Rocket Bomber

[image credit Ape Lad, from his Laugh Out Loud Cats, non-commercial CC licensed]

The original title of this post was “Recent bad news not new; just fallout from the Manga ‘Market Correction’ of 2009”

Yes, it’s grim. By the time I’d waded through years of backstory and got to my conclusion, though, I’d changed my tone: still cynical, still worried, but hopeful.

##

ICv2 produces some lovely charts and numbers, which go back to 2001 (Dec. of that year for graphic novels) and while the data is limited to estimates of Diamond sales through local comic shops, it’s better than nothing and I for one appreciate all the hard work they’ve done. (I only wish I’d thought to track something similar, using my methods, that far back.) (and that I had time. Maybe I should rethink being a store manager and settle back into something less demanding at the bookstore)

In fact, if you look at ICv2’s Dec ’01 GN Chart you will in fact find manga already on it. Later volumes of manga (Inuyasha 10, Dragonball Z 7) and also at $12.95, $14.95, and even $15.95 price points. (the third book charting that month was Dark Horse’s Dirty Pair)

So at the dawn of manga (or at least as far back as I’ve reputable sources) manga was a niche, it was expensive, it sold through the direct market, and while not a chart topper yet, Viz and Dark Horse were doing well enough with manga that each could put at least one volume into the Top 25.

Numbers from Feb. 2002 show Ranma 1/2 almost breaking into the top 10 (and already, at that point, at 19 volumes) and [I’m going to wear out the [em] tags in this post] the 6th volume of shojo staple Fushigi Yugi coming in at #20 — out of all graphic novels, mind, it outsold Blade and Spider-Man volumes that month — and this is a $15.95 shojo manga (and likely flipped, at this early date). It’s also worth noting that ICv2 bases these numbers on Diamond’s sales to the direct market, which were and are non-returnable — so your Local Comic Shop guy was seeing enough movement on shojo manga in 2002 to order it in quantity.

Mind blown yet?

In March of 2002 the number one graphic novel was Dark Horse’s Lone Wolf & Cub, already in it’s 20th volume — and number one. (Also in March ICv2 expanded it’s Graphic Novel Chart from 25 to 50 — and later extensions have followed over the years — so the picture becomes a little less fuzzy as time goes on. As the market expanded, so did their coverage. Thank several gods (and some eldrich powers) that Milton Griepp & his fine staff were on hand to think of this stuff 10 years ago.

With an expansion to a top 50, we also get to see how the first Tokyopop volumes were managing in the direct market, #38 Cardcaptor Sakura vol 6. Already $9.99 at that point, but also still flipped? as I recall, since unflipped 2nd editions of that series went on sale later.

And early shades of Naruto Nation are also in place, as new volumes of Lone Wolf & Cub each take the #1 slot on these GN charts until November 2002, when a couple of Justice League volumes finally knock LW&C (then up to vol 28) out of number one. It only managed #3 that month.

Eight months at number one. Not bad for those dinky little paperbacks.

By December of 2002, Tokyopop was cracking the top 10 (with Love Hina, not surprisingly) and the manga market, as we knew it, was well under way.

##

I could do play-by-play commentary on a decade’s worth of charts, but I’ll spare you.

If one was a fan back then, or if you knew your history — or you forced yourself to learn it — then taking an afternoon (say, a Saturday afternoon) to click through charts at both ICv2 and Comichron.com (The Comic Chronicles is kinda like Five Thirty Eight for comic books) then there’s a lot to learn — like, how far Graphic Novels have come in 10 years, with manga being a part of that but also the expansion of the ‘literary’ and biographical end of the GN market, and the collection and reprinting en masse of the whole 20th century newspaper comic strip corpus…

My point is, it’s a bigger pie — in fact, there are lot more pies out there these days — and so a slightly smaller slice of pie is still a feast compared to what was available 10 or 8 or even 5 years ago.

In April of 2005, again according to ICv2, Manga accounted for 29 of the top 100 titles, with estimated combined sales (in that market) of 53,000 volumes.

By April of 2010, manga seem to have slipped with only 15 titles in the top 100, and sales of a scant 20,000 or so units… via comic shops. The bookstore market is the new home of manga. But even ICv2 numbers can still provide insight: expanding from their top 100 to top 300, manga takes up 50 slots and total sales of 37,000 units — yes, in this one market it dropped, but still not bad for a format that has expanded well beyond the LCS, and is diluted by the wealth of other offerings available.

Those Fushigi Yugi Fans who bought enough copies to put shojo into the top 20 of an LCS sales reckoning in 2002 have long since moved on to Borders and other chain bookstores, and they were followed by a “generation” (I use quotes because, 3 maybe 4 years, c’mon) of manga fans who didn’t know there was any other way to read manga besides plopping down on the floor and clogging up the aisle at the local Borders or B&N. It certainly didn’t occur to a lot of these folks to buy it — which is of course part of the problem, and why quite a few stores are cutting back on the voluminous manga offerings that seemed our Tezuka-given right just three years ago. And we’re in a recession besides.

##

The total pie is a lot bigger; there are many more publishers interested in Graphic Novels these days:

in addition to stalwarts Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly, and Legacy Houses DC and Marvel, and long-time syndicate reprinter Andrews McMeel, and long-standing dark horse Dark Horse, and creator-initiated Image — we’ve added First Second, Top Shelf, Boom!, Dynamite, IDW, Devil’s Due, SLG, HNA Abrams’s Amulet and ComicArts, and Scholastic Graphix —

and a mass retooling of some older imprints — Random House’s Pantheon, Three Rivers Press, Villard — and of course Del Rey; Disney’s Hyperion; HarperCollins’s Harper trade-paperback imprint and Collins Design; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt adding Comics to it’s “Best American” anthology series; Tintin via Little Brown & Co.; Macmillan’s Hill & Wang, Metropolitan Books, and St. Martin’s Griffin; Penguin’s Philomel, Plume, Perigee, and others; Simon & Schuster’s Alladin, Touchstone, and others — that now carry graphic novels as a matter of course, in addition to & alongside their other offerings —

and Last Gasp and Heavy Metal are still truckin’ and still putting out the weird and wonderful, just like they have since the 70s —

And while a number of manga publishers came and went in the past decade (ADV, Aurora, Broccoli, CMX, ComicsOne, Central Park Media, DramaQueen, DrMaster, Go!Comi) and a few seem on the ropes (Udon, Seven Seas, Netcomics, Media Blasters) and at least one seems like an anime co. afterthought (Bandai) we still have 5 viable manga publishers: Dark Horse, Del Rey, Tokyopop, Viz, and Yen Press. [edit: 5 large publishers; there are at least two smaller viable manga houses: Vertical and DMP. See the comments]

• Dark Horse was first, they will be last [in my opinion]. DH has a care for the material, a cautious business sense, an adventurous creative sense, and other things (Hellboy, Star Wars) to keep the company going even after a manga title tanks underperforms.

• Del Rey has the backing of Random House for marketing and distribution, a relationship with Kodansha that has survived thus far and looks safe, a reputation amongst fans built on Genshiken and other great titles, and a backup plan: a deal with Cartoon Network for things like Ben 10 and Bakugan — and yes, we scoff, but that TV-to-comic-book fluff sells like hotcakes and keeps my Shugo Chara in print.

• Tokyopop was about to go under, I feel — or at least be so far gone the brand would be sold to someone who wouldn’t mismanage it — but it looks like one lottery ticket bought: a massive bet on Priest and the heavy involvement of Stu Levy in same, might make enough money to not only save a lot of collective bacon, but to revitalize the brand, provide operating capital for at least 2 more years, and make Tokyopop relevant again (at least for the span of one media news cycle). Not all underlying problems have been fixed, but T’Pop is leaner, smarter; still has a marketing, distribution, and content deal with HarperCollins; and just seems meaner these days, though their rah-rah-cheerleader-bubblegum email updates need to retooled or scrapped. Seriously. And I’m not all that big on the Tokyopop Tour idea either, but that’s because I’m old and crotchety and I don’t buy into the ‘fan’ thing, I Buy Books. (I would say we’re an untapped market, but no, I’m close to tapped out, so yeah, go get some new fans.)

• Viz. is Viz. I can’t even begin… well, I’ll try. Viz has a longstanding arrangement with Simon & Schuster for bookstore distribution and marketing support — not that they need marketing support since Shonen Jump, the occasional cable TV anime, and established brands like Pokemon pretty much sell themselves. To its credit, Viz takes that money and returns with more product: Shojo Beat, SigIKKI, Viz Signature, the Ghibli Library, and massive extensions of almost-there-but-otherwise-wouldn’t-make-it properties like One Piece and Pluto. —no, really: who else would print dozens of volumes of One Piece after the initial sales fell flat? And who would have published Pluto at all? The VizKids line (Zelda, Pokemon) even without Naruto or Bleach would generate enough cash to run a manga publisher; Viz has an embarrassment of riches, but also the grace and poise (and massive available catalog) to pull it off with style.

