Lots of things which are good die for no readily apparent reason. Story and art are certainly not the only possibilities, and it’s even plausible that they aren’t even one of the reasons that the line died. Quality doesn’t always equal success, and success isn’t always a result of quality. A cursory glance at network television is all one needs to prove that point.

Still, it’s sad to see a comic cancelled.

If only DC hadn’t poured money into it at the get go. There are girls out there that loved it and DC only needed to wait for that love to be spread by word of mouth.

That being said, as a girl and as a girl who reads teen girl manga and comics and as part of (honest it should be said) the target audience for Minx even if I’m not a teen because I swear my tastes in books are just the same, I didn’t find a single Minx book appealing enough to buy. And I make sure to flip through every one that comes out in the hope of finding something new that does! (and read halfway through a couple in the store just to make sure I didn’t give up too easy *cough*)

Like others above me have pointed out, the stories felt NY/big city-centric and definitely outsider-looking-in-with-scorn focused characters. I felt no sympathy or relateability with the characters or story lines, and the dripping-with-witty-sarcasm dialog often fell short of the mark . . . like somebody was trying too hard to sound witty and humorous at the same time. Or showing off. I hate to say it, but as much as I love witty-sarcasm, I can only handle it in small doses and believe it tends to be more appropriate in adult fiction than in teen fiction. Tramps Like Us and Peach Girl make an excellent comparison in this regard.

Which brings me to another complaint about Minx books: the art.

Total turn off. Not because I thought it was bad art, but rather that the majority of artists simply were not well suited for teen lit. When I think of girl teen lit, I think of soft lines and curves and a well-fleshed attention to feminine details such as found in Peach Girl (manga) or Breaking Up (American comic). But the majority of art in the Minx line (one obvious exception being Ross’s “Water Baby”) was largely squarish with thick, blocky lines and very little attention to such details as clothing, hair, and accessories with girls who evolved and changed their appearances throughout the books like so many girls do. I like a good mix of eye candy in my comics which is something the Minx line often glaringly lacked.

Then there was layout. Back when Minx was just getting started and DC was trying to explain their views, this is what Karen Berger had to say about layout in the Minx comics line: “We’re doing a more straight-forward American grid style, four-to-six panels per page kind of thing.”

And that was perhaps the biggest turnoff of all, the one that put the seal on the door and threw away the key. The layouts in the Minx books are glaringly bland to someone raise on manga, and it’s difficult to get a real sense of pacing when nearly everything’s laid out in the same grid pattern. I’ve written multiple tutorials on the importance of layout in comics and get asked by libraries and schools to give presentations on this topic, so of course this is a personal passion of mine . . . and I’m getting the sense that the lack of dynamics in layouts wasn’t the artists’ fault but rather a limitation set by DC itself who basically said, “Don’t make it look like manga!”

Except . . . that’s the BEST PART of manga! That’s what makes so many shoujo series so danged readable and easy to slip in to.

So this is coming from somebody who loves teen girls comics to death and isn’t prejudiced by who publishes them or an author or artist’s country of origin. I came to the Minx line with an open mind (albeit an offended one by the title, but not prejudiced and WANTING more good American girl stories in the market place because I want this particular genre to grow) and was left with the impression that this was a showcase of good talent in a very bad situation: artists writing or drawing for a genre that just doesn’t fit their style and didn’t appeal beyond a very specific niche. I saw these books not as mass-market material but more something to be shelved alongside the indy books with wildly diverse styles meandering from the norm.

IMHO. This had little to do with the marketing (other than that I believe the breadth of marketing invested in this line was unneeded) and all to do with content and audience.
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For an example of not just a great but incredible teen chic graphic novel lit, just look at Breaking Up. If American girl graphic novels were to take a certain style and embrace it, I would most hope for it to be something like this. Except thicker . . . Blankets has both areas covered hands down.

“What happens to the writers, artists, editors and the like when an imprint is canceled?”

A couple of them were government plants, the rest will be sent to Guantanamo for advanced interrogation.
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Or they could just continue on with their lives and find other jobs, either in a creative field or working for a corporation.

“We booksellers can leave a copy where it’s SUPPOSED to be, and then take the other copies and merchandise them whereever.”

Glad you could do that at BN. When I did that at Borders, I was chastised and made to move the books back to where they belong. (In this instance, it was taken a floorstack of Bill O’Reilly’s book and moving it from TV/Media to Political Science.)

