Marvel NOW: Big Sales, Steep Drop; Can Manga Survive?; Radical's Surprising Return

News Manga 2013: A Smaller, More Sustainable Market The manga market may be smaller than it was five years ago, but a substantial fanbase remains. Publishers are optimistic that the decline has come to an end, that long-awaited digital initiatives are attracting readers, and that the manga market is stabilizing at a new, sustainable level. more Analysis: Marvel NOW Has A Sales Retention Problem Marvel NOW launched big, with sales estimates on flagship title Uncanny Avengers estimated at almost 304K copies. But the size of that launch may be deceptive, as it appears Marvel NOW is having trouble retaining sales after the first issues have shipped. In the case of Uncanny Avengers, estimated at 84K copies of March's issue #5, sales have dropped 72%. more The MoCCA Arts Fest Returns Under New Management The MoCCA Arts Festival, The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's annual celebration of small press and self-published comics, opened over the weekend at the historic Lexington Avenue Armory to exhibitors and crowds of several thousand fans anxious to see a show revamped and under new management. more Radical Returns To Publishing Behind Upcoming Film Slate With two new movies based on their graphic novels coming out—including next week's Oblivion—Radical Studios is poised to make a return to publishing, after a year in which they concentrated on their film properties and developing new digital models. New projects include a third Hercules graphic novel and an entrance into the digital world with a new app, called Radical Universe. more Kids Comic Con Returns May 11 to Bronx Community College The seventh annual Kids Comic Con will kick off on May 11 with more than 30 exhibitors, including Viz Media, Papercutz, Archie Comics, Jim Henson/Sesame Street and Scholastic Book Fairs, in addition to a slate of panels, film screenings and hands-on workshops on creating comics. more Dark Horse Celebrates 25 Years Publishing Manga When Dark Horse first started publishing manga in 1988, the manga market in the U.S. wasn't small, it was microscopic. more Seven Seas Manga: Small, Nimble and Growing Seven Seas Entertainment launched in 2004 with a line of Original English Language manga and started licensing Japanese titles the following year. Over the last three years their sales have tripled. more Today's Job J. Paul Getty Trust is seeking a Marketing Coordinator. Maybe it's you! For more about this and other jobs, visit PW JobZone. To post a new job, click here. DeviantART Partners With Madefire For Comics/Storytelling Platform DeviantART, the online artists' community, has entered into a strategic partnership with Madefire, the comics software/publishing hybrid known for its Motion Books publishing platform and iOS app. more Papercutz, Stardoll Ink Deal to Produce Graphic Novel Series Papercutz and teen girl online community Stardoll are teaming up to produce a series of graphic novels about a group of friends trying to make it in the fashion business. Attracting more than 200 million members from around the world, Stardoll focuses on fashion, dress-up, shopping, decorating, and social gaming. more JManga Shuts Down: Robert Newman Answers Some Questions On May 30, Jmanga.com, a site organized by Japanese publishers to offer paid legal access to digital manga, will shut down and its members will lose access to any manga they purchased through the site. PW was able to talk to Robert Newman, JManga's former business manager, who answered some, though not all, questions about the site. more Frederator Hires David Wilk To Run New E-book Unit Animation house Frederator is launching Frederator Books, a digital publishing imprint with plans to release 100 digital titles in 2013 and brought in publishing and distribution veteran David Wilk to direct the line of children's illustrated e-books. more Protests Continue Over 'Persepolis' Ban The controversy continues over the Chicago Public Schools restricting access to Marjane Satrapi's memoir of life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. As free speech advocates from six national organizations weigh in on the ban, hundreds of students wanting to participate in a sit-in inside one high school library were locked out. Meanwhile, Chicago-area independent bookstores are reporting brisk sales of all three editions of Satrapi's memoirs. more Marvel, Warren Ellis Team To Launch Line of Original Graphic Novels While Marvel Comics has been notably absent from the field of original graphic novels in recent years, they have jumped back in with a bang, announcing Avengers: Endless Wartime by Warren Ellis and Mike McKone