Comic World News

April 22, 2008:
CWN and the Grand Finale! -

February 4, 2008:
In Conclusion - David ends his CWN run with Tezuka's MW from Vertical

February 2, 2008:
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

February 2, 2008:
The Shoegazer Returns - A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge

January 30, 2008:
Tim's Reviews -

September 13, 2007:
Wizard World Chicago Loot, Part One - Stykman, Empty Chamber, the Ztarian Saga, and yes, Little Bunny Foo Foo

February 15, 2007:
I Come Not to Bury Nick Cage... - But to mourn the death of my punchline

November 20, 2006:
The End - Rich's last Chicks & Romance

November 8, 2006:
Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

October 4, 2006:
This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

September 18, 2006:
Back in Berlin - or How I spent my summer

July 29, 2006:
KICKING UP A STORM - An interview with David Lloyd

June 19, 2006:
You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Me. - Graeme looks at Spidey's "genies"

December 18, 2005:
Disappointed - Sad news for fans of Busiek's CONAN, Stephen King, and others

December 13, 2004:
JUSTICE UNPLUGGED 2 at last !!! - By Fabrice Sapolsky & Xavier Fournier

December 2, 2004:
THE TWELFTH AND FINAL STEP - Say it ain't so, Dan.

November 23, 2004:
The importance of editing -

September 29, 2004:
Mystery and Conundrum indeed! - Where in the world is Jason Pomerantz?

September 13, 2004:
Hello and Goodbye and Hello Again - Change is in the air at CWN and it smells sweet.

August 12, 2004:
The Rise of the Web Toon - New Business Model or Dumb Luck?

July 30, 2004:
The Name Says it All... - Spin Doctors revamp Boomerang.

July 27, 2004:
Bigger Isn't Always Better -

June 8, 2004:
Pre-emptive Strike: MoCCA Arts Festival - Looking forward to the con, rather than looking back at it

The Layer Method
Our top Secret time-saving technique for creating and merging balloons and tails in Illustrator.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Intelligent Design

Love & Rockets goes digest

The Comics Reporter�s Tom Spurgeon pointed to an entry at the Fantagraphics weblog by Jacob Covey, the publisher�s art director. Covey was talking about packaging and design, specifically in the context of a new presentation for the highly regarded Love and Rockets franchise by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez:

�Recently [Fantagraphics executives] Gary [Groth] and Kim [Thompson] decided to repackage the softcover reprints of the L&R books in a 'manga' friendly format (since that crap is dominating the shelves) in hopes of converting some of those readers to more distinctive b/w comics that also happen to have far more substantive stories. This is the result. A bold, graphic emphasis with a modern, younger-audience bent. Sure, there's always the diehards who will bitch but, again, you have to reach the new kids on the block, y'know?�

I admit that the verbiage did set off my Team Manga Signal Device, as Spurgeon predicted it might. The general dismissal of manga�s artistic merit isn�t anything new, but the added doses of cynicism and condescension made it seem somehow special. The notion that appropriating a style of packaging would be all it takes to lure manga readers away from their pablum to something substantively superior (i.e., published by Fantagraphics) is elitist and irritating and� well� it�s classic Fantagraphics, come to think of it.

It�s not like the publisher reserves its condescension for manga. Dismissals are spread liberally among pretty much anything not published by Fantagraphics. It�s their shtick.

And honestly, once I cycled through the phases of irritation with another example of fannibalism (�My nerdy fixations are legitimate while yours are just tragic�), making the expected whistle stops at �Can�t we all just get along?� and �They�re just jealous!�, I realized the repackaging would probably work for at least one reader: me.

Love and Rockets is one of those books I know I should try, but curiosity and accessibility have never really intersected. I�ve been vaguely tempted by those big, prestige collections of Locas and Palomar, but not enough to make that kind of financial investment. (What if I spent $50 on a great big book and didn�t like it?) And as Covey notes, the other existing collections of Love and Rockets don�t have a consistent look or immediately suggest an accessible starting point.

Throw in a reasonable price and a reasonably clear explanation of where the volumes fit in the Love and Rockets mythos, and I�ll very likely be on board with the new packaging, no matter how obnoxious the marketing might be.

I�ll readily admit that I�m a sucker for attractive book design. You obviously can�t judge one entirely by its cover, but nice packaging certainly helps get a book in my hands in the first place.

Look at the gorgeous packages Chip Kidd has conceived for Vertical�s line of classic manga. What�s inside the covers is obviously impeccable, but Kidd has developed packages that match the contents. Kidd�s approach seems right in line with Covey�s views on the subject:

�So the goal, then, is to find a way to compress the emotional quality of the work into a package that expands the narrative intent of the artist without forcing your own style onto it. Especially with the book cover-- not to masturbate to your own design but to creatively reach the audience browsing a book store while maintaining the integrity of the artist's vision.�

To further demonstrate my appearance-driven shallowness, I�ll even admit that I prefer Paul Gravett�s lushly illustrated Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, beautifully designed by Peter Stanbury, to Frederik L. Schodt�s seminal and fascinating Manga! Manga! Why? Because Gravett�s book is prettier. (I�ll happily change allegiances if someone asks Schodt to do a new edition of the book and gives it the glossy, full-color makeover the material deserves, though I do think they run a very close race in terms of quality of content as well.)

Sometimes good book design is just a nice bonus. Fanfare-Ponent Mon�s catalog would still be worth reading even if the publisher didn�t expend extra effort on their packaging. I�d enjoy The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and Mail even if Dark Horse hadn�t been quite so faithful to the original cover designs. Viz�s Sexy Voice and Robo stands out superficially for its phone-book dimensions, but it�s Iou Kuroda�s storytelling that is the ultimate selling point.

Sometimes good book design is ultimately irrelevant. All the elegantly pretty dust jackets in the world won�t make me more likely to pick up anything but a handful of Jun�s boys�-love titles, just because the solicitations make all of the stories sound awfully similar. Blu may take a more basic approach to production, but their titles catch my attention because they generally strike me as having a more interesting and varied catalog.

And if a book is good enough, I�ll just hold my nose and ignore mediocre production values to enjoy the story. One of the benefits of manga for me is the lack of an associated collector�s mentality. Condition isn�t as important to me as quality of content.

It�s interesting to see the dimensions of the manga digest making such an impact. Fantagraphics isn�t the first to adopt them, as Oni and Marvel have been using them for years. And even applying the digest format to Love and Rockets doesn�t guarantee that they�ll get the desired results. If readers can be purists about what �counts� as manga, bookstores can be even more rigid, shelving super-heroes with super-heroes, no matter the dimensions of the package.

But hey, the strategy has made me more likely to try the books. Whether my expenditures are enough to make the experiment worthwhile, well