MISTBORN Reviews

[Tage]

Mistborn is just begging to be translated into visual media, be it movie, manga, or otherwise. Hopefully we'll all get to see it someday.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Video game!!

Brandon, yeah, we have a new deal with HarperCollins where we're doing manga versions of some YA books like Meg Cabot ones. And a few other people like...Michael Crichton...have contacted us about doing manga versions of their stuff. Basically, big names that can hopefully attract new readers to manga.

However, what TOKYOPOP is most interested in is properties we can exploit in other media as well (movie rights, etc), since the original (non-HarperCollins) stuff has shared copyright. We're less interested in creator-owned stuff that won't be exploitable or bring in a large number of new readers. Right now, as a very new author, I don't think you'd be as attractive to the uppity-ups in the company.

But I don't know the details for sure. I don't know how they would react to a real contract negotiator like Joshua. And maybe if they hear about your deal for Alcatraz, they'll be interested in hearing a pitch from you about something.

[EUOL]

Ookla,

What you say makes sense--particularly from a comic book standpoint, where (as I understand it) author property is rare.

However, I think I can offer something that even Crichton can't--and that is an action adventure setting that (as Tage pointed out) almost begs to be turned into a visual medium.  

So, I guess the question is this: Who are the uppity-ups?  Are they corporate types?  Or, are they people who read and love manga/fantasy?  If it's the second, then I might have a chance.  If a copy of the book fell into the right hands, then they might be excited at the potential.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I have comic book ideas. However, since I tend to read western comics, they might not mesh with an anime style. I'll have to look over them. Anyway, if they want/need a writer for some stories, Ookla, I'll give it a whirl.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Brandon (and some comments for Eric too), I've never actually been in the meetings where the green light decisions get made, but I think the final decision is largely up to the company founder, who is definitely a manga fan. Though it also depends a lot on the editor who's pushing it and how passionate they are about the project.

However, being a manga fan and being a fantasy fan are not as congruent as you might think. The top sellers of our original stuff (not counting Warcraft, since that comes with a huge built-in audience) do have a fantasy element, but they're also grounded in some version of the real world--kids in high school, etc. We apparently get a ton of generic Shannara-type fantasy sumissions, such that straight fantasy has kind of gotten a bad name. I think a story like Alcatraz would be much more likely to initially go over well with the editors and upper management than a story like Mistborn. Of course, a lot of that could just be that they plain haven't seen a good non-generic fantasy yet and the right one could really stand out.

But anyway, a reason to make manga is to attract manga readers to it, and the most popular mangas out there are not fantasy-world fantasies. (Well, the #1 most popular manga out there right now is Naruto, which exists in a Ninja type fantasy world...but the main characters start out at like 13 years old in ninja academy. And then there's Bleach, the latter part of which takes place for the most part in the afterlife, with magical swordfighting among Soul Reapers...but the series starts off with a high school kid who can see ghosts and accidentally gets the power of a Soul Reaper.) Our biggest seller is Fruits Basket, which has a high school girl who comes in contact with a family whose members (many of them kids) are cursed by the spirits of the Chinese Zodiac animals, so that if they are hugged by a member of the opposite sex, they turn into their zodiac animal.

Another issue is that for our original books, we're starting off conservatively and wanting stories that will be pretty much wrapped up after only 3 volumes. If something is wildly popular then it might get extended beyond that, but we're not looking for things that spend a whole lot of time setting up a grand overarching plot but never actually get there. Each volume should also have enough plot progression to be a satisfying read (though hooking for future books as well, of course).

Writing manga and writing American comics is not exactly the same thing. What most comics analysts focus on first is that manga is much more exploded than comics. In comics (but of course, I'm not any kind of expert on comics, so I may make lots of mistakes on this), there's a lot that happens between panels that you have to fill in the blanks of mentally. In manga, you pretty much show everything--what may happen on one page in comics could take 10 pages in manga. Manga is compared a lot to movies; people say it has a more cinematic feel to it than American comics.

If you want to know how manga works, I highly recommend reading Fruits Basket volume 1. Pay attention to how much or little text there is per page, how narration is not really used, how there are great big close-ups of characters' faces and you can see into their souls through their eyes...etc. How the first chapter (50 pages or so) packs in a whole bunch of story to hook you, but then subsequent 30-page chapters take things more slowly. Well, that's the way it's done for girls' manga. And for boys' manga, check out Naruto volume 1--you'll see a lot of the same thing--the first chapter really sets things up (the Naruto first chapter is an excellent example of a great pilot episode), and then things develop more slowly after that.

Finally a big problem for us is that we're having problems finding artists who are good enough and really know how to get a manga vibe. We're going to have a hard time finding manga-type artists for the HarperCollins stuff. Writers who pitch by themselves are less likely to be be on the fast track than those who have an artists already lined up. We have been able to put artists on writer-pitched properties before, but these haven't been as successful as the ones where the artists were involved from the start. (cont'd)

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Anyway. If you're interested to see the kinds of things we've been putting out, I suggest looking at http://www.tokyopop.com/mangaonline -- there we've got the first 3 chapters of over 30 different books for people to look at. (If you want to read past the first 5 pages, which I recommend, you can get a login from bugmenot.com)

Ark Angels (Noah's 3 teenage daughters travel through time to rescue endangered species) is by a Korean artist with lots of experience.
Warcraft is by a Korean artist and the American writer of some of the Warcraft novels who also wrote adaptations for some of our mangas before.¹
Princess Ai is written by our CEO and drawn by a Japanese artist and ran in a Japanese magazine and is about a Mary Sue-type character based on Courtney Love who is an angel/demon halfbreed princess from another dimension who becomes a rock star in Japan.

