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Friday, September 3, 2010
Catching Up with CMX
If I had to pick a manga publisher that deserves more credit than it gets, DC’s CMX line would be at the top of the list. They’ve published some of my favorite titles (Chikyu Misaki, Omukae Desu, Emma) and continue to roll out an eclectic mix of series appealing to diverse audiences (classics like Swan and From Eroica With Love to more contemporary comedies, romances, adventures, and horror books). With a raft of new developments and announcements before and during the San Diego Comic Con, it seemed like a good time to check in via e-mail with the main architects of CMX’s growth, Jim Chadwick (Editor) and Asako Suzuki (Director of Manga).
David Welsh: First of all, how was San Diego this year? Have you recovered yet?
Jim Chadwick: Exhausting but fun and productive. The absolute highlight for me, personally, was getting to meet and have lunch with Arina Tanemura, the creator of Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne. This was my first ever meeting with an actual mangaka, and one of the biggest to boot. She is very sweet and humble; someone who doesn’t come off as a superstar, but who nevertheless seems to have that glow or charisma, if you will, of people who are really special and talented. She gave us an original Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne illustration personally signed to all of us at CMX. I felt like a fanboy.
Business wise, the Flex Comics presentation and the Crayon Shinchan announcement made it a pretty big show for us all around.
Recovering? It never happens. It’s back to work the next day to all the stuff that has piled up in your office while you are working at Comic Con. But the con provides some extra stimulation and energizes you to want to do more and do it better when you get back to work.
DW: Which of your licensing announcements got the biggest response?
JC: Probably Crayon Shinchan. I think it took a lot of people by surprise. Plus, there was already some buzz about the property in the air. I went to the panel featuring the writers of the Shinchan anime for Adult Swim. The room was packed and the audience was really into it. This was a day or two before our announcement, so I then realized that it would get a bigger response than I even originally thought.
DW: If it’s not too “insider baseball,” how did you secure the rights to republish Crayon Shinchan? I’m wondering if there was any kind of bidding war, what with the anime episodes airing on Cartoon Network.
Asako Suzuki: With any popular titles, like Crayon Shinchan, we expect acquisition competition. Although we don’t know against whom our offer was competing, we are grateful that the creator and the publisher in Japan for deciding to grant the license to CMX.
Having the Shinchan anime on Cartoon Network certainly helped us making the decision to pursue the license, and DC Comics has a good relationship with FUNimation already. We are hoping to utilize the alliance of the two companies to successfully introduce the property in North America.
DW: Tell me a bit about the thinking behind the new mature line of books that includes Presents and Variante. What made CMX decide that this was the right time to make a branded effort aimed at this particular audience?
JC: To be honest with you, the particular line mix we have at any one time depends on when we are able to acquire and release certain titles. There had been some discussion about setting the mature titles off into a different format for sometime. Launching this with Presents and Variante was almost coincidental. We saw that we had these two very different but equally exciting horror titles and it seemed to make sense to combine the launches in October, just in time for Halloween. Since they also were going to be Mature titles, it also seemed like a good idea to use their joint release as the jumping off point for the new Mature format.
I want to be clear that we have always had Mature titles in our line—books like Sword of the Dark Ones, Young Magician, Madara, Kikaider Code 02, Testerotho, Monster Collection, etc. I’ve seen some reports that make it seem like we’ve never done any mature titles before. That’s not true. It’s just that we’ve decided this is a good time and a good opportunity to do something to set them off from the rest of the line. I also want to make sure everyone knows that ongoing Mature titles will not change format. It just makes no sense to change the size and price of a title in the middle of its run. This just affects any new Mature titles we may launch from now on.
DW: You don’t have to mention any specific titles by name, but have you planned out the growth rate for that line? Do you have an estimate of how many titles you’ll be adding to it over, say, the next year?
JC: Asako knows this much better than I do. I’m always working on all of our titles at some point or another, so I tend to lose count of how many actual titles we have out at any one time. As we are beginning to work on new series, some older series start to wrap up, so for me there is a continual overlap. But generally, we will pretty much continue to have 8-10 titles published per month, with most of our titles released on a quarterly basis.
AS: Since the inception of CMX, our library has been growing each year. Starting off with 5 books in 2004 (CMX books started to appear in bookstores in October 2004), we released 60 books in 2005. We have released 85 books last year, and we expect to release about 100 books this year. Our schedule for 2008 and on is not yet finalized, but the total number of books will keep rising each year.
DW: With the success that Megatokyo has enjoyed, both in terms of sales and of being picked up for publication in Japan by Kodansha, are you considering publishing more global manga-influenced works?
