From Publishers' Weekly Comics Week: Brigid Alverson (of MangaBlog fame) interviewed shojo manga scholar and translator Matt Thorn, who reflected on his early days working with VIZ Media before Sailor Moon blew open the doors for shojo manga in America.
Matt Thorn: "(VIZ) knew I was interested in shojo manga, but they said it would be impossible to sell shojo manga in the U.S."
PWCW: "Did you evangelize for it?"
Matt Thorn: "I started evangelizing. First I told them, 'This whole business model is unmanageable. You're selling to a subset of a subset. Normal people never walk into comic shops.' I said, 'You should skip the whole leaflet format, publish shojo manga in paperback form, and get them on the shelves alongside the youth novels or romance novels.' The editor laughed out loud. 'We could never even get a foot in the door of the big book chains.'"
"So we started modestly. The first project was two short stories by Keiko Nishi, which we published in an 80-page comic book titled Promise. Critically, it was very well received. In terms of sales, not so much. Which isn't surprising, since you could only get it at a comic book shop. The growth of the anime fan community was what fueled everything, for better or worse. They were our core customers."
Thorn also talked about his recent translation work for stories by est em, the creator of Seduce Me After the Show and Red Blinds the Foolish from Deux Press.
Matt Thorn: "est em, whose real name is Maki Satoh, is a former student and dear friend of mine. Most artists, including est em, have little input in the exporting of their work. So one day her editor told her, "We're putting out an English language edition of your first book," and then months later, she mentions it to me. So I freaked out and said, 'Are you serious!? When!? Your work's too sophisticated to be translated by some hack!' So we asked her editor, and learned that the translation was already done, but the editor asked me if I would check it. I ended up pretty much redoing it. For the second volume, I was in from the beginning."Seduce Me After the Show was my pick for the Best New Yaoi / Boys Love Manga of 2008. Want to see more? Check out an online preview of Red Blinds the Foolish, and a preview of Seduce Me After the Show.
Image credit: © est em & Tokyo Mangasha
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