Controversial comics writer Alex DeCampi has been having quite a bit of success in the video field of late. Her video for “Those Rules” by The Schema a became the #1 music video on YouTube.

This week we’re ahead of the new videos by Enrique Iglesias (Universal), the new band Domino is pushing hard (Animal Collective), Ne-Yo, and something involving Pharrell Williams.25,000 50,000 136,000 views. Remember, this is for a video made for £500 on one week’s notice for an unsigned band. I don’t know what to say, except… well, I’m thrilled, mainly for all the people (especially my long-suffering and amazingly talented DP, Guy Routledge) who give up their weekends to work 12-hour days on my shoots for gin, cheeseburgers and a promise of “some day, we’ll make it big”.

The Indiependent has a big article on unsigned wonders tells more of the tale:

I appeal via e-mail and my blog on the www.schema.co.uk website, asking if anyone can help. Within a couple of hours a friend sends me the e-mail address of Alex de Campi, a graphic novelist who is also a budding video director looking to expand her portfolio. We exchange e-mails. She says that she is interested, and – incredibly – she reckons she can turn it around in just over a week. When we met up, her straight-talking, can-do attitude terrifies me; she has already come up with a complete video treatment, combining the paranoid emotions of the protagonist of the song with a meta-commentary on how difficult it is to make a video.

De Campi just directed a video for Thomas Truax, which you can see below.

Alex tells us that her “magnum opus” ADAM IN CHROMALAND part 1 has just been released in France, and KAT & MOUSE 3, “which is by far my favourite in the series”, is also just out from Toykopop.

PR:

The William Morris Agency (WMA) has signed TOKYOPOP, the #1 publisher of manga graphic novels in North America and largest supplier of manga entertainment in the world. WMA will represent TOKYOPOP’s original intellectual property for film, television, digital, merchandising, and game development.

“WMA’s partnership with TOKYOPOP presents a fresh opportunity for our clients and TOKYOPOP to create new characters and ideas through the dynamic world of manga,” said WMA President Dave Wirtschafter. “Our agency’s resources coupled with the unique world of TOKYOPOP, allows for a global exchange between traditional content creators and manga, anime and beyond.”

“We are excited to join forces with WMA as we further develop the TOKYOPOP brand worldwide,” said Stu Levy, the company’s CEO and Chief Creative Officer. “This partnership takes us one step closer to realizing our dream of merging the leading edge of manga entertainment with Hollywood.”

With Levy at the helm and creative executive Noah Stern onboard, the newly-formed TOKYOPOP Pictures is off and running. Film projects in development include the company’s hit properties, Lament of the Lamb, a gut-wrenching horror story of a young man who shockingly discovers he may be the last in a bloodline of vampires, and The Ai-Land Chronicles, a groundbreaking blend of live action and animation based on the company’s successful manga franchise, Princess Ai.

Hailed by the New York Times as “the American pioneer of manga,” TOKYOPOP, the company responsible for igniting the worldwide manga boom, is proud to celebrate its 10-year anniversary in 2007. From the introduction of the first-ever extensive manga publishing program in North America, to the development of its manga-originated intellectual properties into film, television and digital entertainment, TOKYOPOP is recognized on all fronts as a trailblazer in the manga business and a true global pop culture brand.

Oh boy, is everyone teaming with the MySpace Juggernaut? Will no one be left for Orkut? Now Tokyopop will be premiering weekly “webizodes” for four of its OEL manga: I LUV HALLOWEEN (!), A MIDNIGHT OPERA, RIDING SHOTGUN and BIZENGHAST. The animated bits also includes original music.

We watched the I LUV HALLOWEEN debut because it is, after all, our FAVORITE TPop OEL. The CGI is to Pixar what Hanna-Barbera was to FANTASIA…but it’s still watchable. PR:

MySpace and TOKYOPOP today announced a partnership to premiere four exclusive new shows based on TOKYOPOP’s hit manga series “I Luv Halloween,” “A Midnight Opera,” “Bizenghast” and “Riding Shotgun.” Featuring music from the latest underground acts and cutting edge digital animation from Asian CG powerhouse Menfond Electronic Art, pilot episodes will air the week of July 16, 2007, with subsequent episodes running weekly thereafter. MySpace and TOKYOPOP are strategically launching a TOKYOPOP-branded profile (http://www.myspace.com/tokyopoptv) to host and deliver the shows to create a unique one-on-one relationship with MySpace users.

