Picture this: A black and white (and grayscale) comics magazine for $5-$6 a month with around 200-300 pages of content in it. Basically a Shonen Jump for American comics aimed at people 10-11 and up. Would you buy such a thing?

The reason I'm asking this is because this model really seems to have worked for the Japanese comic market and I've been trying to get a few American comics companies like Image to consider the idea. Do you think such a thing would function, what would you put in it, and would you buy it?

Any suggestions or feedback would be appreciated.

Too expensive. Put some ads in it so you can lower the price.

200-300 pages for $6 isn't a bad price, I've bought that kind of thing before. Off the shelf color issues of monthly comics only have 30 pages (22 of actual comic content) and they're $3. I don't think it's the format that would cause the trouble, it's the content. Manga fans are used to getting things in black and white, but American consumers are used to getting things in color. I suspect the trouble might be in finding content which appeals that is also black and white.

maybe dd/platinum should be in that business...with its vast content, you can fill up a 100 page magazine a month

Emily K
Too expensive. Put some ads in it so you can lower the price.

300 pages would be longer than a normal graphic novel which sells from $10-$20. It's basically impossible to get a price lower than $6 if you're going for 200-300 pages.

And that's already with ads.

They might want to do it but just don't consider it logistically possible. With Image, maybe if a group of top-talent cartoonists were to pitch such a project they would take a stab at it but I don't think the company is structured in a way to take on a project like this. There were rumors of a Marvel manga anthology of international creators but that was years ago. It would have to be a solid anthology with strong editorial and no filler. But SJ launched at around 200,000 circulation and then went up to 300,000 from what I can find online. That's far better than anything Image publishes and you have to wonder how 5-10 creators can survive on a monthly $6 anthology working on royalties if it doesn't achieve a high circulation. I would think that you'd need a larger company like Marvel or DC willing to lose the cash up front in the short term to finance such a project and also willing to allow creator owned work, which is not something they've been too good at in past years. Epic version 2.0 was a disaster. I've been wanting something like this for a while but I think it would require really bold thinking and action and lots of money or creators willing to sacrifice a lot in the financial security department. It's tough to put together a monthly comics magazine of that size on schedule if you have to work a day job too. That's large than a graphic novel each month. With consistent high quality. Mediocre, amateur art won't work. When I picked up The Ride from Image I thought that if they could expand that quality of material into an action oriented anthology along what you are describing it could be a strong manga contender. Or genre fantasy is very popular. If they could assemble some fantasy creators who really know their stuff and produced a fantasy comics magazine with ongoing serials and short stories aimed at a general fantasy readers audience they might be on to something.

That's far better than anything Image publishes and you have to wonder how 5-10 creators can survive on a monthly $6 anthology working on royalties if it doesn't achieve a high circulation.

Production costs are usually covered by advertisers. If you do the math, an anthology selling 200,000 copies with 10 creators making $6 a copy would still rake in $120,000 per creator. Now this number will be lower since the $6 price is retail and part of that goes to the distributor. Still you could expect at least $80,000 per franchise. With the lack of color, a comic could probably be completed with teams of three to four people. Pay the artists $2000 an entry (per person, so a group of three would get $6,000 total) and the publisher still makes a killing off the magazine. Even if the sales are half that.

I would think, more than anything, the issue would be with licensing. It's easier to make an anthology like this is you own the rights to everything in it and many comic companies in the US are moving away from that business model.

Shonen Jump is cheaper in Japan... 200 or 300 yen I think (2 or 3 dollars)

Right, well, Shonen Jump is also weekly in Japan.

I would buy this if it had good comics in it.

Ah, I'm tired, I am not an expert on magazine publishing so I should just step aside but I'll try to put edit this and put it succinctly. The American Shonen Jump was a spin off of a magazine that was already selling in the millions in Japan. There was a ground swell of interest in manga in the US and worldwide and Shonen Jump was already a brand name to many manga and anime fans. The American version cherry picked popular titles that had TV, video game, and card game cross platforms . Yu Gi Oh was very popular with kids and the magazine has continued to benefit from TV show tie-ins. SJ had buzz, it had an eager audience, and even still Viz promoted the hell out of its launch. There is no reason to expect that a new American comics magazine with new properties without any of Shonen Jump's advantages would sell 200,000 or even 100,000 at launch when only the top selling American properties with already established audiences get those numbers (which really aren't that high to begin with).

Everything I have read about magazine publishing warns to expect a loss. . Advertising is hard to get for a newbie, and promotions, and returns from newsstand business model means additional losses. And you better believe this type of attempt would require very heavy promotions. The idea of an American comics anthology has been discussed for years now. If it were that easy more publishers would at least attempt it. But you don't see a Marvel anthology or a DC anthology or a Tokyo Pop anthology on the newsstand. Shonen Jump's competitor, Raijin ran in to problems and ceased publication eventually. Lots of publishers have entered the book market, by contrast.