• And Yen. Yen has the full backing of Hachette, who not only fronted enough cash to bootstrap Yen Press from nothing to 6 out of the top 10 NYT bestsellers in a scant two years, they paired that with the hire of Kurt Hassler (who in later years will be known as the [insert title here] of manga) and the commitment to at least two years of Yen Plus, an anthology magazine. Though the recession killed off Yen+, the imprint bravely soldiers on with an expanding catalog of manga and manhwa and begs the question: what if this kind of company had launched in 2004, rather than 2006?

In a decade: five manga publishers where there used to be two (just Dark Horse and Viz back in the murky pre-history of manga fandom)

I’d say, even given the current climate, that ain’t bad. It’s a 150% increase, in fact.

In the interim, a lot of product was put out — some of it great, a lot of it marginal, at best — and a lot was made of the inroads to ‘major’ markets (though 4 whole bookcases of manga in one of the major chains, while nice, do not constitute the mass market) and double-digit sales growth and the ‘sudden surge’ of manga — but I think, in retrospect, we can frame it thus:

• 1992-2005 saw a major expansion of comics (under the guise of ‘Graphic Novels’) — into new genres, new markets, new fan bases, and new appreciation of the form. I pick 1992 because of the Maus Pulitzer – though it was also the year Scott McCloud presumably started work on Understanding Comics [which actually first saw print in 1993] which has since become the primer and first source for a “generation” of both artists and critics (again, generation in quotes, and I don’t mean to slight Eisner in this context; it’s just that Eisner didn’t have the internet) (and I think the critics love to cite Scott more often – artist read it and take it to heart, critics [alas] use it as a framework to judge, to our loss) (that digression aside…)

• From 2001 to 2007 the US economy was growing (and more broadly, from 1983 to 2007 we experienced a general trend of growth, not recession and so consumer spending of all types, even pre-teen-on-an-allowance-spending, was going up.)

• 2003-2007 saw Kurt Hassler, and other bookstore buyers, buying manga. Yep. They bought it. It wasn’t a “major expansion” as no bookstore had ever really bought it before. (feel free to tell me about your obvious outlier: I’d love to know which bookstore stocked manga before Tokyopop) Here’s the thing: from zero to one guy at one chain showing an interest, to other chains matching to compete in a new market, and suddenly you go from a Diamond direct market also-ran to thousands of volumes shipped and shelved in the course of a year. This was a good time to sell manga. A lot of folks saw a good thing and thought they’d pile on. No one really understood the underlying causes, though, and few thought of the realities of selling to the bookstore market — sure, it’s fine when volumes turn (it’s a money machine) but as soon as demand slacks, for whatever reason, the stores use the returnablity of volumes (it was in the distro&sales agreements you didn’t read) to their advantage, and when the economy turns south, they use it with a vengeance.

The Manga market didn’t fail in May of 2010, the writing was on the wall after the Christmas of 2007. But publishing does not react quickly. Titles on sale for 25 December 2007 were in the pipe a year earlier, and after those tanked there remained other titles still in the pipe for release over the next 6-12 months. Manga publishers could see the problem but translators had already completed work, license fees were paid long-ago, and contracts with printers had been signed.

And the two past recessions had only lasted 8 months — the smart business move was to borrow cash, keep moving, and rely on the fact that things would be better next year. Then 2008… wasn’t kind.

We as fans didn’t see the immediate results of the recession, because contractual obligations meant books were made, printed, shipped, and shelved even after we had actually stopped buying them. Not only did this mask the coming market correction, it exaggerated it, as books shipped-but-not-sold weigh more and more heavily on the balance sheets of publishers.

The eventual backlash of massive returns from retailers shouldn’t have been a surprise coup de grâce but no one was planning for a downturn; all the graphs pointed Up Up Up… but the graphs only started in 2001-2002, at the very beginning of the last rebound. Some basic assumptions were quite wrong. Even given the two ‘minor’ blips (the eight-month recessions of 1991 and 2001) there was a 25-year trend of nothing but blue skies, with the occasional cloud, and even clouds seemed to have silver linings. No one planned for credit-default-swap-fuelled meltdown; no one knew what CDFs were. 2008 hit us in the back of the head like a lead pipe. In retrospect, yeah, we can kinda-sorta sort things out, but there was no way to plan for how consumer markets reacted.

##

So manga was a ‘thing’, a consumer trend right at the tail end of 25 years of an over-performing US economy.

Consumers would buy anything, and one of the coolest anythings around were manga and anime DVDs. In this overheated consumer market, a lot of companies tried anime and manga, a lot of product was licensed and released, and almost all of it was unsustainable.

Damn, it was a great time to be a fan. But companies were (even at these levels) just scraping by, borrowing money, making bets, & waiting for that Next Big Thing. If the next big thing had been something like Pokemon or Naruto, all bets paid off and the cycle started again. Unfortunately, for so many, the next big thing was the Great Recession.

We’re back to a baseline. Yes, of course I miss the market of 5 years ago. Those were heady times to be a fan, so many choices that you could afford to pick and choose the very best, and let the merely good rot on the vine. But it was never sustainable.

The legacy of the anime boom is that several major publishers (slow turtles that they are) decided to get into the manga business, and so in 2010 we have not two but five major players in the manga market, and all but one (the first, the last, Dark Horse) are backed by major book pubs or have longstanding agreements with them. And a number of imprints (or new start-ups!) are just waiting for the economy to improve, and for the fans to start buying again.

2009 was a market correction; in retrospect inevitable; regrettable but given the larger economy unavoidable.

May of 2010, when Viz announced layoffs, Go!Comi faded into that good night, and DC finally realized they owned CMX and then suddenly didn’t want to anymore — well, it seems like it all took place overnight but this has been building for years.

My hopes reside in not what happened then, but what happens next. When the economy does improve (and it may take 2 years for publishers to catch up) then what can the new, expanded manga base do for us? With a decade of experience, what can the anime localizers finally put out?

[*fingers crossed*]
(And here’s hoping Japan pulls out as well.)

So, DC: I’d like to ask –

how much did you recently spend on plastic rings as opposed to, oh, say, the now-past 5-year marketing budget for now-defunct [alas] critically-acclaimed manga publisher CMX?

No, honestly: how much did you spend on trinkets—ephemeral souvenirs—and how much did you dedicate to the hard-working localizers who were slowly building a critical acclaim you didn’t even deign to recognize? CMX was too good for you; you employed staff that handily exceeded the goals set for it — ‘you’ (via your agents) licensed titles so good that fans drooled, and yet even with that beach-head and head-start, you failed them in your execution. And You Did This For Five Years.

Dude.

It was free money. Just sitting there. We can’t hand you a better deal. DC, you bungled it.

If I had the money, I’d buy up everything and everyone involved with CMX and prove to you just how badly you botched this. Dear DC: Is the focus on summer tent-pole movies [not that you have one] and easily-licensed third-party crap, really more important than quality comics?

Oh, I already know the answer – I just wanted to get the uncaring, corporate, anti-fan bastards on record, saying the actual product counts for crap and the only thing that matters is making money on the hard work of artists. Dear DC: fuck you.

If you’ve been reading my blog or following me on twitter for any length of time (say, a week or so) you know 3 salient facts about me: 1. I like beer 2. I like manga & 3. My name is Matt [Usually you discover this by clicking a profile or ‘about me’ link where I say things like “Hi, my name is Matt, I drink beer and read manga”]

This product announcement fills me with serious nerdlust

##

Geek Biz Report, week ending 16 May 2010

I’m going to lead with the editorial this week; in fact I’m going to lead with a reader comment, and then my editorial, and then the biz links; if you’d rather skip my drunken rambling I can provide a link to do exactly that

From Steven Marsh, comments on last week’s Geek Biz Report

I’m a long-time site follower, first-time commenter.

I generally find your insight to be interesting, and you’re right more often then not. Still, I find your analysis of the iPad to be off-base.

First, you mention that selling one million of a $500+-product in a couple of months isn’t a noteworthy event. You cite lots of numbers that are bigger than a million. Okay, whatever. It raises the question, though: At what number threshold do you consider the number of units sold to be a big deal? At what point will they start being something to pay attention to?

