Forum - View topicNEWS: X-Men: Misfits, Wolverine: Prodigal Son Cancelled
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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With all respect to the creator who tried to make something of that Marvel Del Ray 'manga', I think it was a failed idea from the outset. If manga fans want to read about a reverse harem where a girl ends up with a bunch of guys, they'll read stuff like Fruits Basket or Ouran High Host Club. You're not going to trick them into reading X-Men by shoe horning the characters into a clone of one of those manga. Then you also turn off the X-men fans who might promote the title and instead they bad mouth it. At a local comic shop I was talking to the employees who run the manga section and they thought the Marvel Del Ray books were a sad attempt.
Pretty much Marvel should focus more on their stuff like Runaways and their own characters that would get through to the shojo crowd. Don't try to mimic a shojo art style (though this art isn't bad) and pretty much rip off Ouran. It's not manga. Mangophiles know that. You can't trick them by calling it manga. You have to make manga only fans learn to like comics. Period. You have to show why comics are just as good as manga, how they're the same thing under it all. Dressing it up as some cliche 'manga' tropes makes it actual manga as much as slanting your eyes and saying you like "flied lice" makes you Japanese. It's really just trying to match a stereotype. It's like learning to draw comics by reading comics and not studying anatomy. Now to be fair, the art wasn't bad. It was just they tried a little too hard to match popular shojo titles and trends rather than letting the characters be their own. Don't impersonate Oruan or other shojo titles. If fans want that, they'll read it. Hell, it's tough enough to get fans of the manga to actually buy the manga. Why would they even get near spending money on an X-Men clone of it. What's wrong with a title that just tells about Kitty joining the X-men? Sure have the same artist and shojo style, but no need to make it a boys school and put them in cliche Japanese uniforms. Doesn't Marvel have faith in their characters? Do they not think Kitty or any other younger or older Marvel characters can't resonate with kids today? You can't make it work by just making Kitty and the X-Men cosplay as Ouran or Fruits Basket. Then there's the Del Ray 'manga' of Wolverine. I haven't even looked at that one. I already got a manga version of Wolverine years ago when Marvel hired one of my favorite manga artists, Tsutomu Nihei, to do Wolverine: Snikt!. Then again Nihei is a bit more for the older teen crowd rather than shonen, but it's an actual manga artist. Though even then I'd maybe call it a comic book. It's out of respect to the artist I use his native word. To me, it's almost a disrespect to steal the word manga and call your own art 'manga' just because you draw big eyes on it and like Pokemons. (Pokemons with the pokee and the mons and the hippin and the hoppin. And the kids don't know what the Jazz.. is all about.) Now i'm sure some artists don't mind kids getting into this manga mind. Hell, I'm sure the publishers love to have American kids in the manga only mindset. Yet I think there's something wrong about American kids thinking American comics are so bad that they have to call their own American comics by a Japanese name for it to be good. That's something the whole industry needs to work on and get across to these kids. Hey, kids, comics aren't a four letter word. Of course in the end they're all comics. They're all manga. Two words for the same damn thing. Words and lines on a page. It's just that manga is a different family, a different gene pool of many styles. Nothing wrong with an artist finding artists they like from that and mimicking it. No more wrong than someone liking Jim Lee or Mike Mignola and mimicking them. Hell, I know Trigun's Nightow is a big fan of them, so the street goes both ways. I was at Jim Lee's panel at a con recently. I said I was at an anime con the previous week and saw a much younger and more female crowd there. I asked him about getting that audience into comics. Someone previous had also asked about Minx and he stated how that line just didn't work. I think he said some of that was also just a slump in the publishing market. Though it did sound like DC was well aware of the anime crowd and their demographics. I found it rather hilarious that Lee said he takes his kids to anime cons and no one notices him. So here's DC's big wig incognito among the anime fans, the market they want to tap into. He said he's even has sat down at a table in artist alley and does sketches in that generic anime style. That's just gold. One of the top artists in the US at a US con giving away sketches and no one notices him. Meanwhile at the comic con, there was a line hours long to see him. Amazing. Lee also made a comment on something that I've been thinking for a long time. Anime fandom is more of a fan focused thing. They're not as much into creators as much as US cons. He said how you see more fan activities like cosplay and fanart than you do talk about creators and of course meeting them. I was pretty impressed that he noticed it too. He knows what's going on. Of course it's much easier to have creators at cons and fans meeting them when they're from the same country and cons don't have to fund trans-Pacific flights. To be fair I've seen and been to some cons with manga creators and there are fans who do know their creators and want to meet them. So thankfully there are those creator aware fans out there. Yet I do more often see kids there