• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 5: Comics-Prose with ‘Small Shen’ (2011-2012)

In 2010, I was winding down in terms of illustrating for Dean Koontz. I was on the way to doing three books with them already, and I was looking for a change, which amazingly, did come at the right time. A nice lady called Kylie Chan approached me at a convention, and asked me to do a graphic novel version of a short story she had written called ‘Small Shen.’ It was the prequel to her best-selling Chinese fantasy series called ‘White Tiger,’ which had sold very well in Australia. I was about to draw the third ‘Odd Thomas’ book for Dean, so I had to push her back, but I eventually started working on ‘Small Shen’ in 2011, for Kylie’s publisher Harper Collins Voyager.

‘Small Shen’ was different to all the other manga I’ve done – it’s actually a mix of prose and comics. This may sound a highly unusual step, but Kylie was very supportive, and I also have other reasons to go into this mix and experiment with the format of comics. Part of the reason was because I also felt that comics, my own work included, was getting stale. The other reasons are far more complex, and it has to do with a mixture of economics and issues with production.

For folks who are wondering what “comics-prose” is, I have a few sample pages here. It’s basically a mix of prose and comic panels, arranged in a way that mixes the two together into a single, seamless, INTEGRATED narrative. Here’s some pages from “We are the Pickwicks” below.

“Comics-prose” is both comics and prose. If you ask me, it leans more towards comics than towards prose, in terms of execution (if not reading experience, which is different for everyone). For those who want to read stories told in this style, here’s more:

• “We are the Pickwicks” (10 pages)
• “Small Shen” (Written by Kylie Chan, chap1-3)
• “Legend of Zelda: The Edge and The Light (312 pages)

 

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Either way, working in comics-prose has been fun and exciting, and I’ve since discovered it to be a new and complex way of visual story-telling. But first, I should FINALLY tell you about two minor events that shook me up in 2010, and how it made me question the path I’ve been on (which will be next Monday).

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• The discount period is over, and the price has returned to normal. Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 4c: Manga Bit-Parts of Media Empires

The Yen Press story is significant. When I first did ‘Odd Thomas’ with Dean, it was one of the first times something like this has been done. By ‘something like this,’ I mean a best-selling author taking one of their best-selling series and doing a manga/graphic novel version of the work. The ‘Odd Thomas’ books I did were prequels, not adaptations, but it didn’t matter – the point was that ‘Odd Thomas’ was a brand, just like Dean Koontz is a brand-name author, and brands have customers that are eager to buy more of that brand.

After the success of the first ‘Odd Thomas’ book, however, it seemed that publishers realised that there was money in making manga adaptations of best-selling prose stories. The prose fiction market was far larger than the manga market, far more established, and with far deeper pockets. What better way was there to make money, than to make manga versions of prose best-sellers and sell them to a pre-existing fan base? It was safe, risk free money – much like how movie studios make movies out of books or comic book superheros. These were ready-made audiences with money, and much easier than developing a new property from scratch.

Again, I was aware this was going on, but perhaps I didn’t realise it would become common. With the GFC and piracy, getting original manga published was becoming harder and harder, as publishing houses could not take new risks on an author when there were better, safer money to be made elsewhere.

 

 

I had originally started off illustrating for Dean Koontz in the hope that it would also help my career, but due to the economic crisis, it hasn’t been the case. It seems the GFC has permanently changed the way publishing houses did business, but there are two other reasons too, as I discovered in 2010.

*****

Next Monday, I’ll be back to talk about changing the way I did comics. After my stint illustrating for Dean Koontz, I would be working for another best-selling author – but this time, I wasn’t doing “comics”, but something slightly different: “comics-prose”.

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 4b: Dean Koontz and the ‘Odd Thomas’ series (2007 – 2010)

Working with Dean was a real honour, and also a great learning experience. We did three graphic novel prequels to his ‘Odd Thomas’ series, one of which was co-written, the other two where I worked as an illustrator to scripts written by comic writers. I must say that while Dean was very nice and very easy to work with, he and I didn’t gel together as writers, and I felt much more comfortable working from scripts by other people.

The ‘Odd Thomas’ books gave me an opportunity to work with other writers, and to adapt a comic script into manga format. It was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to do this, and it was eye-opening – not just of the process, but in the way that comic book writers differed from each other. I worked with Fred and Landry and they were both great, but I must give praise to Fred Van Lente, who apart from being a very visual writer, is also quite talented. I learned a lot from Fred.