10 million? That’s a trivial amount — barely enough to reach the few largest cities in the world combined. Oh, it’s also about how many Blu-Ray players there are, I believe (after four years’ head start) — and, last time I checked, most big-box retailers (book or otherwise) had Blu-Ray sections.

250 million? That’s not even enough to ensure that everyone in the U.S. has one, let alone worldwide. That’s how many iPods have been sold, I believe — and with it has come online audiobook sales, among other retail-affecting developments. To contemplate that the iPod hasn’t been a game-changer in a number of ways is, I think, foolish.

Anyway, I’m curious if you have that internal threshold for what number of iPads would be enough to take notice — or if anything less than seven billion (enough for every man, woman, and child on the planet) is not worthy of contemplation.

Second, I think your analysis of what the iPad is and does is woefully underdeveloped. I have used it to watch videos, but that’s not (in my opinion) the best usage of it — and underestimating this versatility is practically tantamount to dismissing the telephone because all you can use it for is to call your lab assistants.

Last night before I went to bed—in the span of an hour—I read a chapter of a book, played a recreation of the original Dragon’s Lair game, checked my e-mail, and started a game of sudoku. I could’ve watched an episode of something, but I decided against it. None of these would’ve been remotely convenient a year ago.

The people who derided the original MP3s a decade ago were correct but misguided: …Why would I want something that stores less than a cassette player, in worse quality? They didn’t recognize the benefits (lightweight, long battery life, convenience) nor realize the undercurrent changes in technology that would irrevocably change the music industry. Two decades before that, people derided cell phones for the same reason (Why do I want something so expensive that is worse than my home telephone?). Again, same result to the telephone industry.

I believe history is repeating itself, with the iPad. I’m not sure what industries it’s going to revolutionize yet, but calling it a TV Walkman is, I believe, ludicrous and out-of-touch.
It remains to be seen which of us is correct. :-)

Let’s review Apple, shall we?
[this article recycles, in part, some thoughts first posted 28 January]

The Macintosh was a repackaging of PARC‘s Alto user interface — if Wikipedia is to be believed, Apple engineers vistited PARC to get hands-on with the Alto, so there’s no getting around the fact that Apple’s second major success was yet another example of standing on the shoulders of giants and not the revolution propogated in commercials and the Apple company mythos. Jobs & Co. didn’t do the heavy lifting on the Macintosh; they showed up late, with some spiffy new hardware and a polished user interface that immediately captured the attention of a fraction of the market — an enduring fanbase — but the Macintosh wasn’t new, and it never held more than 10% of the PC market until just two years ago — and the more recent bump in Apple desktop & laptop sales are likely largely linked to the success of iTunes, iPods, and iPhones. Apple as a brand, and as a consumer lifestyle choice.

The iPod wasn’t new either; it was a slick revisioning of existing MP3 players. MP3s were introduced, largely, in 1994; spiked in 1997 with the advent of Winamp and other players (not to mention 1999’s Napster and other, later P2P networks) — & the first iPod went on sale in October of 2001 — long after the introduction of digital music files and quite a bit after we’d loaded up hard drives and multiple back-up media with all kinds of music [some of it illegal]. So we were listening to music [even digital music] for quite a while before Apple approached this market: Jobs & Co. didn’t do the heavy lifting on the iPod; they showed up late, with some spiffy new hardware and a polished user interface that immediately captured the attention of a major fraction of the market.

Palm/Handspring or Blackberry deserve more credit in the development of ‘smart phones’ than Apple. The iPhone wasn’t new. However, it had/has the best touchscreen available, Apple built on the success of ‘iTunes’ with their App Store, and the stars just seemed to align for the iPhone. Jobs & Co. didn’t do the heavy lifting on the iPhone; they showed up late, with some spiffy new hardware and a polished user interface that immediately captured the attention of a major fraction of the market.

— and now, we pause.

The iPad is the latest iteration of the Apple/Macintosh spirit. Sure, it’s shiny. But it’s not a desktop replacement (It was never pitched by Apple as a desktop replacement, and yet if you only read PR releases and blogs you’d swear the iPad was the second coming of the PC and all our bases belong to Jobs)

The iPad seems like a revolution. But. [*ahem*] Jobs & Co. didn’t do the heavy lifting on the iPad; they showed up late, with some spiffy new hardware and a polished user interface that immediately captured the attention of a major fraction of the market. One can make the argument that Apple ‘invented’ the tablet computer, since no other successful entrant exists to make the claim, but I’ve yet to see, read, or hear why a ‘tablet computer’ is such a good thing.

On top of that [to repost my initial response to Marsh]:

I don’t buy into the cult of Apple though I can see the appeal. I think some of it is hype, and much of the discussion is shaped by marketing. Apple makes pretty product, and they’re good at selling it.

So, in my comments on Apple and the iPad (flagged as opinion) I feel free to let rip. I Still Don’t Get It. Nintendo has 140 Million DS units out there, and doesn’t get the hype.

Actually, a million is a nice round number, and is a sustainable user base even if aliens land in San Jose tomorrow and in addition to introducing The Next Best New Thing, also drop a nuke on Cupertino on the flight in.

The iPad is here to stay.

It’s a nifty device. It’s a new platform. It’s a toy. There is nothing that can be done on the iPad that couldn’t be done in a web-browser, and as such is available to all platforms, but Apple is Apple and so they get a second look, and a free pass. Yeah, iPad, get that. It’s nice, and you spent a lot of money on it, and I hate to repeat myself: but there is nothing that can be done on the iPad that couldn’t be done in a web-browser, and as such is available to all platforms

The iPad is an internet appliance, the first of many— and actually not quite first but Apple has this knack for making their hardware seem like the first available [with an appropriate mark-up] when in fact the utility and usability of their hardware has been available for years, just without the Apple logo and outside their staked territory.

No, really. Outside of artificially constructed ‘apps’ available from the proprietary ‘app store’ the iPad does absolutely nothing new, and even the Apps are recycled [iPhone] and mostly just copy web functionality, with occasional added GPS and a price tag. It’s all just a slick interface. No matter how beautiful the interface — Not A Damn Thing Is New.

I’m a new-model luddite, in that I prefer mouse-and-keyboard over a touch screen. Hell, I ran computers from the command prompt—keyboard only—for years before I finally upgraded to Windows 95… in 1999. And after that I didn’t upgrade until XP service pack 2 — and only because I stopped building desktops and had to take whatever the laptop manufacturer wanted to sell me (eventually I’ll go to Ubuntu, I suppose, when I stop upgrading my deck every two years and settle in with some older hardware)

My first computer was an Atari 800. I went to Georgia Tech in addition to building computers, so I’ve worked with Macs and wintel, Sun SPARCstations, unix terminals, and used telnet over dial-up to the campus servers to check my email — back in 1992. I remember mudding in the basement cluster at the CoC, using Mosaic on the library Macs, and the time when Usenet slowly overtook BBSs as the internet fora of choice. I fondly recall green and amber monochrome. I know Lynx. I know Gopher. I know vi.

I tell you all this not to brag (because I’ll only come off as ‘grumpy old internet guy’) but to illustrate that the keyboard is my native tongue — the first ‘language’ I learned and still my primary interface. In fact, years of running DOS and Unix programs with nary a mouse in sight conditioned me to default to keyboard shortcuts in all their F-key, ctrl- and alt- glory — a habit that served me quite well when I switched to laptops back in 2004.

And here comes the iPhone, basically a track-pad overlaid on a backlit LCD screen. From my experience, that’s 2 things I don’t really need, but together they’re the only interface on an iPhone, except for a ‘keyboard’ that pops up when, you know, you actually want to communicate with someone.

Eventually I will be superseeded, relegated to the unix cluster of history, when the touch-this and minority-report-style-that are the last remaining interfaces. Touch-screen is fine for browsing, but blogging needs input, and the on-screen keybord isn’t quite up to the task yet. iPads are fine for passive consumption, but the internet is not TV; the new model, [grumpyoldman] the model we built, dammit [/grumpyoldman] is interaction and contribution. Read, enjoy, yes. But also remix, re-post, reply, and eventually, post your own. This is why I characterize the iPad as merely a ‘smart tv’. It is a consumption-only device.

But Computers… are Computers — with all the possibilites and applications we’ve discovered in the last 35 years. I’m going to need all of that to keep writing, to keep churning long lists of numbers into usable facts, to keep up with long-distance friendships with folks I haven’t even met yet (in person) and to keep contributing to the conversation. The internet isn’t jokes, porn, lolcats, blogs, streaming video, and quick updates on ‘social networking’ sites: the internet is a conversation a billion people have about everything and nothing, all at once. The iPad can connect to the internet— to read, watch, or consume it—but that is not the internet’s primary function. Take away the ability to react, reply, and contribute and the internet is just fancy cable TV. While some could argue that YouTube-style “video reactions” can take this role, I’m not giving up my keyboard yet. In fact, I think you’ll have to pry my keyboard from my cold, lifeless hands after my death.