just for the fan experience and general love of anime, not really aware of the creator side of things. They're more interested in their cosplay or fan music video to Linkin Park then buying a legit copy of the manga, never mind whatever American books are out there. You see more kids buying statues and pillowcases and other merch than actual anime and manga. You can't download a statue. At least not yet. I overheard one jackass talking about having a 3D printer at work and how he could try printing out Gundam parts. This was in front of a guy selling models. How the retailer didn't tell the kid off in anger, I'll never know. I wanted to punch the bastard myself. Anyway, aside from the manga scene, Lee also gave a shout out to the Twilight fangirls we like to bash. He said he appreciates any fandom that rabid into something, whether it's Batman or sparkly vampires. The question is, and he really didn't have a clear answer, How do we get those manga and Twilight fans reading American comic books? It's the million dollar question. Lee pretty much said DC has been scratching their heads for a while on how to tap into it. Obviously Marvel is too. I think Minx and these Del Ray Marvel manga are a step in the right direction, just the execution needs to be redined. The mangaphiles, when they do buy manga instead of just reading it on on pirate site, they are in the habit of buying the trades. Then again a vast majority of them are reading the single chapters free (and illegally) online. We simply don't have the market power like Japan does. With its anthology books with chapters, public transportation, and dozens of other things that make manga work in Japan, it simply won't work here in the states. So we have to look at how US manga fans consume comics, a weird hybrid of how Japan does it along with American releases and also with the devil of digital downloading. Obviously, there's no simple answer. Though I guess that didn't stop me for typing all this dancing around what the answer could be. |
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_V_
 Posts: 619 |
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to be honest, I've seen a lot of criticism of this Wolverine series...simply in terms of design, its kind of wacky. So I don't particularly mind it being canceled.
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mdo7
 Posts: 6517 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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To The Xenos:
I'll agree with you on what you said. I can't believe they cancelled the second volume. I bought both of them to show support for OEL manga and I enjoy reading both X-men and Wolverine. The story was enjoyable to me and I expected the second volume to come out. Now I'll never get chance to read the second volume. I blame anime/manga haters who like DC and Marvel but hate anime and manga. I also blame weeaboos that despite OEL manga for this also. [EDIT: No need to quote the entire post when you can just refer to the user by name. -TK] |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I'm saddened by this since I know the creators involved with the Misfits title via my work with Girlamatic.com, and because it was one that really appealed to me- it apparently did find a sizeable market, just not enough of a market for the readjusted licensing costs that popped up when Vol.2's contract came around I guess.
Xenos--- I loved the bit in Trigun Max where the bio comic was Nightow meeting Mignola and being awed by his godly comicking powers. I do think that Tokyopop marketing their titles as "authentic" manga did backfire in having manga fans become very reclusive as to what they read. It set about an odd trend that painted US comics as "bad" or "not for manga fans", though I'm guessing manga fans only seeing US comics as SuperHero comics [and probably "Superhero Comics" as "early 90's Liefieldian Superhero comics"] which is pretty far from the truth. I know we've quibbled on stuff like calling OEl titles manga in the past, but I agree with a lot of what you said. The whole thing about how anime fans view creators vs. how comic fans view them is a key thing, and an interesting take- domestic comic fans interact with their fave artists/writers online and in person at Cons, and it creates a very different atmosphere from the pure consumption habits of many anime fans. Anime/manga fans seem to have little empathy or sympathy when a book gets cancelled, an artist complains about scans of their work, or an artist encounters other difficulties. Not saying all anime fans are that bad, just that I've generally seen better behaviour among comic fans [who aren't without their own sins, given that scans are also a problem for that fandom, but when they rally around a creator, they really do it, from stuff like comics to raise funds for Dave Cockrum's widow to when Lea Hernandez's house burned down]. I guess that's why for the most part, domestic manga-style comics operate at the level of most non-marvel/dc comics, and are often read by the same people/audiences as SLG, Oni Press's and other small pubs works [which often also include manga-styled comics, and have done so for 3 decades now, long before anyone knew what OEL was]. ps-- I have 2 signed Svetlana Chmakova books , 2 signed Shaenon Garrity webcomics collections, a signed Darwyn Cooke book, all with sketches on top of it, and they are way awesomer than anyones crappy scanlations folder will ever, ever be. |
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Tomibiki
 Posts: 837 |
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Wow...they really tried this? Points for going out on a limb I guess.