“We are always looking for ways to deliver unique and innovative content to our community,” said Shawn Gold, senior vice president of marketing for MySpace. “Based on the demand for manga content on the web, we expect the TOKYOPOP profile to speak to users who want to discover and share these exclusive videos.”

(more…)

Time: 6:30 PM

Place: Barnes & Noble Park Slope, 267 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

The participants:

Stuart Moore: signing EARTHLIGHT

June Kim: signing 12 DAYS

James L. Barry: signing WARRIORS: THE LOST WARRIOR

Melissa DeJesus: signing SOKORA REFUGEES

Becky Cloonan: signing EAST COAST RISING

More info

Via Anime News Network via ComiPress, a list of 38 new titles coming next year from Tokyopop:

January 8th, 2008
- Aria by Kozue Amano
- Deja vu - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter by Byung-Jun Byun / In-Wan Youn
- Gakuen Alice by Tachibana Higuchi
- Harukaze Bitter Bop by Court Betten
- King City by Brandon Scott Graham
- The Knockout Makers by Kyouko Hashimoto
- Manga Sutra - Futari H by Katsu Aki
- Monochrome Factor by Kaili Sorano
- Short Sunzen! by Susugi Sakurai
- V.B. Rose by Banri Hidaka

February 12th, 2008
- .hack//G.U.+ by Tatsuya Hamazaki / Yuzuka Morita
- I Wish by Hyun-Joo Seo
- Masque: Gothic & Lolita by Various
- New Petshop of Horrors by Matsuri Akino
- Princess Ai: Rumors from the Other Side
- Shin Megami Tensei (KAHN) by Kazuaki Yanagisawa
- Twelve Kingdoms - Paperback Edition by Fuyumi Ono

March 1st, 2008
- Spy Goddess by Michael P. Spradlin / Rainbow Buddy

March 11th, 2008
- Boku to Kanojo no XXX (formerly licensed by ADV Manga under the name Yours and My Secret) by Ai Morinaga
- Devil’s Bride by Se-Young Kim
- Fever by Hee Jung Park
- FLCL (Novel) by Yoji Enokido
- Seduction More Beautiful Than Love by Hyun-Sook Lee
- The Third by Yuko Ito

March 12th, 2008
- Rose Hip Rose by Toru Fujisawa

April 1st, 2008
- Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe

April 8th, 2008
- Dragon Sister! by nini
- Element Line by Mamiya Takizaki
- eV by Alfa Robbi / James Farr
- GOSICK by Kazuki Sakuraba
- Hellgate: London by Arvid Nelson / Lee Tae-Hang
- Hotel Africa by Hee Jung Park
- I-Doll by Mi-Ae Choi
- Mamotte Shugogetten! by Minene Sakurano
- Starcraft Anthology by Various
- Warcraft Anthology by Various

May 8th, 2008
- Sea Princess Azuri by Erica Reis

May 12th, 2008
- Ai-Land Collection by D. J. Milky / Misaho Kujiradou

May 13th, 2008
- DNAngel Illustrations FEDER by Yukiru Sugisaki

June 10th, 2008
- Fallen Moon: Daten No Tsuki by Hasumi Toui

See links for commentary.

§ Brigid notes what might be the first appearance of an OEL manga on the USA Today Bestseller list:

The top manga on this week’s USA Today Top 150 Books list is Warriors, Tokyopop’s manga adaptation of the popular YA novels about cats… doing something. Warriors debuts at number 74, while the latest prose novel in the series sits licking its whiskers at number 17. Vol. 16 of Fruits Basket slips to number 98, and vol. 14 of Naruto makes a slow start at number 115.

I believe this is the first time a global manga has made the list. I checked Megatokyo and Dramacon, and neither is in the USAT database. So this could be a first!

We’re not surprised at WARRIORS high debut…it’s all about a brave warrior kitty and his journey to escape from “twolegs” and a life as a kittypet, and it’s cute as heck. Plus its based on a best selling novel series. So the moral? You can never go wrong with a kitty and a puppy!

¶ Yet Another Comics Blog joyously notes the return of YOTSUBA&! from ADV this July. To know why everyone is happy about this, you must know that YOTSUBA&! is from Kiyohiko Azuma, whose other book is Azumanga Daioh. These are true all-ages manga, with the same strand of warmth and insight as classic kids comics like Little Lulu or Peanuts. Yotsuba is a little green-haired alien girl whose enthusiasm for EVERYTHING in life leads to humorous scrapes and adventures in the great comics tradition. It’s gentle, good-natured fun that everyone can enjoy.

And look, she likes KITTIES! We told ya so!