JC: Yes, we always consider this. There isn’t any sort of concrete, master plan in place for publishing global manga-influenced work. We tend to judge projects on their own, individual merit. If something comes along that impress us and seems to present a great publishing opportunity, then we’ll definitely consider it. Some publishers seem to be anxious to get out a big line of original, manga-influenced material for its own sake. To me, the link to actual manga in some cases is a bit tenuous at best. We’re not going to do that, but rather review projects on a case-by-case basis. What kind of projects might these be? I guess I can only say we’ll know them when we see them. I wish I could be more definitive than that, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
DW: Now, DC had already published Gon under a different imprint. Why did you decide to republish it in the manga line? (Not that I'm complaining, because it's gorgeous, and I love the price point.)
AS: As you may know, the Paradox Press edition of GON was introduced when manga wasn’t quite so popular yet in this country. Nevertheless, GON still managed to attract a large number of fans back then. So why not re-introduce him now to a market that is more familiar with manga? Thankfully, since we already had a relationship with Kodansha on this title, and we all LOVE this book, we are able to give him a fresh start in the original Japanese format for newer manga fans, as well as those who have already enjoyed GON from its earlier, Paradox Press run.
DW: How does CMX interact with DC's other imprints? Is there any common strategizing? Do you look at each other's output and try and develop opportunities for audience crossover?
JC: Editorially, there isn’t that much direct interaction with the other DC imprints. Everyone’s too busy! However, we are a part of Wildstorm, working out of the La Jolla offices, and we do interact with Wildstorm editorial on a daily basis. Hank Kanalz, our VP and General Manager, oversees the entire Wildstorm operation, including CMX. We also share Production people and resources with Wildstorm. All marketing for every DC imprint, including CMX, goes through the same department in New York. Management keeps an eye on the bigger picture and that’s where relationships between the various imprints are analyzed. Usually, we are not directly involved at that level. I can’t speak with any inside knowledge, but I have to add that I do admire DC’s efforts with Minx. A decision was made to do a line of books for girls that weren’t manga. It was studied and determined that such a potential market did exist. I think there are any number of American manga publishers right now who would have taken the Minx titles and just slapped a “manga” label on them and put them under the CMX imprint. But DC didn’t want to do that, and because of the company’s already existing record of editorial diversity, they were able to create a new brand to better serve a slightly different demographic.
DW: What are some of the early results of the Flex partnership going to mean for manga fans? New titles or delivery systems?
AS: We’re not ready to reveal our plans with Flex just yet, but we’ll be rolling out those plans over the next few months. We demonstrated the kind of online and mobile platforms Flex can support at San Diego Comicon this year.
DW: Now that CMX has started developing an imprint specifically for older audiences, is there any talk about branding product for other audience niches, like boys' love or yaoi?
JC: I do want to emphasize that the new Mature format does not constitute a new imprint. We aren’t calling it anything else or visually branding it apart in any other way. It’s just differentiated from the rest of the line by a change in size and a different price point. We simply don’t consider our line of books to be large enough, or the brand identity of CMX itself to be mature enough to warrant any sort of sub-branding at this point. The exception to this may be Flex, but that’s its own unique thing. For now, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to start spinning out a whole bunch of offshoots of CMX. And Asako and I tend not to be big fans of shoe horning our various titles into certain pre-existing labels. We have a number of titles that we think have potential audiences across several demographics, and why limit a larger, potential audience by saying, “Sorry, this is only for teen-age girls,” or “No, this is boys only.” Look at a title like The Recipe For Gertrude. Some people would brand this as Shojo, but we’ve found that there are certain male readers who respond to it as well. Or Emma. Okay, so it’s a romance. But anyone who loves comics and is a fan of great art and storytelling should be reading this book.
As for Yaoi, there’s definitely a market for it right now, but we think it’s already being very well served by other publishers. And again, we’re not big fans of labeling books by type. Manga has a certain tradition of depicting effeminate men, sexual ambiguity, homosexuality, etc. that you are going to find in any number of titles. We’re fans of good stories with good characters and interesting premises. If there’s a relationship between two or more male characters in a series, then that’s just one element of the overall story. Take a look at a title like From Eroica With Love. Would you consider that to be Yaoi? To me, it’s limiting to classify that title only by the sexual orientation of its lead character. The book works brilliantly on any number of levels: espionage tale, action, suspense, international intrigue and adventure, strong character-based comedy, etc.. There’s a lot to enjoy in Eroica and it would be limiting to say this is only a series of interest to those who enjoy Yaoi.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