[If I plan it right, I’ll have 6 months of blog posts queued and uploaded at that point so the site lives even after me. Immortality, for the short term]

Even if I persist in 20th century interfaces, it’ll be a long, long while before I have to give up my physical-button keyboard — no technology I’ve seen yet is an adequate replacement.

##

And. One Million iPads. Great. Bully for Apple.

Perspective: one mil out of One Billion Screens — oh, and those are just PC screens, and doesn’t include the additional 1.5 billion TV sets. So the iPad (at one million proud units) is just four-thousandths of one percent of the total ways we view content, and just one hundredth of one percent of available ‘computer’ screens.

Google is focused on the web: which is accessable (at least in theory) to all of the one billion PCs. I like that potential market better.

and the next internet boom will be phones not iPads — and cheap phones, at that. Twitter, as the bridge between SMS text message and the web, is better positioned than Apple or Facebook (or Google) to be the bright beacon that leads us into the new internet age, and the simplicity (some might call them limitations) of Twitter captures the core of the internet: interaction, and conversation. — and might I add, 6 billion people using mobile phones to exchange text is like the first information revolution, the telegraph on steroids and amphetimines. The internet is just getting started, folks.

Apple will do quite well with the iPad. They will continue as a company long after the iPad brand is retired, and however we consume content in 2076 (the year of Apple’s centennial) no doubt, Apple will be a part of that. Maybe not the largest part, however.

A company can be significant, successful, and profitable without controlling its market, or even directing the overall range and scope of development in it’s field, or even pioneering the new technologies that drive that market. Apple will make money. But it’s not because Apple is a leader in computers. They sell content (iTunes, a 4 Billion Dollar business), they sell a lifestyle brand, and they sell a customer experience.

It’s fine to talk about Apple in any of these contexts. It’s even OK to discuss Apple as a (very fine) hardware manufacturer, as that has always been the core of their business and is the source of both their reputation and sizable profits — but Apple is not a market leader. Through pricing and other strategic decisions, they have purposely limited themselves to niche markets and the top fraction of consumers. They do what they do very well, but they themselves are not the mainstream, or the future. And for my money, the iPad is no laptop — and that’s a deal-breaker. As fine as it is at what it does, it still falls short.

My opinion matters for naught, and Apple will make billions off of other people who don’t share my needs, background, and perspective. Like all Apple products, it’s awfully pretty. But I still think the iPad is a toy (or a TV—a special type of toy) and does little to advance computing or the development of the internet.

[/editorial]

##

► Rich Johnson @The Beat on iPad – re: e-books — we owned them already

► There are two hardware-focused manufacturers who continue to play as “content” publishers, and at least one commenter is finding it hard to tell the two apart. – let me note, the DSi XL is $300 cheaper than an iPad, and also plays Chrono Trigger. Nintendo, or at least one Nintendo executive, considers the war with Sony over, and the war with Apple the next challenge

► Speaking of Nintendo and the DS, they sold 440,000 of them in March — the DS doesn’t get the coverage of Apple’s-latest; in fact, it’s considered by most as ‘old’ tech, or merely gamer tech, not worthy of blogging. Not quite a million in sales this month, but the DS is six years old already and at 140MM, total, puts iPad to shame. Since (as previously stated) I consider the iPad to be little more than an content-consumption device, I have to wonder why Apple gets all the love, while Nintendo gets zilch. [The DS doesn’t connect to the internet; that’s the only thing I’ve been able to come up with.]

Would otherwise be the lead story:

► Viz Media Layoffs. There is all kinds of reaction to this news [& 1, 2, & an official response]

We’re in a recession; the news isn’t that Viz reported layoffs, but that they held on for 2 years before they had to.

► One assumes Go!Comi remains as a corporate fictional entity—and potential ongoing manga publisher at some future point—but short of outside rescue, it’s hard to see how they’ll survive the year. Once again, the web comments on this in detail.

► 4Kids reports loss. I’d love to characterize that as “4Kids acknowledges error; returns to anime” but if the Choatic bet had paid off, it’d be a whole new market. Wizards of the Coast [now wholly owned by Hasbro] was founded on less. Chaotic wasn’t a bad move on the part of 4Kids; given the success of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic and other CCG – hell, it looked like a slam dunk. Trends are not guarantees, however, and the kids didn’t pick up on Chaotic; maybe it lacked that ‘Japanese’ cuteness or some other intangible. At any rate, 4kids is now, once again, primarily a licensee with a kids anime focus

► via Pop Culture Shock, Dark Horse’s Carl Horn on Love & Wonder — while I was over at the Dark Horse site I also unearthed ‘Overdelivered’ Would Be An Understatement and Manga on the Wing

► e-books aren’t new; looks like the technology is 24 years old

► EA Not Going to Be Happy Until It Steals Shooter Market from Activision. EA also reports quarterly earnings

► The Census Bureau [love ‘em] report retail sales numbers for April.

► Lagardere SCA [owner of Hachette, and Yen Press] reports 1st quarter revenue is down, but that trends are encouraging. In fact net publishing sales are up – though largely due to Twilight, Meyer, et al.

► The Age of the Blog Is Upon Us

► Sony reports loss but looks to future profits

► Disney is still making money

► Amazon does the obvious and drops ‘free’ from it’s ebook bestseller list Dude, this took more than a year? Isn’t it obvious that ‘free’ and ‘seller’ are antonyms?

And:

► Via tested.com All of this week’s tablet news in a nutshell
► Plus Sony Considering Tablet to Compete with iPad

##

Aggregate prices on the Rocket Bomber Geek Stock Index rose 38.38 points (4.1%) to 974.44. Last week was nuts, this week was marginally more sane, and yet, stock prices are only a marginal indicator of either company strength or investment value.

Rolling 20-week RBGSX Aggregate Price

[we’re slowly working up to first, a 26-week graph, and eventually a full year]

& the 25 stocks: CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS), The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), News Corporation (NASDAQ:NWSA), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA), Wiley John & Sons Inc. (NYSE:JW.A), The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE:MHP), Lagardere SCA (EPA:MMB), Pearson PLC (NYSE:PSO), Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ:SCHL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Books-A-Million, Inc. (NASDAQ:BAMM), Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP), Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), Hastings Entertainment, Inc (NASDAQ:HAST), Indigo Books & Music Inc. (TSE:IDG), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), Navarre Corporation (NASDAQ:NAVR), Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME), Nintendo Co., Ltd (OTC:NTDOY), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Please note: nothing here is investment advice. full disclaimer

I’m turning over the soapbox this week, not because I ran out of things to say [I can always rant about customers] but because there are a few links clogging up my drafts file and I thought it might be better to propogate them, rather than have them collect dust until they might be useful.

[for a full index of ‘rethinking the box’ posts, see the most recent one, Sales vs Service]

##

Most recently was Tom Spurgeon’s conversation with Brian Hibbs over at The Comics Reporter

Among other observations:

“Specifically, what I would really say is that it’s a real lack of understanding in the retail base that alt-comics aren’t just a sell-this-month or even a sell-this-week kind of a deal. That alt-comics for the most part tend to sell continually over the years. I still have every single issue of Optic Nerve sitting on my shelf, including number one that came out 15 years ago. I still stock it because I sell enough copies to justify that rack space. I have every issue that’s in print and available from Diamond of Love and Rockets Vol. 2 on myself. I don’t have Volume One because it’s easier to sell the single book. If I could have the last ten issues of Eightball and the last ten issues of Hate on my wall, I would.”

##

McSweeney’s Issue #33 was an actual newspaper, featuring news of the day, comics [indy comics!], sports & arts coverage, and of course, a book review section.

Not necessarily buried, but tucked away, in the Book section was this neat little sidebar, thankfully reproduced in the May/June issue of the Utne Reader [and posted to their website, click the link] and also represented (with commentary, & alongside a number of other photographic snippets from the SF Panorama) at Steve Rhodes’s flickr account

So You Want To Open A Bookstore featured figures from Annie Danger of Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco. “Modern Times is a medium-sized independent bookstore—about 3,700 square feet, and with five part-time staffers.”

So, a small storefront bookstore with six booksellers (I’m guessing Danger didn’t count herself as part of the ‘part time’ staff) can be run with monthly operating costs of $56-57K — more than half of which is the cost of new inventory, and which dates back to November? of last year.