We’ll end our brief foray into onscreen comics with a legit freebie, the first chapter of Anike Hage’s Gothic Sports, a new manga from Tokyopop. The premise is really “Why didn’t I think of that?”: Goth kids playing high school sports. Click on the image for a full-sized spread, and note the reason that manga is so immediate and immediately appealing to readers: You get the premise in the very first panel.

“I’ve been dying to transfer into this school for years, and this summer I finally made the cut.”

It’s high school, and goths and jocks don’t go together. You don’t need to read up on Wikipedia to know this is going to be a bumpy road.

(You will need a free registration to read the whole thing.)

Tokyopop has announced the winners of the 7th Rising Stars of Manga competition. This is our AMERICAN IDOL, people! Give them a hand!

BEST OF ACTION
Ares Maier
by Daniel Lucius Cross

BEST OF COMEDY
B is for Bishie
by Margaux Hymel and Russell Herrick

BEST OF DRAMA
Melody
by Stacy Nguyen

BEST OF FANTASY
Fortune Finders!
by Jerry D. Garcia

BEST OF HORROR
Gagaku Berceuse
by Erick Melton and William Ruzicka

BEST OF MYSTERY
Scratched
by Crystal Hawkins

BEST OF ROMANCE
I’ll Be Waiting
by Lanny Liu

BEST OF SCI-FI:
Argosy
by Megan Spence and Erin Simpson

PEOPLE’S CHOICE WINNER
BlueBlood
by Ryan Mauskopf

A few have web pages or you can see all entries here.

Tokyopop is set up at booth #731 with creators including Eric Wight, Rivkah, Svetlana Chmakova, T Campbell, Amy Mebberson, Joanna Estep, Melissa DeJesus, M. Alice LeGrow, Federica Manfredi, Shannon Denton, Dan Hipp, June Kim, Frank Marraffino, Stuart Moore, James Barry, Joshua Ortega, Drew Rausch, Amy Hadley, Megumi Cummings, Steven Cummings, Jamar Nicholas, Rob Steen, and Armand Villavert. They’ll be having panels right at their booth, and signings. Schedule in the jump.
(more…)

Tokyopop and Harper Collins are teaming on a new manga series based on the bestselling fantasy books by Erin Hunter: KITTY!!!

TOKYOPOP, the leader of the Global Manga Revolution and HarperCollins Publishers, one of the top English-language publishers in the world, are pleased to announce the May 2007 release of Warriors: The Lost Warrior, the first graphic novel series to be launched under the two companies’ recently announced innovative co-publishing deal.

Drawn from Erin Hunter’s #1 nationally best-selling Warriors books, The Lost Warrior features a very special note from the author to Warriors fans. Warriors: The Lost Warrior manga series, created by Dan Jolley and James Barry, tells the untold tale of the feline hero Graystripe: his life with humans and his ultimate quest to be reunited with his clan. Graystripe’s story in the manga series bridges the gap between Hunter’s “The New Prophecy” and the next installment of the Warriors novel series “Power of Three.”

As Erin Hunter writes to Warriors fans: “Manga brings out the best in Graystripe. The drawings are so powerful and so direct. Alongside the punchy dialogue, they speak volumes. I love them, and I am so proud of the all-new action Graystripe. Well done, Graystripe! Well done, manga!”

In a word from TOKYOPOP Publisher Mike Kiley, “It is truly an honor to bring such a wonderful children’s series to manga form. Dan Jolley and James Barry have reveled in the Warriors universe I think the end result does this very special story proud.”

The Lost Warrior is the first of a trilogy. The second book will release in December 2007.

Via Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat a comment thread wherein OEL manga-ka, and now Minx creator Ross Campbell reveals that at least one contract at Tokyopop ended a bit sadly:

Alas for The Abandoned 2, i sorta quit Tokyopop after the first book, i had a crummy experience with them (requiring a long rant to explain, heh). but i’m pitching the sequel’s material to another publisher, but unfortunately without Rylie because Tokyopop owns the rights (d’oh!). so hopefully that’ll get picked up, and also hopefully in the future i’ll be able to get the rights to Rylie back and she’ll make a triumphant return in my third zombie apocalypse book. keep your fingers crossed!

Tintin wonders why, and this leads to sleuthing from Johanna, which takes us to Campbell’s blog. If you hit the link you will be greeted by gruesome pictures of his colonoscopy, but here’s a selection:

what happened when The Abandoned was being put together back in December, my previous editor took a big holiday vacation early, and left all this unfinished business on the book. so to make the print date, a bunch of other editors had to finish everything my editor left. there was some stuff i had to fix so the book would print correctly, and everyone was rushing around being insane trying figure out what to do. so meanwhile, i pretty much had no editor for about 2 weeks or something, so nobody had a “go-to” guy for anything, and although it should’ve been me obviously, that’s not what happened. considering the amount of confusion and craziness surrounding The Abandoned in that time, i guess i’m surprised the thing made it out as good as it is.

