development. Yen Press also announced several other titles, as well as an anthology that they will have available in July 2008. The yet-to-be-named anthology will include a range of titles from Japan, Korea, and original content. Since there will be both Japanese (right to left) and Korean and OEL (left to right) manga in the anthology, it will be split somewhere in the middle when it comes down to it. As opposed to industry titans Viz and TOKYOPOP, Yen Press (owned by Hachette Book Group, the third largest publisher WORLDWIDE) is interested in licensing and creating manga titles according to quality, not quantity.
While there were plenty of interesting licenses from Yen Press, including Spiral, The World of Quest (the release of which will coincide with a KidsWB! cartoon this fall), Black God, Keili, and Keze No Hana, the most interesting one, hands-down, has got to be Sundome. This is what, in my book, officially won the "best line of the day" award. According to Yen Press staff members, "sundome" roughly translates into "blue balls" or more literally "stopping just before." Apparently, it's about a Japanese high school boys' club that is basically a bunch of "circle jerks," or guys that masturbate together. Yeah, weird, but there's more. So, one day a girl transfers to the school and requests to become a member of the club. The main character, one of the "circle jerks" as I've come to call them, is obviously flabbergasted, having little to no interaction with girls (surprise, surprise!), and doesn't know what to do when she asks him to masturbate in front of her...Yeah, this one'll be shrink-wrapped and rated mature! Oh, and did I mention that the cover features a schoolgirl in uniform, sticking her hands down the front of her skirt? From what they said, it's supposed to be hilarious (for the not-so-squeamish, I'm guessing).
So, that's day two of Comic-Con...Now, I just have to make sure I'm prepared for Saturday. It's a big day with upcoming season sneak preview panels for both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Heroes! There's also Family Guy and Shojo Beat panels, and Del Rey Manga and Futurama panels at the same time! It looks like I've got some serious decision making to do...And if I'm not too tired, I might head to The Sarah Silverman Show panel going on during the nighttime programming...
The Shin Chan panel featured the writers of the [adult swim] version of Shin Chan. For the uninformed, Shin Chan is described as a Japanese version of The Simpsons, starring Shin, the main character, as a kindergarten version of Bart (or say the gang on South Park). The panel started with a sneak preview of episode 22, featuring vignettes of Shin's teacher avoiding him and his family while on vacation in Australia, how Shin gains and loses weight for his lady, and a Charlie's Angel-ish story featuring Shin's teachers. During the last "shortie," this line is said (and was in the running for the "best line of the day"):
"It's better to choke two chickens by the neck than to toss your rocks into a bush."
Now, for context: some older kids throw rocks into the bushes, hoping to hit a kindergarten student that they think is hiding in the bushes. Instead, there are two chickens in there and they proceed to chase the kids. The teacher grabs the chickens and tells the kids some words of wisdom.
The rest of the panel was filled with laughs, including the use of spray bottles squirting water by panelists as their cohorts said something wholly inappropriate (aka negative reinforcement usually seen used against dogs or cats). The writers talked about the inherent challenges in creating scripts and jokes for a beloved Japanese cartoon, all the while paying attention to not only the liberal use of humor, but also timing it to "mouth flaps." Season two looks like it will be filled with more inappropriate humor, dirty jokes, and big reveals for secondary characters!
Now, for the manga! TOKYOPOP's panel was, unsurprisingly, filled with tons of new manga licenses, as well as an introduction to their Web site redesign and (what I call) their e-products. Now, I won't go into listing all of their new manga releases, I'll just provide some highlights...
There are a few interesting licenses to speak of, including not one, but two .hack spin-offs: .hack//G.U.+ (Feb. 12) and .hack//xxxx (June 10); the release of several Taiwanese titles by Park Hee-Jung, such as Fever (March 11), Hotel Africa (April 8), boys' love anthology Martin & John (July 8), and Too Long (August 12, 2008); The Third, which will follow closely on the heels of the RightStuf anime; two Selena Lin titles, including White Night Melody and the "how to draw manga" book, Selena's Comic School; some German titles from the TP office in Hamburg; a TON of BL titles for their BLU and regular lines; and, last, but not least, TOKYOPOP Ultimate Editions or omnibus presentations of popular manga series, including Fruits Basket, War Craft: The Sunwell Trilogy and Battle Royale. The Ultimate Editions, similar to those presented by Viz Media yesterday, will contain color pages, a larger format, and will contain about four volumes each (if I remember correctly).