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I dunno, it seemed less wacky the Joe Mad's late 90's Capcom-styled super squat Wolverine, which kind of became his general look until Hugh Jackman gave him human growth hormones. Anyone remember when he wore a Bandana as a mask because his face had mutated because having no adamantium affected his powers or something? Crazy times. Also, for those looking for X-men channelled through 70's Shojo manga tropes and British Girl's comics, checkout the digest collection of the 80's Firestar miniseries. Drama, Trauma, Emma Frost and Ponies! Not quite as crazy and cool as Manga Mohawk Storm, Tin Toy-styled Collosus and Totoro Beast though If you want to get your Japanese X-men on, also be sure to check out Essential X-men, Frank Miller's Wolverine mini or any of the Wolverine Essential collections. The X-men spent a fair amount of time in Japan in the 80's. I think there's a collection of the Wolverine and Kitty Pryde miniseries out too, wherein Wolverine meets up with Kitty while she's in Japan on a business trip with her dad, and ends up getting trained in the ninja arts by his old mentor for sinister purposes. I also have an awesome issue of What The wherein Wolverine and Chris Claremont reinact Lone Wolf and Cub, in a style very close to that manga [Lol- Lone Wolve' and Chris]. If you're a longtime X-men nerd, and your exposure goes beyond the movies, something like X-men Misfits doesn't seem entirely out of place. Gonna repeat my hope that Marvel picks up the title themselves and concludes both series. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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The Xenos, did you notice how much you contridicted yourself within that one, long, yet quite insightful post?
Let's start with "if called by any other name..." I long for the day manga and anime fans will stop their rabid efforts to distinguish what they love from other, similar forms of entertainment produced around the world. How about calling it all "sequential art" and "animation" and stop trying to out-geek one another based on your favored entertainment's country of origin. That will be the day! As for the titles in question, I've read both and am very upset over the news of their cancellation. 1. With all the "Alternate Universe" stories both Marvel and DC produce in-house (Superman: Red Son, for examle) there is plenty of room foralternate tellings of X-Men characters in any given art style. 2. Both attempts were quite good, with "Misfits" being quite a bit better than "Prodigal Son", IMHO (probably due to the fact that the former had more well established and less "original" characters than the latter). Misfits was not simply a mix of Ouran and X-Men, it was an original story story that maintained the integrity of the characters it reimagined, especially Kitty Pride. Yes, the reverse harem setting was a bit offputting (one reason I was looking forward to Vol 2 was the promise of more girls added to the mix), but Kitty was portrayed as a very strong heroine, one who would break up with a hot guy and end up "lonely" (a fate worth than death in most "authentic" Shojo) than stay in a relationship with a bad influence. The book had great art and plot with promise for more, and I mourn that lost opportunity to see Kitty grow up in an alternative, manga-influneced universe. Xenos, you asked how mainstream American comic publishers can capture a female manga consuming audience. I have two ideas: 1. Stop producing a succession of Never-Ending-Stories aimed at adult men and 2. When you have a NYT bestselling manga/comics collaboration in your lap, DON'T CANCEL IT!!! |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I think Xenos had some good points, though it's best to strain out his critique of Misfits as moreso his personal reaction to the material- everything after that was interesting points.
I liked X-men Misfits myself, and enjoyed the past MangaVerse events Marvel had done- the Punisher oneshot was a really amusing twist on the name, logo and inventive in the manga context concept [I still wish someonelse'ld use Skangi Ho]. I imagine we'll see Marvel tackle this stuff again at some point, and manga will continue to have an influence on domestic comics [oddly, the most active time period for anime/mangainfluenced creators came before the big boom, with J Scott Campbell's Danger Girls, Joe Mad's Battle Chasers and Humberto Ramos's Crimson under Wildstorm, and the artwork said creators used on Uncanny X-men, Impulse and Gen13 that preceded those- there was a large influx of cartoony styles in the late 90's, even in Chris Bachalo's shift on Generation X into a more cartoony style] |
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edzieba
Posts: 704 |
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Youkai Warrior
 Posts: 505 Location: Sarayashiki |
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I was never interested in either Wolverine: Prodigal Son or X-men: Misfits. Like The Xenos said, Misfits felt like Fruits Basket and Ouran High School Host Club, both of which do it better. But I feel bad for the artists that worked hard on these, and for the readers who actually liked them. I've had some series I liked canceled, but just like me, I'm sure those fans will be able to move on.
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wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
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So Misfits made the Bestseller list and it still wasn't making enough money to justify it? Wow, that's rather scary actually, I thought that the point of the bestseller list was "naaahhhh, our book is making so much money and we can afford to have sequels!" guess it ain't so.
