Flipped!: David Welsh Interviews Vertical's Ed Chavez On Their New Announcements



A highlight of any comics convention with any kind of manga publishing presence is always the announcement of new licensed properties. Several houses made a decent showing at the recent New York Anime Festival Sept. 25-27, but the most interesting announcements came from Vertical, Inc. Primarily a publisher of translated Japanese novels and non-fiction, Vertical has earned a reputation as a leading purveyor of classic manga. They've released a number of excellent titles by Osamu Tezuka, including this year's Eisner Award winner Dororo, and pioneering shôjo manga-ka Keiko Takemiya.

The four titles they announced at NYAF indicate an expansion of their manga interests, appealing as they do to a variety of audience demographics. Most warmly received was Konami Kanato's Chi's Sweet Home, which adorably examines the daily life of an orphaned kitten that's taken in by an average family, originally serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Morning magazine. Kodansha's Morning Two seinen periodical offers up Felipe Smith's Peepo Choo. Smith made his comics debut with MBQ from Tokyopop and has since moved to Japan and has helped redefine "making good" for manga-influenced cartoonists from North America. Vertical secured two titles from Media Factory: Kou Yaginuma's Twin Spica, the story of a girl who dreams of space exploration, and Nobuaki Tadano's Needle, about an alienated teen who ends up sharing her body with a space detective who's hunting down a fugitive. Both were originally serialized in the magazine Comic Flapper.

Ed Chavez, Vertical's marketing manager and the driving force behind the publisher's manga licensing choices, was kind enough to answer some questions via e-mail. Chavez is the founder of the news and criticism site MangaCast, authored columns and articles for Otaku USA and other publications, and freelanced as an editor and journalist in Tokyo prior to joining Vertical this year. (I added the links and annotations to the interview, just for the record.)

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DAVID WELSH: I guess what interests me most is that this is kind of an expansion for Vertical in terms of the kinds of comics you publish. I know you publish a lot of contemporary prose in translation, but most of your comics are vintage (Tezuka, Takemiya). Can you give me a sense of what drove these choices and the apparent expansion of Vertical's comics catalog?

ED CHAVEZ: A number of factors were involved. Some of them I should not share, but as I have noticed how manga fans have reacted over the last week or so, I will share some insight with you and your readers today.

First, Vertical has been teasing about an expansion into contemporary manga for some time now. I can remember our Editorial Director Yani Mentzas publicly suggesting these plans as far back as 2007. At the time he stated future releases would be of Cartoon Network quality. Well, now the CN is not doing too much anime and the manga industry is even more competitive after some market adjustments, but we could not wait any more. Sadly we still have not locked down that publishing/licensing partner yet, so maybe the licensors are also a bit of a surprise.

Second, I was hired not just because of my mad marketing abilities (?), my personality or my language skills. I believe that my manga knowledge is what gave me an edge over more experienced marketing experts. I know a bit about the medium and I am acutely aware of the many publishers, imprints, and demographics we can approach for the North American readership.

We also wanted to remain financially stable. Now this might come as a surprise to you, but our classic titles have not been bestsellers. While the titles have received great reviews and good publicity among certain communities they have yet to hit large segments of any specific market -- not the manga reader or the comic fan. To help us fund those classics we need to find properties that will appeal to more than just our base. Chi's Sweet Home and Twin Spica will help do that. If they succeed, we will follow them up with a few books from two more of the Fabulous 49ers [Note: >This refers to a group of groundbreaking women cartoonists which includes the aforementioned Takemiya] and another treasure from Tezuka.

Finally, I personally do not feel any publisher should limit themselves to a specific genre or image. That's what imprints are for. But a publisher should try to bring in as many readers as possible under their umbrella. Viz has done much more than Shogakukan seinen since they launched, Tokyopop branched out of Sailor Moon... Few people are asking Yen Press for more josei like With the Light, but then again they expanded their line-up very quickly. Hopefully, fans, vendors, and critics will come to see the benefits of a broader and more balanced line-up as it gets filled out.

DAVID WELSH: I don't know if there's anything you feel comfortable saying about it, but I'm curious about the negotiations with Kodansha, given their emerging efforts to publisher their titles in English (such as they are) and their recent decision to withdraw their licenses from Tokyopop. Was there anything different about the negotiation process with Kodansha than with other publishers, or was it delicate business as usual?

ED CHAVEZ: Well, I cannot talk about other publishers because I do not know much if anything about their unique relationships with Kodansha. In our case though, we have worked with Kodansha in the past and that definitely helped ease the process. Of course, I have some experience with Kodansha and specifically Morning, so that helped with Peepo Choo, and to an extent Chi. But to make things clear the entire process was very time consuming and delicate. So much so, we thought we were going to lose Chi when the Amazon listing was posted. [Note: A listing for Chi's Sweet Home appeared on Amazon.com before licensing negotiations were final, causing some consternation.]