for release in October. more Archie's Kevin Keller Gets a Novel Veteran comics writer Paul Kupperberg—who created the wildly popular issue of the Life with Archie magazine in which Kevin Keller, Archie Comics' groundbreaking gay character, marries his partner—is releasing a new prose novel, Kevin, through Penguin's Grosset & Dunlap children's imprint on April 18. Aimed at kids eight to 12, the novel is focused on Keller's life before he meets the Archie gang and follows him through middle school, where he deals with issues relating to his weight, bullying, sexuality and other sensitive teen issues. more DBD to Distribute Gen Manga Titles to Book Trade Gen Manga, a digital and print publisher specializing in Japanese indie manga, has signed with Diamond Book Distributors for print distribution to the book trade. more Chicago Board of Education Defends 'Persepolis' Ban In a letter sent to free speech advocates yesterday, a lawyer for the Chicago Board of Education defended the restrictions on students' access to Persepolis. more Chicago Schools Restrict Access to 'Persepolis' Chicago Public Schools, which oversees 600 schools, is under fire for pulling from classrooms Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's coming-of-age memoir of her youth in Iran. more Digtal Manga Portal JManga.com Abruptly Shuts Down JManga.com, a digital manga retail site organized by the Japanese Digital Comics Association, comprised of 39 of Japan's biggest manga publishers, will be shut down for good effective May 30. Manga purchased at the site cannot be downloaded and will be lost completely to the purchaser after that date. more More To Come: The PW Comics World Podcast More To Come 47.2: The New MoCCA Arts Fest Special Part 2 In this week's podcast the More to Come Crew's roving reporters – Heidi "The Beat" MacDonald and Calvin Reid – report live from MoCCA Arts Fest in New York, interviewing Mark Siegel, Jason Little, Tucker Stone, Marguerite Van Cook and James Romberger on PWCW's More to Come. More More To Come 47.1: The New MoCCA Arts Fest Special Part 1 In this week's podcast the More to Come Crew – Heidi "The Beat" MacDonald, Calvin Reid and Kate Fitzsimons – discuss Rick Remender and the Mutant M-Word, a new day for Marvelman and Madefire's motion comic teamup with DeviantART. Also, Calvin reports live from MoCCA Arts Fest, interviewing Karen Green from the MoCCA steering committee and Columbia's academic library graphic novel collection on PWCW's More to Come. More More To Come 46: Exit JManga, Persepolis Banned In this week's podcast the More to Come Crew – Heidi "The Beat" MacDonald, Calvin Reid and Kate Fitzsimons – discuss the closing of JManga, the Chicago school ban on Persepolis, writer turnover and turmoil at DC, the digital promotion that crashed Comixology and Marvel, a very interesting panel on Fredric Wertham and much more on PWCW's More to Come. More Reviews The Initiates: A Comic Artist and a Wine Artisan Exchange Jobs Etienne Davodeau, Trans. by Joe Johnson. NBM/ComicsLit, $29.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-56163-703-4 This intensely thought-provoking graphic novel makes us pause to consider our relationships with other people and asks us to think about who we are, what we do, and how we perceive and relate to the world around us. Davodeau (Le Constat) approaches wine maker Richard Leroy with a proposition: that the two spend several months together teaching one another about their respective vocations. Leroy would read graphic novels, attend conventions, and meet people in the industry, while Davodeau would learn the ins and outs of harvesting a grape crop and running a vineyard. more My Dirty Dumb Eyes Lisa Hanawalt. Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 trade paper (120p) ISBN 978-1-77046-116-1 Imagine a grown-up Richard Scarry turned absurdist social commentator, and a world where dogs sit in houses made of fish. Hanawalt's humor comics, which previously appeared in publications like Vanity Fair and the New York Times Book Review, are collected here for the first time. The disparate subject matter allows her to showcase her different styles: scantily clad animal-people in bright colors and action-packed scenes of chaos segue into painterly images of Anna Wintour riding an ostrich or detailed illustrations of animals in strange hats. more Fatale: Book 2 - The Devil's Business Web Exclusive Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Image, $14.99 (136p) ISBN 978-1-60706-618-7 This collection hits just the right combination of horror and intrigue to keep readers turning the pages—though with no small amount of trepidation. At the centre of the story is Josephine, a mysterious woman who