Anyway, I got to improve my drawing and get paid for it, and I also took up another illustration job during that time. In 2009, I worked with Steve Deger from Fairview Press, providing art for a ‘Book of Quotations’ he was publishing. I must say that this was the best-paying job I’ve ever had, and it was amazing for that very reason. If you see Steve, please shake his, because not only did he give very good pay, but he was also utterly professional in my experience.

 

 

That same year, I also worked with Hachette imprint Yen Press, drawing an original short story for them called ‘Forget-Me-Not.’ It was the first time in years (possibly ever) that I was able to draw a short story that I’d actually pitched, as opposed to drawing ‘on spec’ or working as an illustrator. The story was about a ‘Scent Merchant’ (read it here: http://www.queeniechan.com/manga/forget_me_not/1/), and it was published as part of their Yen Plus anthology in July 2009.

Yen Plus was Yen Press’ attempt to copy the anthology format of the Japanese manga market, and seeing the bulk of their books were manga, this seemed a wise move. Unfortunately, the magazine market was dying, and with the rise of the twin spectres of digital publishing and piracy it was just too pricey to keep Yen Plus as a print magazine. Yen Plus eventually went to digital subscription format in 2010, but finally shuttered their doors in December 2013. Along the way they had several important innovations, such as same-day release for all worldwide regions of their titles, so it was a good run. I still have my copy of the July 2009 issue of Yen Plus, which I treasure.

*****

Next Monday, I’ll be back to talk about more changes that happened in the industry, during the 3-4 years I spent working as an illustrator. After that, I’ll go into what happened in 2010.

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 4: Working as a Manga-Style Comics Illustrator

After I finished book 2 of ‘The Dreaming’ in 2006, I was contacted by Dallas Middaugh of Randomhouse imprint Del Rey to work as an illustrator for one of Dean Koontz’s series. I jumped at the opportunity – Dean was one of the writers I used to read as a teenager, and I was psyched to hear that he was interested in turning his best-selling work ‘Odd Thomas’ into a manga series.

Dean was a best-selling author and a canny businessman, and he was interested in tapping into a younger market. The goal was to create a manga-version of ‘Odd Thomas,’ his psychic fry cook who can see dead people, since manga had now matured into a known category in bookstores. This was around 2007, manga was perceived as catering to a younger audience, and publishing houses everywhere had tagged it as a ‘youth market.’ Unfortunately, that also meant that more mature manga had a hard time selling in the US.

 

Part 4a: Manga was Either Being Pirated, Or Considered to be for Kids

When publishers saw that youth-oriented manga was selling, they just put more of that into the market and reduced the number of mature titles.

This had a stack-on effect. Few adult readers got into manga because they perceived it as something for children, while children were increasingly turning to the Internet to get their fix of free, pirated manga. 2008 marked a turning point for the publishing industry in general, but especially for manga – it was (a) the year of the Global Financial Crisis, and (b) the year manga aggregators such as OneManga.com truly took off.

 

 

Now, fan-translated manga – called ‘scanslations’ – have been in existence for a while. These used to be small groups of fans, who scanned and translated Japanese volume manga in their own time. They then shared it on the Internet with other fans via IRC or other online servers – a pure expression of their love for the manga (even though it was 100% a violation of the creator’s copyright). Anyway, I remember variations of this having been around as early as 1998, and it was a surprisingly big community. Early scanslations helped build the popularity of manga in the west, and in those days, established publishers even surfed scanslation sites, to help them choose which manga to translate and bring over.

By 2007, however, things had taken a darker turn. Along came manga “super-sites” like OneManga and other sites like it, which amassed all the fan-translated manga they could find and placed it into one big centralised website. This was often done without the permission of the translators, which meant that the pirates got pirated. This made things too easy, and too accessible. Soon, when people realised they could read all the manga they wanted online without paying a cent, they began to stop buying manga.

These two things, rampant piracy and the GFC, combined to cause a catastrophic fall in manga as a publishing category. The glut of publishing also didn’t help. Due to the manga boom, various publishers have also flooded the market with inferior titles, and this just made things worse. In 2013, bookstores sold less copies of manga than they did in 2003, and the numbers still continue to fall.

 

Sales in the “Manga” section of Bookscan, which covers 60-70% of US book sales. These figures were taken from “Tilting at Windmills” by Brian Hibbs at ComicBookResources.com.
 

When I first started working for Dean, it was in 2007, a year before the GFC. What happened after resembled a downward spiral, not just for me, but for the publishing industry as a whole. Two things also happened in 2010 that made me change directions, which I will talk about later.

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Next Monday, I’ll be back to talk about my work as an illustrator first. After that, I’ll go into what happened in 2010.