NYCC 2010: Saturday Funnies

Ultraman (ウルトラマン) Cosplayer
New York, October 9 – Saturday is probably the busiest day during the New York Comic Con. I arrived early for many of the interesting panels including the Spotlight on Harper Collins, Digital Comics & Distribution, and Sushi Typhoon.

Vampires, Witches, and Zombies. Oh my...


Spotlight on Harper Collins. Seated (Left to Right): Erika Tsang (editor), Margaret Ronald (author), Jeaniene Frost (author), and Pamela Palmer (author).
I popped into this panel to check out the announcements and support my cousin Erika Tsang. She is an Executive Editor at Avon Romance. The panel announced several supernatural romance fiction titles such as Majorie Liu's In the Dark of Dreams, Jeaniene Frost's Side of the Grave, and Kerrelyn Sparks' Vampire Mine. Despite the romance nature of the imprint, the line was filled with sexy vampires, powerful witches, and zombies invasions. The trend in romance fiction is leaning towards the supernatural with the popularity of book series like The Twilight Saga and The Southern Vampire Mysteries (True Blood).

Lowboy and Black Blizzard

Lowboy Cover Art by Adrian Tomine
NEW YORK, February 4 – In a promotional event for his new novel, John Wray conducted a book reading and discussion at the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn.

Lowboy, Wray’s latest novel, is centered on a paranoid schizophrenic teenager who’s recently escaped from a mental institution. Interestingly the narrative of the novel is told through the eyes of a boy suffering with mental illness, and the story frequently blurs the line between reality and fantasy.

After a brief reading, Wray was joined by Adrian Tomine. Tomine, a popular cartoonist, did the illustrations for the cover of Lowboy. Using a set of prepared questions as a jumping off point they discussed a variety of topics including possible movie adaptations, the creative writing process, and their collaboration on the novel’s cover art.


Adrian Tomine and John Wray
Towards the end of the night, I had an opportunity to talk with Tomine, and we got into a discussion about manga. He mentioned that he had just finished editing Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s (辰巳 ヨシヒロ) Black Blizzard (黒い吹雪). It’s a follow up to Tatsumi’s critically acclaimed graphic novel A Drifting Life. He described it as Tatsumi’s attempt to incorporate elements of film noir into his manga. As an avid reader of Tatsumi’s work, the news of a new graphic novel was very exciting.


Related Links:

• Book Review - 'Lowboy,' by John Wray - Review - NYTimes.com
• The Tunnel : In “Lowboy,” a schizophrenic rides the subway. : The New Yorker
  
• A Delusional Odyssey Through New York's Tunnels : NPR
  
• Tatsumi's Black Blizzard Listed by Drawn & Quarterly - Anime News Network
  
• SAME HAT!: EARLY TATSUMI GRAPHIC NOVEL COMING OUT IN 2010
  

Vertical Vednesday: The Hard Sell for the Light Novel

NEW YORK, July 29 – I attended another installment of a discussion series hosted by Ed Chavez, Marketing Director for Vertical, Inc. The event was being held at Kinokuniya (1073 Avenue of the Americas). (See a prior post about the Vertical Vednesdays series.)

The topic of discussion was the humble Japanese light novel. Light novels are essentially novellas written for the young adult market in Japan. Some of the more successful titles in this genre are The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱), Vampire Hunter D (吸血鬼ハンターD), and Scrapped Princess (スクラップド・プリンセス).

The group talked about many aspects of the light novel, but the main focus of the discussion was centered on the difficulty of marketing them to an American audiences.

The real problem is the lack of an existing American market for the light novel. Perhaps the only comparative literary market to the light novel in America is the pulp fiction boom between the 1920s until 1950s. The dime store novel. However, since the collapse of the pulp industry, there has never been a resurgence of the pulp format.


In the case of the Japanese light novel, publishers need to build a market from the ground floor. This can prove to be herculean task.

One of the major obstacles is penetrating the American fiction market. The majority of light novels are localized and marketed by manga companies, and many retailers tend to shelve them with manga titles instead of the prose fiction. This can prevent market growth due to the lack of exposure with non-manga readers. Some publishers understand this reality and try to avoid any marketing connections between some light novels and their manga ties.

It will be interesting to follow the development of this market in the next few years.

Related Links:

• Vertical Vednesday In NYC: Lighten Up! By Serdar Yegulalp