Do I have problems with Tokyopop as a company? Sure. Do I have problems with my contract? Double sure. But that’s life. And life isn’t perfect, and neither are first-time contracts for young creators in any creative field.

I could have kept all rights to “Mail Order Ninja’ and self-published or distributed the book via the Internet, but then I would have been paying to produce the book rather than being paid. And I would have started from nothing and had to spend years creating the kind of brand confidence and value that Tokyopop can provide simply by stamping their logo on the cover.

Or I could have held out for another publisher to offer me a better deal. Only there weren’t any other publishers offering any kinds of deals to anyone like me. I had interned at DC and still couldn’t get work there to save my life. And now — after Tokyopop published “Mail Order Ninja” — I have all sorts of offers from the major book publishers and I write Batman.

Economics is all about trade-offs. I traded some control and possible long-term financial renumeration in exchange for immediate monetary compensation and exposure. And less than two years later, I have a full-time career in comics. Plus the clout to get a much better deal out of any future contracts. Not so bad as far as trade-offs go.

So as long as creators go into this deal with eyes wide open, I don’t see the problem.

I now anxiously await being labeled “Tokyopop’s own D.J. Coffman” …

http://www.unscrewedcomic.com/article.php?story=tokyopop

http://www.unscrewedcomic.com/trackback.php?id=tokyopop

He lost me with the stuff about the young girl who would undoubtedly go to school for art with the hopes of working on manga…how, apparently, there’d be no chance of her becoming a more savvy individual in the next decade. Which seemed to be part of his point that all this condemnation would be of no use.

You’re right that the reprint nature of manga makes it tougher for people to write gossipy copy about. At Anime Insider, they rarely covered the OEL books simply because no one buys them. Considering that, it’s almost surprising that Tokyopop is being so aggressive in capturing all the rights to these books. Actually, scratch that. It isn’t surprising at all considering that the “Dragonball” and “Astro Boy” movies set to roll out in the next year may make manga and anime properties the next hot thing for Hollywood to throw money at. It’s sad that the only people taking the longview on the financial potential of these stories are the folks with the least amount of creative input.

Kiel, I’m kind of lost with some of what you said, because there are bloggers that run links to ANN every day or every other day, or at least to their manga content (they run a lot of anime content that doesn’t always interest comics sites). I linked to their Hiro Mashima to Comic-Con story, (not exactly a huge news story, I know) at some point this week I’m pretty sure, and I post drunk and clearly hate manga.

One thing about manga, too, is that so much of it is reprinted, which means there isn’t as big a creator class whose friction with editorial drives 60 percent of the meaty comic book industry stories.

I agree that we all might cover manga more effectively. My manga coverage S-U-C-K-S. Although in my opinion, all my coverage sucks. In fact, I’d say there hasn’t been consistently good, rigorous newswriting about any field in comics since the mid- to late- 1990s. By my count, we have exactly one part-time original critical content generator of consistent value: Dave Astor at E&P, whose focus is newspaper strips.

At the same, I think it’s sort of understandable. Comprehensive, critical coverage takes some time to develop; it’s the last thing that develops in a news delivery technology and we’re seeing a 110-years-in-the-waiting paradigm shift there, and it’s also the last thing to develop regarding a field of endeavor, and manga’s still a baby. I think we’ll get some at some point. Most of it will continue to suck, though. And none of it matters if no one cares about the news, which is increasingly the case in comics and, well, everywhere. (People always forget that Image going to Diamond wasn’t just a watershed moment for the comics business, but the coverage of that business as well.)

PS — for what it’s worth, a lot of people seem to complain that webcomics are covered in poorer fashion than manga…

“…but we want to do so under the terms in this pact instead of under fancy French idea.”

Since when were Moral Rights a fancy deal here??? Helloooo - your rights are VITAL (especially when it involves one of your comic creations!)!!!! And totally dissing the “fancy” French. Bah!

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/industry-comments/2008-05-28

I’m sorry if my rant read like I was trying to convince people that speaking out against or criticizing the immoral activities of major publishers is a waste of time. That certainly wasn’t what I was trying to get across. If I could take a second to describe what I was thinking with a bit more clarity, maybe that would help:

I am an impatient young person, and my initial response to most bad news, despicable activities and unscrupulous behavior is to not only to agree with those decrying it, but to work myself up over the fact that I wish there was a more immediate solution. Is that practical? Hell no it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that a lack of immediate reversal of a ridiculous slight doesn’t make my knee-jerk, 20-something blood boil.

Yes, anyone writing about the fact that the contract that Tokyopop’s pawning off on young creators with the subtlety of a poor Jeff Spiccoli impersonation is vile and vaguely criminal are not only right in doing so — they should be encouraged to do it as often as possible and in as many forums as they possibly can. And the fact that successful creators with large fan bases of young aspiring cartoonists are writing about it in such a way most definitely raises not only the content of the discussion surrounding the practice but the reach such a discussion has. These are great things, and like I said, I’m very glad to see so many well known people taking Tokyopop to task for this garbage.

That said, I’m still endlessly frustrated that the biggest news sources within our industry — those with the largest readership and most reach — so often ignore or trivialize these kinds of issues through lack of coverage or softball coverage (and yes, I understand the irony that it’s a former Wizard employee typing this). I’m sure it comes to no surprise to a lot of people that this is the way things are: the small number of honest and critical voices raising the ire over these BS contracts slowly while the bigger outlets chug along with business as usual. This isn’t specific to our industry or the modern day. It still pisses me off.

However, the reason I fired off the above comments was to first extend the idea that in addition to voicing our displeasure, there might be a changes we can all make in the way we look at and cover the manga market in terms of how it fits into the larger comics scene. One easy and immediate way would be to cross post stories on manga-specific sites like Anime News Network (which I can never recall seeing a link to on any American comics related news site or blog), particularly their apparent upcoming piece on this very contract. I’m certain that most folks would be much more interested in reading about that story on the main page of The Beat than they would in listening to the far too long rants of a kid who’s been sitting on his couch all day jonesing for freelance work.