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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If you ask me the problem is that Marvel and DC are both stuck in the exact same rut as the anime industry. They're both just surviving on their existing, aging fanbase. Except where anime puts out a whole lot of pandering crap that's totally unappealing to new fans, Marvel and DC put out nonsense that's completely impenetrable to anyone but their die hard fans. I mean, just try this: Pretend you don't know anything about comic book characters or their world already and try reading any given mainstream Marvel/DC comic. It's utterly impenetrable. There's no real starting point, no continuity, no real way to just read a single series. There's an endless parade of established characters, technology, and other bullshit that they don't even bother to explain. They even start new series and this is immediately the case. Hell, they even start new universes like Ultimate Marvel and this immediately becomes the case. It's totally impossible for new fans to break into it or for that matter, for anyone to enjoy it in a vaguely casual capacity.
It doesn't help either that they're stuck in this sort of half and half level of maturity. Everyone wants to ape the complex, intelligent and genuinely mature stuff that started the whole 'modern age' of comics but as far as the mainstream stuff goes, it's just a pale imitation. All they manage to do is lose the fun and heroism of classic comics without actually making the step up to telling genuinely mature and intelligent stories. As a result, it only actually appeals to these man-boy comic fans. That's really the bottom line. Younger readers have not flocked to manga because it's so bloody great. They've flocked away from mainstream US comics because they've become total shit. For this reason, you can't just trick them into coming back by slapping a manga style and some manga cliches onto your stuff. You've got to actually start putting stuff out there that's decent. At least DC has managed to carve out a solid niche for themselves with their Vertigo imprint. It's a perfect example of the genuinely intelligent and mature stories that most comics fail to be. It's no wonder Marvel finds them self in trouble. If you want something like that from marvel...well I hope you like Criminal or Powers or one of the other half dozen series from their Icon imprint. Although as much as I hate to say it, that's not even the point. The kids that read Naruto and Bleach and other popular manga don't want this kind of thing. Again, the bottom line is that they need to get the mainstream stuff off of this ridiculous 'universe' mentality and back to being actual mainstream appealing stuff. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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@ikillchicken
re: continuity OH GAWD YES!! When people ask me what the primary difference between manga and American comic books are, I say one of the big ones is that manga series are generally self-contained, with a beginning and an end and only one writer and they last a set period of time. While clearly there are American works that fit this description (many of the greats), that isn't true of, say, "Superman" or "Spider-man." I haven't even attempted to touch the Marvel universe, I see no good starting point; I jumped in at "Gotham Central" in the DC side and managed to survive with a little backtracking here and there thanks to having seen the cartoon show. But yeah, manga for all that it's now published "backwards" is easier to read because it reads like a book or series of books and not like a giant web of interconnecting stories written by a small army of different authors, some of whom seem intent on derailing your characters (BatgirlBatgirlBagirl(. re: "manga style" Yeah... this is what has always boggled my mind, what even counts as "drawing in a manga style"? Do people who say this actually read manga? Have they really looked at the works of Osamu Tezuka, Rumiko Takahashi, Urasawa Naoki, Katsuhiro Otomo, Masamune Shirow, Nihei Tsutomu, Miura Kentarou, Yuuki Kaoru, Watase Yuu, Souryou Fuyumi, Arakawa Hiromu, Goseki Kojima, Mitsuru Adachi, Hiroaki Samura, Riyoko Ikeda, Takehiko Inoue, CLAMP etc. etc. etc. and seen one single cohesive style to emulate? Ugh... "manga" are just Japanese comic books! I read lots of awesome non-Japanese comic books too. If you skip out on Watchmen, the Sandman Chronicles, or Fun Home just because they weren't originally written in Japanese, you're missing towering works of literature. All that aside, it sucks to see anyone lose a job, especially in this economy. I hope you guys get on projects next time that pan out for you better than this did. 
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sepherest
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First off: TL;DR for all those essay-length posts I spy.
Anyway, this is just too bad. I picked up Misfits and it was actually a pretty decent alternate take on the X-Men universe (a bit fan-ficish, but still worth the buy to me). I liked how it focused on Kitty, and the character redesigns looked nice. This is dissapointing, but it's happened to many other series, whether American or Japanese. It's just how it goes. |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1043 |
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I don't really care about these, and I agree with the top of Xenos' gargantuan post that this was probably "a failed idea from the outset". But even so, it seems pretty rotten stopping before the second volume.
For one thing, it's a betrayal of those who did buy the first volumes and are left with half a plot arc. Are they going to be encouraged to hop into new series in the future? Next time, they'll probably wait to see if it continues (meaning it definitely won't, because nobody will buy it). For another, who knows, word of mouth might have spread by the release of the second volume and increased sales to a barely acceptable level. At the least, it probably would have helped them sell out of their extra copies of volume 1. Since the authors have already been paid, they could at least release the second volumes for free on-line or something... turn it into some sort of marketing thing. P.S. -- Guess this also shows just how easy it is to get onto the New York Times Bestseller list. |
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