We could parse the numbers to figure out Modern Times rent-per-square-foot (~$20/sq.ft., actually) or the wages offered to employees (you can ball-park it, but there are too many unknowns) but that would be unfair. All bookselling is local, and while it is nice (abso-freaking lovely) to see someone else’s numbers, it doesn’t affect my expenses or the differences between our two stores and markets.

Still, very much worth a read

##

Questions abound around Google’s e-bookstore initiative, and Ian Paul at PC World rounds up five

##

This guy gets a book deal, and I don’t. Thems the breaks, I guess. I must not be snarky enough. Oh, and I write essays, instead of posting pics-and-a-gag or stuff other people write for me — my loss, twice over.

##

…almost on cue: oh, look, A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell: Handling Idiots, Whiners, Slackers, And Other Workplace Demons (isbn 9780814474082) is one of five titles recommended to retail managers by Shari Waters, retail blogger for About.com. I need to read at least 3 of these. (Yes, even with my experience, I’m still looking for input on how to do the job better) – Waters also posted a list 10 books on how to get started in retail

##

How valuable are my columns on retail? Well, of course, value is subjective, but at least one firm wants to charge you $1,150 for stuff you can find on Google in a single weekend. [that, and by looking at primary sources, you can do you own analysis] — $1000 seems a bit steep, and their description of the doc is more than a little… dry. Could be any industry.

One thing I can promise: Mean spirited, condescending, self-righteous, occasionally funny (but not as often as I think I’m being “funny”), and grounded in reality — but never dry. Even when I’m numbers-heavy, I try to tell you what the numbers mean. And I’m not charging anything for it, let alone $1000.

I’ll take a book deal if anyone cares to offer one, though.

updates 9 May, 10am: added RBGSX chart and reporting to the news coverage originally posted Friday night

Lead Story:

Apple sells one million iPads. [link]

oooo…. [dr.evil] One Million iPads [/dr.evil]

[Geek Biz Editorial]

Perspective: a scant million is between the total metro populations of Tulsa, OK and Tuscon, AZ — and only half the populations of Vegas, Kansas City, Orlando, San Antonio, or Cleveland. (that is to say, still half as small of any of the five, let alone considering the combined population of 10 Million in the 5 cities cited)

Yeah, yeah, a million is a big number but it doesn’t light me on fire yet — imagine the press release: “Apple sells iPads to just under half of Cleveland, OH”

Internationally, 1 mil is one person in 12 in Beijing or London, one person in 15 in L.A. or Hong Kong, one in 20 in New York, Seoul, or Mexico City, and just one person in 32 in Tokyo.

Dude. iPad hasn’t even cracked local Tokyo fandom numbers yet. More people watch K-On in its native language than own an iPad. The market for Yui, Mio, & Asuza figures is bigger than the whole iPad App marketplace.

Don’t let 6 zeroes distract you. One Million is nothing. An extremely profitable nothing, but the iPad user base is half the size of Cleveland. There’s an Ohio Wal-Mart out there with a larger potential ‘user-base’

##

more trashing the iPad:

Disney Says IPad Owners Played 1.5 Million ABC Shows – translation: toy owners use toy to watch TV. Is this news? What else are they going to use the damn thing for, compiling spreadsheets?

Dude, these aren’t computers. They may be better than computers, for what their target market wants, and I stress again, they will likely prove extremely profitable for Apple, but it seems like people want to slot the iPad into categories where it just doesn’t belong.

I’m calling it: the iPad is the first ‘smart TV’ — it does stuff other TVs don’t, & it’s portable. Bully for Apple. But this is an old market segment: popular entertainment platforms. The iPad isn’t even a netbook, or a gimped computer, or a super smart phone: it’s just a fancy TV. It doesn’t do anything more or less than an internet-linked Wii, PSP or X-Box attached to a normal TV (or even a regular cable box attached to same).

The iPad isn’t a revolution in computers, it’s a revolution in entertainment. Dell shouldn’t be worried; Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, and Charter should be. If Apple announces tomorrow that they’re buying Netflix or Hulu (note: not gonna happen, but if) then your backlist-movie, re-run watching ass is pwned. This isn’t a battle for tech dominance, it’s a new struggle for who has the rights to feed you couch potatoes reruns of Lost and Gilligan’s Island (if the two are, in fact, distinct shows and not just reiterations of the same damn thing)

The sooner we all realize that, the sooner we can move the iPad buzz to TV Guide, where it belongs — and then dedicated Games sites, Tech sites, Book sites, Biz sites, and Geek sites can get back to content — the actual stuff that makes the rest exciting — with only cursory mentions of Jobs’s new TV Walkman.*

* yes, Walkman is a Sony trademark, which only shows that even with a 30-year head start, Sony still managed to drop the ball.
[/editorial]

► Speaking of popular entertainment: One Million Wii users stream Netflix. See? One million isn’t a hard number to get to.

► Gamasutra in depth on GameStop: part one; part two

I’d like to point out that GameStop, before its IPO, was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. One could argue that without the influx of outside cash (or Len Riggio’s initial buy-out) they wouldn’t have been able to buy up all their competition & expand internatonally. Which is fair. But there is also an alternate universe where B&N supplimented their music & DVD sales with in-store GameStops (honestly, these things take up ridiculously little square footage) and ended up more like a MediaPlay — except, you know, profitable and less likely to go out of business.

I get the warm fuzzies when I imagine either Riggio waking up in a cold sweat over lost opportunities — at it’s Jan. 2008 peak it was trading at 8 times it’s avg. 2003 price. Of course, the 2004 and 2009 paychecks Riggio got out of the deal certainly means he sleeps quite well. Note, currently [at least according to MSN Money] no one person or entity owns more than 5% of GameStop, so it really is a publically traded company now.

disclaimer: B&N signs my paychecks. But my blogging is neither paid nor authorised by my employer, and in fact is probably a bad idea.

speaking of B&N:

► Ron Burkle sues B&N over dick-move to keep Riggios et al. in control. My gloss on the headline reveals my opinion on the ‘poison-pill’ provision; while I actually appreciate the lack of ‘corporate’ interference in day-to-day operations, and a new profit-minded corporate overlord is just going to make the situation worse, I harbor some animosity toward both Len & Steve Riggio (who still run the company, despite recent cosmetic changes) and change would be good at the ol’ employer. If the fact that B&N signs my paycheck makes you feel I’m biased, you’re welcome to take the above statements in that light.

► News Corporation Reports Third Quarter Revenue Growth of 19% Generating Net Income of $839 Million; $0.32 Per Share. not much to add. The HarperCollins chunk of that is also up.

► Time Warner, home of DC Entertainment [neé DC Comics] also reported quarterly earnings; the “Highest Quarterly Profits in Company History” — all without mentioning anything about either comics or comics-based movies.

Not even Batman. yep.

► CBS also reports quarterly earnings, with a more human touch, “‘I could not be more pleased with how CBS performed in the first quarter of this year, and I’m confident that Leslie and his management team will build on this success as the economy continues to recover,’ said Sumner Redstone, Executive Chairman, CBS Corporation.”

PW has an update on the publishing chunk of that, A slight decline at Simon & Schuster

► Time Warner, CBS, and News Corp. all benefit from a rebound in the advertising market.

► FBI can act like a hero because publishers, finally, ask them to. – Every comic, manga, & anime blogger is all over this story, and you might think I’d chime in with an editorial, but no: neither of my two editorials this week are on the HTML Comics bust. It is what it is. As an isolated incident I don’t think I can label this as either a precedent or as a seed to a trend.

► Dark Crystal gets a sequel. Go Henson

► Seth Godin wants you to rethink your blog as a ‘micro-magazine’. Actually, he said no such thing, but I’m reading between the lines, and thinking there are at least 10 ‘blogs’ I follow that could make that leap, if they wanted to.

► Activision Blizzard is also doing the happy dance

► Borders is soon to launch Kobo Actually, the web site is up, and they’re taking pre-orders for the device itself. This puts them about 6 months behind B&N, and 3 years behind Amazon and its Kindle. Is this too late? Well, the $149 price-point ($110 less than nook and kindle) is certainly a wedge to drive into the market…

But can it also compete with the iPad? You see, even in 6 months the whole market has changed.

Via Publishers Weekly: BISG all gloom-and-doom this year

We’ve been predicting the end of publishing, and by extension book retail, since Gutenburg’s second book
(“well, it certainly didn’t sell as well as the bible. I don’t see this technology going anywhere.”)