finds herself not only having to guard against the intrigues of 1970s Hollywood, but against Satanic cults and a cadre of wealthy perverts with bizarre tastes in black market film. If Josephine is in the 1970s, however, how is she haunting every waking moment of Nicolas Lash, an amputee from the present who's desperately bent on discovering her secrets? more St. Francis and Brother Duck Jay Stoeckl. Paraclete, $15.99 trade paper (144p) ISBN 978-1-61261-159-4 Few could match the passion of Giovanni Francesco Bernardone for the unencumbered life, more theological than logical. To people like his father, he looked like a fool, while to debut talent Stoeckl, a secular Franciscan, St. Francis serves as a transcendent model to whom he pays homage in a comic-book biography of the saint—with a duck (a comic foil and discussion partner) who accompanies Francis through a lifetime of asceticism. While the premise is quirky—telling the story of poverty-seeking clergy while giving a fictional fowl second billing—the purity of Stoeckl's vision, not to mention Francis's, makes it compelling. more Graphic Preview Photo Mania: The MoCCA Arts Festival 2013 The MoCCA Arts Festival, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's annual indie and self-published comics festival, returns under new management by the Society of Illustrators. PW Comics World was there and brought back some fantastic images from the show. more Panel Mania: Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes In the city of Red Wheelbarrow, Detective Gould, the world's greatest detective, catches every criminal in the city. However, a rash of random and eccentric crimes has him stumped. There are strange crimes such as the compulsive chair thief, a novelist who uses stolen signs to write her magnum opus, and a photographer who documents people's most anguished personal moments. Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes is by Max Kindt and will be released by First Second on May 7. more Panel Mania: Dial H Vol. 1 Written by the Hugo Award-winning novelist China Mieville, Dial H Vol. 1: Into You is set in the the town of Littleville, CO, where a troubled young man stumbles upon the lost H-Dial and the the power it possesses. Dial H Vol. 1: Into You will be released by DC Comics on April 17 in comic book stores and on April 23 in bookstores everywhere. more Panel Mania: Punk Rock Jesus Punk Rock Jesus is written and illustrated by Sean Murphy, the artist of Joe the Barbarian and American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest. In the near future, a new reality show has an unlikely celebrity, a clone of Jesus Christ. He causes an outrage on a reality TV series, J2, and then as rebellious teenager when he joins a punk rock band. Punk Rock Jesus is published by Vertigo. more Panel Mania:Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Magic Within During the Day Sabrina Spellman is your average teenage girl at Greendale High, where she has a crush on Harvey on the basketball team. However, at night Sabrina enters a magic realm where she attends a charm school to learn witchcraft with a handsome and mysterious boy Shinji. Sabrina the Teenage Witch: The Magic Within is written and illustrated by Tania del Rio and is published by Archie Comics. more	Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Comics Events 4/9 Jane Esperson & Brad Bell "Husbands" Signing in New York, NY 4/10 "Man of Steel vs. Orson Scott Card" with David Gerrold, Danny Fingeroth & More in New York, NY 4/14 Lucy Knisley "Relish" Signing in San Francisco, CA On Sale Calendar The Adventures of Jodelle (Fantagraphics) Adventure Time Vol. 1 Playing With Fire (Kaboom) Dial H Vol. 1: Into You (DC) Happy! Vol. 1 (Image) My Dog: The Paradox: A Lovable Discourse about Man's Best Friend (Andrews McMeel) Oz: Road to Oz (Marvel) The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame (PictureBox) Raven Girl (Abrams) Vader's Little Princess (Chronicle) Worlds' Finest, Vol. 1: The Lost Daughters of Earth 2 (DC)

PW Comics World editors: Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald Assistant Editor: Matt White Panel Mania editor: Ada Price Podcast Producer and Comics Events editor: Kate Fitzsimons Follow us on Twitter at @PWComicsWeek and on Facebook. Send advertising questions about this eNewsletter to: cbryerman@publishersweekly.com For additional assistance, contact us by email or at the address below. Publishers Weekly, 71 West 23 St. #1608 New York, NY 10010 Phone 212-377-5500 Copyright 2013, PWxyz LLC Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to a Publishers Weekly e-newsletter. To unsubscribe, click the link below.

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