February 4, 2005
European Comics Market Round-Up
A lot of news from Europe, which if nothing else shows that industry gets back in the swing of thing after their major industry convention much more quickly than North America does theirs:
* In major publishing news,
a new Asterix Album has been announced for release on October 14, 2005, right square in the Christmas shopping. The French-language market seems to release an enormous number of books at that time of the year, with a concentration on popular series. The last volume in the Asterix series sold eight million copies. This will be the 37th volume in the series, and a formal announcement of title will be on September 22 in Brussels -- when you move that many copies, they announce your announcements.
* The comics critic Jean-Claude Gasser
passed away in Paris. He was born in 1941.
* A
long intervew with Sebastien Dallain at Panini-France is a bit wonky but worth plunging into if you're a business buff. Dallain describes his company as one of the only ones that pursues any sort of non-bookstore market, although that market was down single-digit percentage points in 2004. The bookstore business was way up however, and Dallain notes that three of their titles were nominated for festival prizes at Angouleme, which was a shocker to me at least, although I forget if I commented on it at the time. Dallain reports how remarkably responsive his market was to the success of Marvel's various superhero movies -- they even got another bump after the second Spider-Man movie -- although you kind of worry for him when he reports that he's been told the Fantastic Four movie is four times better.
* Here's another one of those weird reprints from Le Monde, this one
an article about a Manga documentary. The thing that jumped out at me is that the documentary claims the first manga was performed by a 12th Century monk that drew animal-based caricatures in various short comics stories. That was new to me, anyway.
posted 7:49 am PST |
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