[Geek Biz Editorial]

Bookstores don’t sell books anymore [alas]

We sell atmosphere, we provide a commnunity center, a Third Place. We’ve absorbed and subsumed the role of the newstand, the music store, & the coffee shop (though Coffee Shops and even the Diner are still extant and still operate — we demand sweets, grease, and caffeine at a much greater rate than we consume books & other print; our appetite for information isn’t any less voracious, but the internet serves the ‘fast food’-style information needs quite readily. Rarely do most of us feel the need for more substantial books and magazines; and yet the underlying need is still there, and fine, white-table-cloth dining still exists even in an overwhelming world of fast food options.)

The physicallity of a bookstore is in fact something Amazon covets, and has attempted to patent — good luck with that, and of course your not only wrong but *centuries* too late to claim this as an “original invention” — and the actual bookstore — bricks, mortar, coffee, tables, comfy chairs, and books-on-shelves — when taken as a whole is the one thing that can not be pushed to a web site. You might as well think the internet will replace concert halls or sports stadia — yes, for some users, for some uses, a web site is better, but Real Life wins out in almost all cases.

E-books are fine. MP3s are fine. Everything can be had online, more conveniently, more rapidly, more often — and all that is fine. The internet has been around for 30 years, Powell’s & Amazon have been online for 15 years — and all that is fine.

And yet you still come into the bookstore, and no matter what your options, you always will. Yeah, sure, you can buy that on Amazon. But when you can’t even find it on Amazon, where do you go?

You bug me. At your local bookstore.

This is a dynamic even more potent than ‘one-click shopping’ — I just need to sell you a coffee before you leave the storefront to go order it on Amazon, because that’s the only way I will get anything out of you leeches who value a $.56 discount over expertise, knowledge, and enthusiasm for books. Customers suck.

And please, buy a scone with you coffee. It’s the only money we see these days.
[/editorial]

► last note, via the Orange County Local News Network, Comic Con Cage Match, local news edition:

[Geek Biz Editorial]

Most of us don’t care if “San Diego” stays in San Diego, because we can’t afford the badges, travel costs, hotel costs, or (in some cases) can’t even line up five days off in a row because we work for a living

Comic Con International might as well be held in orbit, at L5, and for 99% of the people who read your con reports online, hell, it is held in orbit for all we know. We read about it, we see the pictures, ass else.

It’s not about economic impact, but marketing your city/convention center, and of course, bragging rights. Even if we consider CCI as more of a break-even prospect for the host city for the actual weekend, Comic Con has a business value that extends beyond the con:

“If you can do Comic-Con, you can do the next largest meeting that comes along,” [Charles Ahlers, president of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau] said. “It becomes a marquee event.”

This talk of restaurants and hotels and local support is nice I guess, but only pertains to the actual folks who can attend. One eighth of iPad owners, if I can tie the first editorial into the third — and permanently fixed at a mere one eighth of a million so long as the CCI is stuck in San Diego — get to attend the grand geek prom and the rest of us just read about it on the internet.

Once again: 8 times as many people now own an iPad, as opposed to the scant 125,000 who attended last years CCI. Dude.

[/editorial]

##

Aggregate prices on the Rocket Bomber Geek Stock Index fell 94.57 points (9.18%) – Despite several major firms all reporting record (or at least, quite profitable) results from the past three months. Fears over Greek Debt, Gulf oil slicks, and just the usual lizard-brain reactions of the market are to blame.

Rolling 10-week RBGSX Aggregate Price

Value at close of markets Friday 7 May 2010: $936.06

& the 25 stocks: CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS), The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), News Corporation (NASDAQ:NWSA), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA), Wiley John & Sons Inc. (NYSE:JW.A), The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE:MHP), Lagardere SCA (EPA:MMB), Pearson PLC (NYSE:PSO), Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ:SCHL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Books-A-Million, Inc. (NASDAQ:BAMM), Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP), Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), Hastings Entertainment, Inc (NASDAQ:HAST), Indigo Books & Music Inc. (TSE:IDG), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), Navarre Corporation (NASDAQ:NAVR), Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME), Nintendo Co., Ltd (OTC:NTDOY), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Please note: nothing here is investment advice. full disclaimer

So.

I’ll lead with the news report I first read.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-04-26/ceo/bang-zoom-to-cease-anime-dubbing-in-2011-without-fan-support

CEO: Bang Zoom to Cease Anime Dubbing in 2011 Without Fan Support
President Eric P. Sherman cites fans watching fansubs, not buying DVDs

…and of course everyone else & their kid brother [i.e. most manga&anime bloggers] have linked to it.

key quote:

Anime is going to die.

Unless YOU change. Right now. Stop stealing. If you have committed theft, robbery, shop-lifting, or just “downloading some stuff through torrent reactor,” then just stop doing it — now. You probably wouldn’t go into a supermarket and put a package of swiss cheese under your shirt and walk out without paying. Nor would you walk into Best Buy and try to walk out with Guitar Hero, bypassing the cash register. Why? Is it because you might get caught? Or are there other issues, such as standards of morality, that dictate how you live your life.

The net, for all it’s charms, is also a dark and dangerous place. When you’re navigating it, you need to ask yourself this question: Is this right, just because it is so easy? You need to understand that quality entertainment costs a lot to create. And if there is no one paying for this content, it just won’t be made anymore. If no one bought tickets to a Lady Ga Ga show, she would not do the tour. That’s just how it works. For some reason, people don’t mind stealing their anime. I’m here to tell you flat out: This is wrong. You are doing something bad. And you need to stop it.

Again, So.

I’ve an excellent suggestion, one that will educate you about the process while simultaneously adding some black ink to Bang Zoom! Entertainment’s bottom line. Consider this to be a pledge drive of sorts, with it’s own very special “Thank You Gift” in the form of a DVD well worth the $20.

Go. Buy this DVD.

http://www.adventuresinvoiceacting.com/purchase

I’m not selling you a pig in a poke: you can go preview the first five chapters right now at Crunchyroll

Not only will your purchase benefit Bang Zoom! — a company that has recently, publicly noted they could use a bit more commerce — but you will also be in possession of one of the best recent documentaries on the production of American anime localizations, and if enough of us buy this first volume, it might prompt Bang Zoom! to release the next two planned DVDs in the series — I can only assume they are sitting on hours of interview footage and are waiting until it’s economically viable to do another DVD release. (these things cost money)

From their FAQ: “There are no other DVDs available anywhere in the world like this that we know of.”

Damn straight.

If nothing else, you need to see Lance Henriksen [yes, Bishop from Aliens and from the ’96-99 Fox show Millennium] talk about voice acting, and how it’s different from other aspects of the craft.

See, this is where it’s easy to make a difference:

Buy a DVD you know you want anyway. Prove that you’re an intellectual, reflective fan who is interested in the process (or interested in becoming part of that process as there really is no other tutorial available on how to become an anime dub VA) and simultaneously inject some capital directly into one of the few companies that produce quality dubs.

$20.

Two manga.
One DVD. (in fact, you get one DVD in this deal)
5 Starbucks.
3 Fast Food dinners.
24 beers, or two bottles (or one box) of wine.
Crap advertised on late-nite TV.
A single hardcover book.
116 packs of ramen. (OK, so this comparison is a little harsh)

Still: Can we find $20 in our budget this week for the best and indeed only documentary on the American Anime business? You owe it to yourself to own this DVD, and if nothing else, a spike in sales would shut Eric Sherman up.

Whether you like or hate him, it has to be worth the money, right?

http://www.adventuresinvoiceacting.com/purchase

Level I: Obscure Fandoms

definition: there are too many obscure fandoms to count — as many as stars in the sky, books in the bookstore, or videos at the near-extinct local rental place.

poster boy: To pick my own? Atlanta’s now defunct Beer Garten (not a typo, and not the proper-Deutsch “Atlanta Bier Garten” or proper-English “Atlanta Beer Garden” but the-owners-obviously-don’t-know-German-but-they-might-have-seen-it-once “Beer Garten”) (and link – “I will likely mourn the Beer Garten until the day I die.”)

- the thing about level 1 fandoms is that no one has ever really heard of them, past a very small handful of fans. This is, in fact, their defining characteristic. This does not make these fandoms any less rabid.

Level II: One-Shot Fandoms

definition: we’ve all heard of it, it was kind-of-a-big-thing once but then died six months later.

poster boy: The Black Hole

- at level 2, the property gets nation-wide exposure, a big budget, and a major push by a corporation, and usually makes quite a bit of money. The memories linger long after the project leaves the limelight — or really, any kind of relevancy — eventually it becomes just another component of the overall nostalgia-compost of a generation’s collective memory.