The digital stuff from TOKYOPOP is interesting, but I'm not sure that I want to dedicate any more of this post to the topic. They have a lot of cross-promotional "e-products" that are interesting, but moreso because I work in marketing...If anyone's interested in hearing about it, let me know and I'll decode my notes on this portion of the panel into another post.
So, speaking of TOKYOPOP, they also did a little "convention within a convention" at their booth, presenting panels with their many artists and writers. Having read and loved Gyakushu!, I decided to take some time away from the Comic-Con panels and sat down on the carpet in their booth to listen to a panel discussing the difference between writing for comic books versus manga. The panel featured the authors/creators of Gyakushu!, Pantheon High, Earthlight, Poison Candy, and Dark Crystal. It was a really interesting panel and I got Dan Hipp to sign my copy of Gyakushu!...Oh, and Dan Hipp is HAWT!
As you can see, he looks pretty silly posing with my book (he posed that way all on his own), but he's very handsome for a high school graphics teacher...Although I was disappointed he took of his glasses to draw and sign my book, as I thought he looked even cuter with them! XB
Anyway, it was great to hear everyone's perspective on what it's like to write for comic books and manga!
After the TOKYOPOP panel, I headed over to room 10 to check out two of the three small publisher panels scheduled (Broccoli Books had their panel during the TOKYOPOP panel I was at). The two panels included staff members from OEL- and yuri-loving Seven Seas and newcomer Yen Press. Seven Seas was interesting...they invited three guest panelists up from the audience and had a surprise visit from their colleague with MediaWorks. Predictably, they talked about how OEL Hollow Fields' creator, Madeleine Rosca, won one of four of Japan's first ever International Manga Awards. They also talked about their many OEL titles and the SLEW of yuri titles they'll be bringing to market. In contrast to the Yen Press panel that I'll describe later, Seven Seas really focuses on a specific part of the manga market. While they had started as an OEL company, they've heavily branched off into yuri with their "Strawberry" line and their BL line, simply dubbed "b." EDIT: It's actually called "beeline" and will feature a little honeybee on the spine. They also grabbed the license for an original OEL storyline for Speed Racer, which, at the time they garnered it, was not known to coincide with a film adaptation.
While Seven Seas is about niche markets in manga, Yen Press is about finding quality titles that appeal to a broad swath of the market. Their first big-name license is for Zombie Loan, which is currently running as an anime in Japan. They've also got a more mature title in With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, which will be shelved in bookstores not only under manga, but also under child development. Yen Press also announced several other titles, as well as an anthology that they will have available in July 2008. The yet-to-be-named anthology will include a range of titles from Japan, Korea, and original content. Since there will be both Japanese (right to left) and Korean and OEL (left to right) manga in the anthology, it will be split somewhere in the middle when it comes down to it. As opposed to industry titans Viz and TOKYOPOP, Yen Press (owned by Hachette Book Group, the third largest publisher WORLDWIDE) is interested in licensing and creating manga titles according to quality, not quantity.
While there were plenty of interesting licenses from Yen Press, including Spiral, The World of Quest (the release of which will coincide with a KidsWB! cartoon this fall), Black God, Keili, and Keze No Hana, the most interesting one, hands-down, has got to be Sundome. This is what, in my book, officially won the "best line of the day" award. According to Yen Press staff members, "sundome" roughly translates into "blue balls" or more literally "stopping just before." Apparently, it's about a Japanese high school boys' club that is basically a bunch of "circle jerks," or guys that masturbate together. Yeah, weird, but there's more. So, one day a girl transfers to the school and requests to become a member of the club. The main character, one of the "circle jerks" as I've come to call them, is obviously flabbergasted, having little to no interaction with girls (surprise, surprise!), and doesn't know what to do when she asks him to masturbate in front of her...Yeah, this one'll be shrink-wrapped and rated mature! Oh, and did I mention that the cover features a schoolgirl in uniform, sticking her hands down the front of her skirt? From what they said, it's supposed to be hilarious (for the not-so-squeamish, I'm guessing).
So, that's day two of Comic-Con...Now, I just have to make sure I'm prepared for Saturday. It's a big day with upcoming season sneak preview panels for both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Heroes! There's also Family Guy and Shojo Beat panels, and Del Rey Manga and Futurama panels at the same time! It looks like I've got some serious decision making to do...And if I'm not too tired, I might head to The Sarah Silverman Show panel going on during the nighttime programming...