I don't know. Try asking Erik Larsen on the Image boards about it. I'd love to see it and I hope some publisher will try it.

Kxela
Shonen Jump is cheaper in Japan... 200 or 300 yen I think (2 or 3 dollars)

Yes, but manga is cheap in Japan because it sells tons and Shonen Jump in particular sells millions of copies weekly. Also the print quality in the Japanese SJ is crap, printed on brittle recycled paper. I own a copy and it's not pretty

American Shonen Jump is much better but sells for a few bucks more, which I think is worth it. You'd have to up the price a little bit on the American magazine because American comics don't have as much popularity as manga these days.

I've thought about this from time to time, but I always concluded it would be too expensive for an independent publisher to even attempt and way too risky for major publishers to consider.

I'd love it if someone were to try though. Maybe you'll be the one with the new idea that makes it work.

To that end, I recommend you read
this interview & article ,
which might give you some hope while showing what you're up against.

The first half is an interview with the editor of Super Manga Blast! on the demise of Dark Horse's attempt at one of these anthologies. There's a lot of PR-speak to wade through but some illuminating stuff too.

The second half is the good part though. It's an article by Viz/DH Editor Carl Gustav Horn that explains the radically different business models that emerged in the U.S. and Japan over the years that created our two entirely different comics markets.

And the market is really the big obstacle in creating a phone-book here.

Speaking of which, it's good to dream big, but 200,000 is probably way too optimistic.

For example, the top-selling manga in North America in 2006 was Naruto, averaging about 80,000 per volume mainly due to the syndicated anime series. Manga without daily, free, perfectly targeted advertisement on Cartoon Network sold far less. (The median VIZ book sold about 8,000.)

Discounting special-event publications like Civil War and 52, only 5-10 superhero comics regularly sell more than 100,000* (and again, the rest sell far less). These numbers are thrilling to Marvel and DC right now, because it's the best they've done in many years.

*If you're interested, check out more sales figures here.

P.S. I just read somewhere that Range Murata's Robot antho will no longer be translated and sold in the U.S. At $20, it's only vaguely comparable to a phone-book, but it has art from some of the best manga-ka in the business, and if that didn't sell... yikes.

But it's free. Charging money changes everything.

It doesn't change much, it's just a matter of who you look at. Stephen King's popularity has been waning for a while, but look at the Harry Potter books. And even in the case of King, his publisher certainly didn't drop the Dark Tower series simply because Green Mile didn't sell as well as a serial.

I also find that there are several companies which do publish anthologies and seem to do pretty well in the US. They aren't often listed on comics lists, though, due to a difference in intended audience. They either shoot for a more mature audience or kids.

ian_feverdream
Yet on drunk duck and other comic sites, there are a sub set of the reading public, who wait days and weeks, just for the next page or panel of their favorite comics.

Hmmm, very true.

Would that mean Web-comic sites are the next evolutionary step of the huge manga anthologies? Does what we're talking about already exist right here but we can't see the forest through the trees (i.e., because these comics aren't on paper:) )?

Maybe an alternate question would be how to bring those 200,000 readers here instead of how we could go to them.

Scott McCloud tried to bring readers to the net along with payments with his Micropayments system. It was good idea in theory. More buyers would pay much less because there's no actual printing involved. Unfortunately the idea didn't work out because people are too worried about their personal info being stolen online, or they don't have credit cards, or they're too lazy. Plus when you bring something to the web people think it should automatically be free.

It should automatically be free. Asking ppl to pay for comics online is a pipedream. With the online readership, you're automatically talking about the savvy reader population who bittorrent all sorts of fan-subs and fan-translations, and who can read a plethora of amateur/hobby/fan comics genres of the highest quality for free. Why pay?

Personally I have no problem with that. The non-commercialization culture and reality of online comics seems to me to be part of the creator freedom the internet gives amateur artists. Don't expect ppl to pay for your rent, but in return you have an outlet and audience for your creativity with minimum investment. Want a paying job, go print.

i say enjoy all the things you can get legally free on the internet, cause sooner or later someone gonna find a way to tax you for it.

I would never pay for online content, so I'd never ask anyone else to pay for it either. If your goal with this is to make money, there are much better ways to do that once you have the traffic.