I see a lot of valid points being made above, about mis-fires in marketing, about a failure to take a longer view on things, but I think that on the whole, the remarks about the content failing to excite the intended audience is the most important factor.

Just WHY this failure occurred is probably a complex matter, likely a confluence of factors including the Manhattan-centric nature of U.S. comics creators, the failure to appreciate the role of fantasy in YA appetites, the lack of female creators, and perhaps the misapprehension that “alternative” must mean material such as what Fantagraphics or Top Shelf publishes. (Not to knock those two publishers, I have a great deal of respect for them, but they are not attracting hoards of young female readers, are they?)

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2006/12/01/you-minx-you/#comment-20372

I was intrigued by Jason’s comment: “I’m neither teen-aged nor a girl so I’m not exactly what DC was looking for in an audience.” I keep seeing comments like this. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Minx books do unexpectedly well in the direct market? It seems that DC found an audience for their Minx books, but it wasn’t what they expected! I’m wondering what they could have done about that. If they accepted the audience that they had, the mission of their imprint wouldn’t be fulfilled. But how did they change and adapt with the second round of graphic novels? Did they try to find a different kind of story, a different marketing strategy? Again, I don’t have answers. I just wonder because we learn from others’ mistakes and successes.

–That’s what Scholastic did with their Graphix line (which predates Minx) and Chynna created Queen Bee:

http://www.scholastic.com/queenbee/author.htm

I haven’t heard much about whether that book did well for them or not.

This was a feeling I was getting from the line. I’d also say that it felt like Minx was fighting in a market space that is currently being won by books that are more unabashedly soap opera and more unabashedly fantastic than the Minx books were. In many ways, the Minx books I read felt like conventional YA girls books that I’ve seen, but they were fighting with Ouran High School Host Club, Nodame, and similar books, and I think the extra soap opera and fantasy won out.

Honestly, if I wanted to compete in that market, I’d grab Chynna Clugston, ask her to remove the most obvious sex jokes from her work, and then let her go to town on whatever she felt like. I think her material is by far the most competitive in that area, and is likely to have the broadest appeal among the girls I see going through the comics shelves at my local library.

Non-librarians might not appreciate the importance of the turnover rate, especially at libraries which lease books. Librarians might have opinions about literature, and want to buy what they think is good, instead of junk that’s popular, but the library’s turnover rate stat has a lot to do with indicating how well a book buyer is doing his or her job. A library is a business.

SRS

IMHO…

The problem wasn’t the marketing.

The problem was the product.

I echo Mark Engblom’s comment. The Minx line was for the most part, a hyper niche proposition, not for the majority of teen and tween girls. Unless, of course, the hyper niche is what DC wanted in the first place.

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The ending of Minx is, of course, sad, and it should be sad to all of us, not just those involved in producing and publishing the books. A lot of people were very negative of the imprint from the start, for all kind of reasons, but I would hope that all of us (meaning industry professionals and readers alike) would have been happy to see Minx live up to its potential, to capture a new audience and bring more people in. The fact it didn’t, that it couldn’t, is bad news for everyone and a reason to mourn the loss.

Editor Shelly Bond called me up yesterday and told me the bad news. I wasn’t part of Minx from day one, but I know how important this was to her, going back a lot of years. She is a fantastic editor, a great supporter and champion, and one of the most sincere and genuine people I have met in my career. Because of her not only does THE NEW YORK FOUR exist, but there will be a second volume in the series. Not sure when, or under what imprint, but we’re working on it. I have no doubt that she went out of her way to make sure that happened for me and my collaborator Ryan Kelly.

I fear clicking around on the web to read the news and reactions to this. No doubt there will be plenty of armchair quarterbacking, people not only crying that they knew it was coming, or they predicted it, or that it’s some kind of triumph of their way of thinking over Shelly and DC’s… but also comments suggesting what Minx could have done differently in order to make it. Like they alone had the magic solution, the secret formula. I think I can say with utter certainty that anything that the collective “we” could think up, it occurred to DC first. They tried all they could, and it didn’t work. Again, this is bad for all of us. But they tried, we all tried. Minx represents not only a financial risk undertaken by DC, but the hard work and ideas and hopes of a lot of writers and artists and editors and people supporting us.

Today is Shelly Bond’s birthday, by the way.

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