And

my first problem with the book is that on every page, there’s a black bar at the bottom, like where the graphics people put the page numbering, and it covers up varying amounts of the panels on the lowest row.

More in the link…and colonoscopy photos. Only love can break your heart, kids.

spotted on the Variety job board:

The Gig:
TOKYOPOP is currently looking to hire a TV/Film Development Associate to work from its Los Angeles based office. The primary functions of this position are:

• Participate in early development of manga properties to deliver creative input that would facilitate transition from book-based graphic novel into film, television and/or integrated media.
• Extract the essence of the Company’s manga properties, properly reflecting such in written documents such as treatments, synopses, pitches, outlines, concepts, and other appropriate development material.
• Identify programming opportunities based on current cultural trends, scheduling opportunities and positioning titles to meet the needs of studio and network buyers, creating materials (such as written, visual and multimedia presentations) reflecting that positioning.
• Develop, foster, and maintain close relationships with a broad spectrum of members of the creative community (agents, managers, writers, casting agents, actors, directors, and studio executives), pro-actively meeting with such members of the creative community to potentially package the Company’s intellectual properties with such talent attached.
• Collaborate with editorial and marketing team members in the creation of presentations, including website development and title specific sales materials.
• Heavy reading, coverage, and involvement with new manga properties that are under consideration for development and distribution by the Company.
• Work with members of the executive team to attend presentations, participate in tactical and strategic discussions and generally assist the Company’s goals as needed and directed.

Christopher Butcher has his RSS feed working again and the Beat rejoices. Now it is not so easy for us to miss stuff like this, where he reveals the dangers of reviewing OEL:

It’s funny, but the most difficult thing about reviewing any Tokyopop OEL manga is that you have to be ready for the creator to e-mail you within 12 hours of the review going online. Well the creator… or their fans. It’s easy enough when it comes to North American creators working outside of “global manga�?; if you write something they just bitch about you on a friends-locked Live Journal post, or send an e-mail cursing your name to a couple of their buddies. This has not been my experience with Tokyopop’s “not-Japanese-manga-creators�?. The absolute worst example of this happened to my buddy Scott Robins, who was screamed at by (frankly) rabid Peach Fuzz fans for daring to suggest some of the imagery and language used in the book wasn’t 100% appropriate for their target audience of “very young�?. It’s not like Scott doesn’t determine such things professionally, every day, at Scholastic Books. To her credit though, Peach Fuzz creator Lindsay Cibos did step in and calm them down after a little while…

Luckily brave Chris faces the danger and reviews FOOL’S GOLD, as well as non-OEL’s KAMPUNG BOY and SHIRTLIFTER in the past few days.

Via B o n e v i l l e:

Another interesting thing to note: in Germany, the black & white manga version of BONE is for younger readers, and the color version is for adults; while in the US it is the complete opposite. Scholastic’s color editions are aimed mostly to kids,

Queenie Chan has finished THE DREAMING 2 and posts cool header art at her LJ:

The Dreaming (Book 2): Is finished. YAY!!! All 181 pages of it, plus a 3-page mini-manga at the end. Jesus, whatta heckuva month. It’s going to be out on November 22, and while I made the deadline, it was no fun experience since there was a major muck-up with my schedule. It turns out that the schedule laid out in my TOKYOPOP contract was wrong. In my contract, it said that everything was due on October 6th, but actually the due date was August 22nd. I found out after mid-July, and while having 6 weeks shaved off your schedule will kill most people, luckily I was a month ahead of schedule. That was what saved me, really - being 1 month ahead of schedule meaning that I had to work extra hard to fill in those 2 other weeks, but otherwise I made it. Now that it’s over, I can get back to bulletin-boarding and essay-writing, which I have really missed. I also got a new editor - Paul. Unfortunately, my former editor Carol is too busy to handle “The Dreaming” now. It’s a bit sad, but she was a good editor and I hope she’s coping well with her new workload.

We’re hearing reports on a slight editorial shake-up at Tokyopop; some editors’ titles have changed, and editor Rob Valois has left. The last part has been mentioned at at least one Tpop creator site. Valois was one of the main editors of the RISING STARS series, and responsible for much of the OEL/OGM line. The Beat wishes him well.