Level III: Wholly Owned Fandoms

definition: you know that one movie, with the sequels? an established corporate-owned property that is popular, and has ‘fans’, but doesn’t inspire or encourage fan participation or secondary works

poster boy: The Mighty Ducks

- obviously, I’m being hipster-ironic when I pick the Mighty Ducks as a fandom — but there are always the Anaheim Ducks — I’ll remind you, an actual NHL franchise — to prove that some ‘jokes’ get deadly serious before you can even finish off your PBR Tallboy. The actual level of fan ‘participation’ in level 3 fandoms is questionable, but someone, somewhere with a PR budget is still pushing this thing. That is not to say that if you happen to like a wholly-owned fandom, you’re in the wrong; obviously, someone has to like it or the whole thing fails.

Level IV: Established Fandoms

definition: A solid property that is enjoyed by many; one with a long half-life that takes quite some time to taper off, and that merits and survives the occasional reboot.

poster boys: James Bond, Dr. Who

- there are a number of properties that are popular, well known, and when the owners deign to make new product, manage to capture both the media spotlight and enthusiasm of the established fan base. We all enjoy the occasional Bond film, but there isn’t a large fanbase writing Bond fanfic. (Please don’t mention Dr. Who fanfic) (I asked nicely. please)

Established fandoms usually rule a given media (TV or Film) without necessarily making the jump to others — there are derivative works, but these are usually considered inferior or lacking in some way, and fans revert to the original medium – especially when the designated corporate parent releases a new version of the same old show an exciting ‘reboot’ of the property in it’s original medium.

Tron, with the new ‘Legacy’ release, is graduating from a level 2 direct to a level 4. (And I can’t wait for the new movie)

Level V: Massively Popular Established Fandoms

definition: A property that manages to be successful across multiple media, while also engendering massive fan participation. Please note: sometimes a level 4 is more successful, financially, than a level 5 — but while we merely consume the former, we obsess over the latter.

Poster boy: Joss Whedon

- Kevin Smith might merit a 4.5: we like his movies and forgive the rest, or we follow his comics writing career because, hey, he made those Jay & Silent Bob movies (and there’s all that comic stuff in Chasing Amy) — but there was never a synergy between the two to set his fandom on fire.

Joss exceeds level 4; not just because he’s done movies, comics, and TV – but beacuse he inspires buffistas, whedonites, and browncoats… and he can do musicals, too. All That, And Yet: Whedon isn’t Rowling, or even Lucas. I couldn’t even say authoritatively that everyone knows his name. It’s a big niche, but still a niche

Level VI: Corporate Fandoms

definition: typically founded in the 60s or 70s (or a legacy property from the 20s or 30s) it’s an iconic character we all know, and often love, but which for whatever reason never quite lives up to its full potential

Poster boy: Superman

- these get by and coast (often for years) on the strength of their history and the decades-long library. Eventually, someone at corporate remembers they own the damn thing, and they think to reintroduce it to new audiences while simultaneously tapping the established fanbase and soaking them for a few bucks.

With a little work, it’s possible to push a level 6 to a level 7 — for a time. Superman did that in the 80s, following the 1978 film (and at least two sequels; yeah there were others but after Sup3 did you really care?) and maybe building up to the ‘Death of Superman’ arc in the DC comics in what, 1992? [I forget the exact year] but Supes was a thing and then over. [Smallville was it’s own thing and is also now, largely over]

Obviously the charater and property remain, but it’s hard to keep this going at higher levels no matter how ‘popular’ the character. Eventually, you lose steam and some other property comes along to capture the imagination of the general public.

We know the official product and look forward to new instalments, but we know each chapter might in fact be the last — and if it is, well, the corpus stands as a complete work.

Level VII: Corporate Tent-Pole Fandoms

definition: It’s the big summer movie event, or the one show everyone watches on Friday night.

Poster boy: Iron Man

- In 2009, Watchmen managed to vault from a level 2 fandom all the way up to level seven, based on a movie trailer shown at San Diego CCI and the collective nerdgasm that followed on the web. Level 7 is a transitory state; either a property peaks here before falling back into relative-fan-obscurity, or this is just a stepping stone on the way up to greater things. And it’s odd: this is almost always related to a big summer movie release — one could argue that X-Files, Buffy, and the new Battlestar Galactica hit level 7 based on their respective TV shows [in the early 90s, late 90s, and aughts, respectively] so the movies aren’t the only route to level 7 status — but a big-budget Hollywood movie really helps.

The vast majority of tent-pole fans are as ephemeral as the morning fog. They gather around a major release because it’s new and shiny, but they aren’t the sort who hang around for years, waiting for the next instalment in the franchise. They will have already moved on.

Level VIII: Corporate Wet-Dream Fandoms

definition: An established series in one medium which spawns multiple spin-offs in other media, plus licensing for toys, t-shirts, crappy board games, lunch boxes, and a world of other, cheap, imported crap.

Poster boys: Pokemon, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and—at least for now—Batman, Spider-man, and [*sigh*] Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books —and in a large sense, the DC and Marvel universes when taken as a whole moreso than the sum of their parts.

- these series pay the bills. It’s like winning the lottery for some companies/creators: milk it for all it’s worth, occasonally repackage it, and ride the gravy train for life. Yes, we’re looking at you, Lucas.

A solid, established level 8 will even survive poorly-conceived and badly executed extensions of the brand [once again, we’re looking at you, George] The thing is, there is enough other stuff involved that the series will continue on, and even the bad decisions and awkward story choices can be made to fit, and occasionally, be made to shine.

I don’t know if corporations employ professional turd-polishers or if turd-polishing is just another function of writers and editorial — but rather than refute anything or admit any past mistake, they’ll take the most convoluted premises or basically bad writing and somehow work it into continuity, lest the admission of a mis-step somehow devalue the whole franchise.

[and yes, I was also thinking of Marvel & DC, but mostly Marvel, when I wrote that last sentence]

Level IX: Permafandoms.

definition: At some point, your back catalog is so good that you can stop making anything new — or you can even make derivative things that detract from the original, and the fans don’t care.

poster boy: Mickey Mouse, Mario. Star Wars and Star Trek are so close, but not quite here yet. Some comic book characters/franchises might also rate a level 9, if they weren’t continuously retconned and rebooted; it’s hard to know which version we’re talking about so there isn’t a single ‘comic’ to talk about.

- no, really, what was the last good ‘Mickey’ — I’m thinking the Sorcerer’s Apprentice short in Fantasia and that was in 1940, dammit and honestly, the Disney shorts with Mick aren’t that good — so, um, Walt was the best salesman ever? Or we just give Walt & Mick a pass because it’s Disney and he was one of the first things on TV? Is that all it takes? Are we so enamored of the theme parks? …damn.

Other properties spike at level 9, but don’t stay long: Christopher Reeve’s Superman; Tim Burton’s Batman (with Jack Nicholson’s Joker); or Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight.

If you consider a single week, one news cycle, hell: a lot of properties seem to hit level 9 and all claim they’ll stay there, but it never quite works out that way. The vast majority of fans have too short an attention span.

Level X. Myth and Legend.

defintion: see appropriate academic resources.

poster boy: Homer. Virgil. Dante. Shakespeare. Dickens. Twain.

- at this point, your characters are famous world-wide. Their very names can be shorthand for a definining characteristic, or a summary of their major struggles. Everyone knows — but the copyright has expired, so everyone and anyone can propogate, re-write, remix, of otherwise use these iconic characters. This is a good thing, for humanity and the Humanities. This is a bad thing for corporations, as there are few ways to monetize it [though Disney has been appropriating and monetizing the public domain since 1938. bastards]

All companies aspire to properties that are iconic — but stop just short of the ultimate, public-domain, universally known myths, legends, and icons. They’ll make them look just like a level 10, but they don’t really want to be there because level 10 is Greek Myth (or Egyptian, or Mayan, or Norse, or Celtic, or Zoroastrian) and while they’d very much like to take on the trappings of universal myth, they won’t quite go that far as there is no money in it.

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Comics fandom almost always follow the major media release, else it’s just a level 2.

Manga fandom, when we can coat-tail on an anime release, usually peaks at a level 4 (unless it’s Mario or Pokemon or Final Fantasy – which tap the gamer fan base) but is more often just a level 1 fandom. [sucks. I know. I’m right there with you guys.]

Anime fandom defaults at level 2, and seldom rises above level 3 — unless there is a cable broadcast, or a game. We love to consume Japanese content, but games and (occasionally) DVDs are the only major ways we express that love. Pokemon is an obvious outlier.