Fool's Gold is by our Mormon artist Amy Reeder Hadley from my Korean classes. No fantasy element. High school girl makes a geology club dedicated to getting the girls in school to date nice guys and boycot all the jerks.

Our other most popular stuff:
Bizenghast about a teenage gothy depressed girl who has to help trapped spirits move on to the next world.
Dramacon (no fantasy element) about a comic writer girl who goes to her first anime convention and finds love and has problems with her boyfriend.
The Dreaming about Australian twins at a haunted boarding school.
ShutterBox about a girl who shuttles back and forth between Earth and some kind of heavenly university. I haven't read the beginning of this series so I'm confused, really.
Mark of the Succubus about a young succubus on her first assignment, in a high school, who doesn't act very succubusish.
Sokora Refugees about a portal to a fantasy world that opens in the high school girls' shower, and the girl who has to share her body with a big-busted elf sorceress.
Steady Beat (no fantasy element) about a Texas Republican state senator's high school-age daughter who finds out her perfect older sister is a lesbian and who starts falling for a guy who has two dads.
I Luv Halloween is Keith Giffen's disgusting kid story.

Other stuff you might check out: Psy-Comm (future corp-media state psychic commando warfare), Snow (planet-destroying aliens called the Warmongers), East Coast Rising (Post-apocalyptic Jersey coast pirates), Sea Princess Azuri (mermaids), Peach Fuzz (ferret with delusions of royalty), Boys of Summer (college freshman baseball sex comedy), Yonen Buzz (angsty rock band formation drama), A Midnight Opera (goth undead rock), Re:Play (punk undead rock)...well, all the other series as well are worth checking out to see what we do and what niche you might be able to fill.

Footnote 1. Oh! That's a good path too, of course, Eric especially--if you want to see what manga writing is like, you could try to get into writing adaptations--taking the literal translations and turning them into good English-sounding books.

[Spriggan]

Who boy, the adapting is fun.  I tell you even after doing all the translating on my mission and in school there are times when you are just dumbfounded on how best to explain something that's a purely native Japanese concept with out actually explaining it.

[42]

More advice.

[EUOL]

Boy, 42, that sure does sum it up well, doesn't it?  I grabbed a copy of that for future use.

Ookla, that's a big post (or, I guess, two posts) of very useful and interesting info.  Thanks for writing it up.

As I think about it, I don't think I'd really be interested in writing a manga myself.  The honest truth is that I haven't read enough of them, and I think that you should stick to what you know.  More, I would be interested in licensing the books for adaptations.  (Such as has been done with Terry Prachett books, among many others.)  I just think Mistborn has a lot of potential in that area--though, of course, I'm no Prachett.  Still, any manga or comic book that would come from MISTBORN wouldn't be sold or marketed on the merits of my name, but on the concepts and story.  

Part of what you said made me think "Ah, well, it was a good idea, but Tokyopop doesn't seem like the right place."  After all, if original world fantasy isn't what other people are doing, then it could be difficult to market.

Yet, at the same time, I was a bit encouraged.  If all that they've gotten is generic fantasy, then how much better would MISTBORN stand out?  Plus, there has been high fantasy manga that has sold well, right?  Vampire Hunter D is a twinge horror and a twinge sf, but the soul (of what I've seen) is fantasy.  Plus, is there a Howl's Moving Castle manga?  I would assume Miazaki films go manga.  

Is there an editor on the staff who likes fantasy?  Is there even a chance, you think, of licensing a property like this?  
(Makes me wonder if I could get the Paper Eleven guy to team up with me for art.  That would just about be perfect....)

http://manga.clone-army.org/pxi.php?page=34

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I'll put out feelers and let you know what I find out.

[CtrlZed]

Wow.  Paper Eleven's stuff would be perfect for MISTBORN!

[EUOL]

Yeah, I've always been very impressed with the style of that comic.  In fact, I've been tempted a couple of times to email him to send out feelers and see if, maybe, he'd be interested in a project like this.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

That style of art is heavily male-skewed (see the cyberpunk manga BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei) and not really appropriate for a title with huge crossover appeal that was lauded by Romantic Times. Unlike with American comics, women are a major part (for many titles, they make up the majority) of the manga market, and not catering to them would be a mistake for this property.

[Spriggan]

Yes Ookla but most of those manga are geared towards the 12-15 year old female market in the first place and while Brandon's books cater to females he's not trying to get such a young audience with Mistborn.  In fact from the sales charts I've seen most of the stuff that's popular in the states skews young.  I have yet to see a title besides FMA that I would have read when I was younger, so from that I could assume that the only mangas that sell really well are the ones geared for young girls.

While I think a Mistborn, or Elantris, manga would be cool I think Brandon might have a better shot at doing the webcomic route.  Start a comic with someone based off of one of his properties (but tell a different story) and then sell collections.  If the site does well enough he can put the effort into translating Mistborn into comic form.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I'm not talking about the shoujo manga like Fruits Basket, I'm talking about the shounen manga like Bleach or Fullmetal Alchemist that are originally marketed at boys but which have high crossover appeal.

If we look at the top 10-selling bookstore (not comic shops) graphic novels from the previous week (Naruto, Kenshin, Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Death Note, Naruto), all of them are shounen titles that girls like as well. The most recent Fruits Basket only comes in at 12th place in its 10th week of release, and one of those Naruto books is in its 146th week on the chart. In the top 20 Dragon Ball Z is the only manga with less female appeal, and #20 is V for Vendetta which is not marketed at the female market.

Paper Eleven has what I'd call a very dark seinen art style, and V for Vendetta might be comparable, but the highest ranking dark seinen this week is Berserk 11 at #195 in its 7th or so week--202 copies sold (though the Vampire Hunter D novel comes in at #183, but that's not really a graphic novel).