I shell out the rough equivalent per month on the latest Marvel 'Runaways', so it seems perfectly reasonable to me, BUT I'm an adult. The difference here, and the main issue, is that if your comic is for KIDS it's different. When I was 10, I got a pound a week in pocket money, meaning I would get about four pounds (8 dollars) per month on average, which would mean that a comic like that would be a significant portion of a kid's pocket money unless they were an irritatingly rich little bugger. Would a kid spend that much of their monthly 'income' on the comic, I think that's something to consider.

It would probably be marketed towards teens anyway. That's what SJ seems to be marketed to as well. People between the ages of 10 and 20.

mlai
It should automatically be free. Asking ppl to pay for comics online is a pipedream. With the online readership, you're automatically talking about the savvy reader population who bittorrent all sorts of fan-subs and fan-translations, and who can read a plethora of amateur/hobby/fan comics genres of the highest quality for free. Why pay?

But that stuff is all illegal. In reality you shouldn't be doing that stuff. I can't say that your not right about people not wanting to pay for stuff, but I do think you're incorrect about that they SHOULDN'T pay.

Well, the amateur/hobby/fan comics thing is legal, but the bittorrent stuff isn't.

Littering is illegal too. So where are all the trash on the sidewalk coming from?

Driving faster than 65 mph on the highway is illegal too. So why am I being passed by everyone on the HW when I'm going 65?

Illegal or not, it's reality. Nobody who bittorrents feels even remotely bad about it, so it's not even a matter of "as long as I don't get caught."

Would a kid spend that much of their monthly 'income' on the comic, I think that's something to consider.

I would think most kids these days get more than that anyway, but even so, if a kid buys comics as their preferred medium of entertainment (they won't be getting too many video games with that little allowance) I would think a $6 anthology with 7-10 comics in it would be a much better deal for most kids than a $3-$5 22-page comic book. In the end, it would be heavily dependent on what was in the anthology, but assuming the publisher had a good lineup, the anthology gives you more bang for your buck. Kids who are into comics don't generally only buy one comic a month.

i miss the 1.50 comics.
nowadays a 2.95 comic isn't even worth that...content wise

subcultured
i miss the 1.50 comics.
nowadays a 2.95 comic isn't even worth that...content wise

Yeah, and when something worthwhile does come out, I'm one of those people who "Wait for the trade." Collections are cheaper and more convenient in many ways.

isukun
I would think a $6 anthology with 7-10 comics in it would be a much better deal for most kids than a $3-$5 22-page comic book.

Maybe, but unfortunately, those aren't the kids who buy Shonen Jump. Comic Shops only sell a total of about 5,500 issues of SJ a month (see that sales-figures link above). It's likely that most of the 170,000 kids who buy SJ from bookstores and newsstands have never even been in a comic book store or have ever wanted to buy a 22-page comic (otherwise U.S.-style comics sales would be higher.)

I'm not trying to be negative, just realistic.

Yeah, well this magazine would have to be marketed to more than just comic shops. Try to get it in the same places Shonen Jump is and on regular magazine racks.

The basic idea of the mag would be to get comics to people on a monthly basis, without treating every issue like a collectors item. People would pick up the magazine, buy it, read it, and then maybe put it away but not be so overprotective about it. Problem is normal comics cost so much people think they think they've got to preserve them. Lower the price, and more people will hopefully read them and stop being so crazy about keeping them pristine. That's what graphic novels are for.

I don't know why I went off on that tangent...

i only know a comic that is worth 2.95 and that's "defiance".
it was a fully cg painted comic.
that is some quality artwork.

now the filler artists on issues of popular comics like x-men and spiderman is not worth that much.

Aren't comic books a declining industry nowadays?
I think we'd be better off selling sno-cones or something.

Maybe, but unfortunately, those aren't the kids who buy Shonen Jump. Comic Shops only sell a total of about 5,500 issues of SJ a month (see that sales-figures link above).

Just because something is an anthology, that doesn't mean it will sell. SJ doesn't sell in comic book stores because that isn't their target market. The kind of people who would buy SJ are the kids and adults you typically see perusing the manga section at Borders. So you're right, the majority of people who buy it don't go to comic stores. That's an issue of content, though, not format.

Yeah, well this magazine would have to be marketed to more than just comic shops. Try to get it in the same places Shonen Jump is and on regular magazine racks.

You should try to put it wherever the target market is most likely to buy it. Don't just copy SJ. In fact, you would probably do better to differentiate yourselves from them. Manga has its market and while SJ sells, there isn't much room for anthologies in manga. The target audience is too used to getting their manga in compilations of single series. This is actually something that works incredibly well for manga since each series is a unique story. Readers can pick and choose their favorite series and avoid those that don't interest them.

I actually find the anthology format could be more beneficial to Western comics, particularly superhero comics.

Yes, maybe not every month though.