I think fans were much better about buying DVDs historically than they have been in the last 3 to 5 years. We must remember though: anime, and manga, and to an extent even mainstream games of Japanese origin (Final Fantasy included) are just a niche in the overall American market.

Obviously, something like Pokemon or whatever is on prime time cable or Saturday morning network TV & is going to get a boost. In a new digital age, where there is no ‘prime time’ or ‘cable’ or ‘network’ for that matter I’m not sure how we’ll introduce anime to new generations

The trick, if I can call it a trick, is getting even a small percentage to buy, whether they’re at a level one or level seven fandom.

► Newsflash!: Steve Jobs posted a letter; sure, fine. Ah! but Mister Jalopy suggested a remix, which Mark Frauenfelder linked to from Boing Boing and a lot of us read it, and thoughtfully chuckled.

see also: major media (Associated Press in this case) reporting on the letter, Will Smith at Tested.com for one tech blog take [pro-Apple, to balance out the snark], and of course Adobe has a reaction

What is the letter actually about? Who cares. Both sides of the Apple/iPad v Adobe/Flash debate are, substantially, correct: We need open systems that run open standards. And both sides of this issue have some failings in one area or both, as do nearly all companies that are attempting to extract money from the gadget-and-computer-using public.

► Related: free video is still out there, but more and more sites would much rather you pay for it

► Bungie Has 10-Year Plan for Secret New Game Series Headline says it all.

Well, OK, I think part of the news here is that Bungie (formally separated from Microsoft in 2007) is going to partner with Activision to distribute whatever the Grand Secret Game Universe Thing is — at least to the PC and gamer decks. (Movies and/or Cable TV and/or breakfast cereals would obvious utilize different channels). Small coup for Activision, large coup for Bungie (they retain ownership of the big secret) and potentially good news for gamers, if the thing lives up to both the legacy of Halo and the hype.

► Intel, Sony, and Google gang up to provide future generations with all the TV they will ever need

Sony provides the screen hardware, Intel the chips to drive it, and Google will bake up an Android-variant dubbed Dragonpoint to run the thing. Logitech gets pulled into the mix (as providing the keyboard-cum-remote) and there’s even a rumour (though it’s a rumour reported by the New York Times) that set-top box testing is already taking place with select Dish Network customers.

[Geek Biz Editorial]

meh. I’ve already given up my TV to watch DVDs and streaming video on my laptop. In fact, I still use the external DVD player I bought 4 years ago when the internal drive failed on my first laptop (and it has in fact survived to serve both my 4th laptop and noteably, the drive-less netbook) and finding that old blog post to link back to reminds me that I’ve been without a TV since Sep. 2004 and I’ve not felt the lack, yet. Super TVs running Chrome OS on Atom chips isn’t about to get me to switch back, either. This isn’t the hardware solution I’m looking for.
[/editorial]

► Electronic Arts, News Corp, CBS, & Time Warner all report earnings in the next couple of weeks. Viacom reported earnings on Thursday — still making billions, but down slightly (4%) from last year, attibuted to lower box-office (down 6%) and the fact that their new DVD slate for Q1 2010 wasn’t quite as good as the releases for the same time period last year (strong sales of “DreamWorks Animation Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa DVD release in first quarter of 2009” is name-checked in the press release; …Really? Madagascar 2? ugh.)

Say, someone remind me to look into why Viacom is carrying $6.79 billion in debt. I’m sure it’s a movie thing, just don’t recall any news (good or bad) on the topic.

► Indigo lanched their Kobo e-reader in stores and online this past Saturday which is impressive, but only if you live in Canada. No word yet on when Indigo’s partner in the Kobo, Borders, will have the device for sale in the U.S.

They better start soon… the e-reader party is getting awfully crowded.

Selling point: The Kobo streets for just $149. (Canadian, but the exchange rate is tight) — That’s a $110 less that the next lowest price point [Kindle, Nook]. Here, have some

► Amazon, not content to under-cut sales, attempts to patent ‘meeting at the bookstore or coffee shop’ to exchange goods for money. Um, I think the entirety of Craiglist could be used to prove ‘prior art’ to immediately deny the claim. Seriously, who let this past Legal? Or do Amazon’s lawyers relish a challenge?

##

Aggregate prices on the Rocket Bomber Geek Stock Index fell 23.93 points (2.27%) – Everyone was down for the week. (If I knew why I’d be making a lot of money)

Rolling 10-week RBGSX Aggregate Price

Value at close of markets Friday 30 April 2010: $1030.63

& the 25 stocks: CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS), The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), News Corporation (NASDAQ:NWSA), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA), Wiley John & Sons Inc. (NYSE:JW.A), The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE:MHP), Lagardere SCA (EPA:MMB), Pearson PLC (NYSE:PSO), Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ:SCHL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Books-A-Million, Inc. (NASDAQ:BAMM), Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP), Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), Hastings Entertainment, Inc (NASDAQ:HAST), Indigo Books & Music Inc. (TSE:IDG), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), Navarre Corporation (NASDAQ:NAVR), Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME), Nintendo Co., Ltd (OTC:NTDOY), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Please note: nothing here is investment advice. full disclaimer

From the Publisher:

Shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze, deadly creatures—mushi—came into terrifying being. They still exist and wreak havoc in the world today. One man with a sardonic smile has the knowledge and skill to save those plagued by mushi.

…

They Have Existed Since The Dawn Of Time

Some live in the deep darkness behind your eyelids. Some eat silence. Some thoughtlessly kill. Some simply drive men mad. Shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze, these deadly creatures, mushi, came into terrifying being. And they still exist and wreak havoc in the world today. Ginko, a young man with a sardonic smile, has the knowledge and skill to save those plagued by mushi… perhaps.

Mushishi is a 10 volume manga series from Yuki Urushibara, who has also written at least one manga short-story collection and is the author of the new ongoing series, Suiiki, which started in November of 2009. Both Mushishi and Suiiki are serialized in Kodansha’s Afternoon. Mushishi won an Excellence Prize at the 2003 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2006 Kodansha Manga Award.

There is a 26-episode anime adaptation by the Artland studio, which ran Oct. ’05 to June ’06 (and which has been licensed and released in the US and Canada by Funimation [flash site]) and a live-action movie, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, originally released 24 March 2007 — and also released in the US by Funimation as a subtitled DVD, which came out Aug. 2009.

[though no official word was found on the Funimation site, a listing on RightStuf points to a new re-release of the Viridian Collection Edition of the full Mushishi anime for just $40 MSRP, timed for early June in advance of the Del Rey release of the vols. 8-10 omnibus in July.]

Mushishi is an episodic manga, and what passes for an ongoing plot are the reveals of the past of our enigmatic protagonist Ginko, the Mushishi or mushi-master of the title. Each chapter is largely self-contained, with a problem presented to Ginko by whatever local mushi might be evident, and then a conclusion: but not always a ‘cure’ or solution. Sometimes the only way to deal with mushi is to find the proper balance, or to more fully accept them; sometimes there isn’t a happy ending, because there can’t be a happy ending.

This mix of conflict and acceptance, redemption and tragedy — and the thick layer of mystical, elemental, primeval mushi that exist just beneath the surface — combined with the dreamlike qualities of the story and the seemingly never-ending series of small, isolated Japanese villages — and the timelessness of the setting (Ginko seems a modern man perpetually wandering a pre-1900 Japanese wilderness) — and it all adds up to a manga that hits emotional notes and spurs intellectual reflection in the reader.

It’s about as far from shojo sparkles and shonen tournaments as we can get.

Not that it’s perfect. In an upcoming series of diary posts (reviewing a volume a week, give or take) I’ll be critically re-reading each volume in turn and I’ll be quite happy to pick nits and to point to flaws. But taken as a whole, Urushibara’s Mushishi is a magical world to get lost in, for an hour or two. Also, each chapter stands alone, so it’s easy to dip in-and-out, say, during lunch breaks or while commuting on the train.

I’m taking the Mushishi MMF as an opportunity; a starting point, not a way to post my final thoughts on the series — and this is only natural, as the series hasn’t ended yet. And depending on how long it takes me to post the seven weekly volume reviews, I might even closely run up into a review of an ARC of vols. 8-10, provided Del Rey can get those out in advance of the 27 July release date.

More than 2 years ago I wrote a review of volume 1. — I’m trying not to think about it much, lest it colour the new review (or about how much I think I’ve improved as a blogger & writer since them) but it does count as record of my introduction to the series.

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The April Manga Moveable Feast is hosted by Ed Sizemore at Manga Worth Reading. Please check out the review index posted there for other views on Mushishi.