Peepo Choo has been a special case. I know the artist and his agent personally, so we worked with them directly. Japan has [intellectual property] laws that grant the original creator full rights to handle as they please, so with the Kodansha's consent we worked directly with Felipe Smith's agent to hammer out this deal.

Chi was literally almost four months of legwork for almost everyone in the Vertical offices. Being a big Chi fan myself, I was selfishly working on Chi even before I officially started working for Vertical while I was in Tokyo freelancing for Kodansha and others. So yeah, it was a long delicate ordeal (I think Black Jack would appreciate the steady hands we kept given the circumstances). To contrast that, the contracts for Twin Spica and Needle: One in 7 Billion took about three weeks. And yes, we literally got three of those four licenses on the morning before our panel at NYAF.

DAVID WELSH: As much as I'm excited by Chi's Sweet Home and Twin Spica in particular, there's just something really cool about licensing a Japanese comic created by an American cartoonist for publication in English. It kind of makes the head spin. Smith going to be translating the series himself, correct? And do you have a sense of how the series has been received by the Morning Two audience? What do readers in Japan think of Smith?

ED CHAVEZ: I think Vertical titles are supposed to make heads spin. I know [Koji Suzuki's] The Ring did and I am sure [Osamu Tezuka's] Buddha did when it was first released.

Felipe will be working on the translation for this. He originally writes it in Japanese and English, with his agent doing the rewrite for Kodansha. Felipe has been consulted for almost everything we have done so far with the title from the new cover to the marketing samplers we are distributing to our vendors as we go into sales meetings. We are also working on getting him to the US next year, so he can share his wisdom and sign some books at [San Diego's Comic-Con International] and a handful of comic shops across the US.

You know Felipe has been received with admiration and with awe in Japan. The critics love his enthusiasm and can clearly see his talent as an artist. At the same time readers initially did not know how to approach Peepo Choo, as it is a very unique hybrid on many levels. Some people didn't know if they should have expected more Ame-comi beefcake. Others were not keyed in on his style of humor. But I feel they could all agree he was perfect for Morning Two. Peepo Choo fits right in with Chin Nakamura's Gunjyo Tagro's Hentai Seminar and Hikaru Nakahara's Saint Onii-san. Each one pushes the envelope artistically and redefines the concept of seinen manga, especially when put into contrast against [Kenshi Hirokane's] Shima Kousaku or [Moyoco Anno's] Hatarki-man in the original Morning. [Note: Both of these works are workplace stories, Hirokane's starring an ambitious salaryman, and Anno's starring an equally ambitious "office lady."]

Felipe's Japanese fanbase is growing. And yeah, he's already got one in the US, but we want to see that expand as Peepo Choo will reveal just how much he has developed as an artist since his days with Tokyopop.

DAVID WELSH: Just to confirm, Chi's Sweet Home is going to be published in a flipped format with the consent of the author, right?

ED CHAVEZ: Yes. This was actually discussed with Konami-sensei's editor before I joined Vertical. I translated the first few chapters and with the help of my production staff we made a sampler to present to Konami-sensei earlier this month. Ironically, it was only after we provided the flipped version that we got the license. While her editor had at one point been supportive of the idea, the mangaka was a little skeptical at first, but she immediately gave the okay after seeing the treatment. She was also so thrilled that she quickly gave us permission to announce the license at NYAF while papers were being filed. I think we did a great job and I am ecstatic that the mangaka seems to have agreed.

We will be working closely with Kodansha with this title. Right now my team is wrapping up cover treatment designs. And we should be sending those off for approval by early next week. Chi is going to get a lot of love in her new American home. I hope you all will welcome her into your homes next June.

DAVID WELSH: What about classic manga? Tezuka's Black Jack is ongoing, but can the audience that really appreciates that kind of work expect it to keep coming from Vertical? You've got a reputation as the foremost purveyor of that manga category.

ED CHAVEZ: As I noted earlier, titles like Chi and Spica will make it easier for us to release more Tezuka and '49ers in the coming years. I am working on two Tezuka releases for 2009 right now and we might squeeze in one '49ers, but finding the right story or collection of short stories is tricky given their level of quality.

In my brief experience at Vertical, I have noticed a strange trend with classic titles. Historically, I have been told that female readers are more willing to experiment and are often more likely to continue to support series as new releases are available. However with our titles I have noticed the opposite. I cannot explain why that is but while numbers for the Tezuka series are pretty consistent, Keiko Takemiya's books would see significant drops from volume 1 through 3. In a way this supports my theory that the shoujo market in general is extremely crowded, highly competitive and somewhat fragmented compared to the smaller seinen or classic markets.

Knowing that, I have been doing my homework reading my share of classic releases recently. At recent events, I have been lecturing younger Vertical fans about my research and the response I have received so far has been positive... but then again they are Vertical fans. I am making a point of that because I feel the casual manga reader will be surprised by what they see from some of the '49ers. What made them great was how they made shoujo so good. How they were not only great storytellers, but amazing manga crafters. I honestly feel shoujo has not been so good since. I'd recommend reading [Yasuko Aoike's] From Eroica with Love and looking at it with a critical eye technically, then following that up by reading [Takao Saito's] Golgo 13 and [Tezuka's] MW. Or reading [Takemiya's] To Terra... with a Galaxy Express 999 chaser. [Note: Galaxy Express 999 was created by Leiji Matsumoto, who also penned Space Battleship Yamato, which might be better known to English-speaking audiences as Star Blazers.] Do either one and you might notice that classic shoujo might have more in common with seinen, or what we would call seinen now, than with modern shoujo.

Picking stories that will appeal to the shoujo scholar and to the neo-shoujo fan has been a challenge but I think we will figure it out.

DAVID WELSH: While all of these titles Vertical has announced were originally serialized in seinen magazines, that can be a misleading demographic designation, can't it? Just because something was originally published in a magazine for young male adults doesn't always mean that's the only audience that enjoys it, right?

ED CHAVEZ: I think people treat demographic labels with too much of a heavy hand sometimes. The industry has long known that women read Shonen Jump and in slightly smaller numbers Shonen Sunday. Women are huge fans of Morning's Shima Kousaku and Morning Two's Saint Onii-san also. And while crossover into the world of shoujo is minimal by guys, men have had some tendencies to read josei tankobons, especially since some of the best josei artists often do shonen and seinen. This is often forgotten but while [Fumi Yoshinaga's] Ōoku ran in a josei mag, Hakusensha added the tankobon into their seinen line Jets, because of the crossover potential.

One thing about the top of the line seinen magazines is that they survive by catering to mature readers. The word seinen itself means adult and does not make reference to gender. So do not be surprised when you see something with crossover appeal in Kodansha's Morning, Shogakukan's Spirits, Futabasha's Action, or even Ohta Shuppan's Erotics F because in general adult manga readers are well read enough that they can handle a variety of stories as long as they are presented in a well thought out and properly laid down manner.

A title like Chi could have been in Nakayoshi, a Kodansha shoujo mag the mangaka I believe has worked with in her past. However the comic would have looked completely different. The panels would have been sliced in diagonals for pacing and tone. Visual effects, called "manpu," would be utilized frequently to show Chi's temperament. The little gaps between scenes would need to be filled in for the agnsty audience. So it would be a completely different comic.

Selecting seinen or josei titles in my opinion makes manga more approachable to a broader audience. Seinen manga can be as dynamic as shonen or shoujo, but it's so well edited that it's crafted to be consumed and appreciated by the masses. I think this is why historically [Naoki] Urasawa, Kazuo Koike, Hiroaki Samura, Yoshihiro Tatsumi and even Tezuka and [Takehiko] Inoue have done well outside of manga circles in the US. That said those artists have all struggled to find readers from traditional manga/anime fans possibly because manga literacy, in regard to comprehension, is still in its infancy. Anime fans in particular want to see a specific design in their manga, and that's a shame because most of what they focus on is character design and not layout. In a way I wish Hikaru no Go had more fans because the layout [illustrator Takeshi] Obata puts down is seinen quality, possibly done on purpose since he was drawing something abstract like Go to a young audience and was working with a rookie author who was learning the ropes of thumbnailing.

Finding seinen titles that crossover is pretty easy. Selecting ones that will actually work that way here, because some fans are more resistant to change though, may pose a challenge. So we are going to be very careful with the marketing of these titles.

There is only so much that can be done with an 18+ title like Peepo Choo, but we will try to lure in comic book and indie fans to that property. Chi we are going to work to an all-ages crowd. Spica has my office buzzing as it might be the best in the bunch, and will get some push to the sci-fi crowd as well as the shoujo circles. And we want to see young women try Needle since its lead is rare in manga because she's a strong young woman with mind of her own entirely walking her own path even before an alien invaded her headphones. There will be more to that but that's a glimpse into our approach.

Ultimately I feel demographics are necessary but only to understand where the base will be coming from. Do I honestly think men in their 20s and 30s are going to go nuts over Chi...Well, I am in my 30s and so is Yani, but knowing how Chi has been produced I will understand if it does become a hit with not only kids but their parents as well.

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* Peepo Choo cover
* Twin Spica cover
* from Chi's Sweet Home
* Needle cover
* another Peepo Choo cover
* another Twin Spica cover
* a Chi's Sweet Home cover (below)

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David P. Welsh has loved comics since his parents first used Archie and Casper to sedate him during long trips in the family station wagon.

He's worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, and later sold out for the glamorous world of public relations. Prior to relocating to The Comics Reporter, he wrote his Flipped column for Comic World News for just over three years. He's written articles on comics for print outlets and a variety of other web sites.

He lives in West Virginia, which he says has gotten a lot easier since the Starbucks and Barnes & Noble opened up.

You may e-mail David with questions or commentary You can write to this site about David's columns

Please bookmark his site, Precocious Curmudgeon.

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