To Japan and Back: Cirque du Freak Travels the World

Darren Shan's Cirque du Freakis a story with legs: originally an Irish young adult novel, it was licensed in Japan and proved so popular there that it was adapted into a manga for Japan'sWeekly Shonen Sunday,a weekly manga anthology magazine, with art by Takahiro Arai. It's the story of aboy who takes a flyer for a mysterious circus only to find it has a cast of ghoulish performers. Now U.S. graphic novel publisher Yen Press is translating the manga into English, with an initial print run of 65,000 copies for volume 1.The book is the story of a kid who takes a flyer for a mysterious circus, only to find out it’s a circus of vampires.A movie based on the novels is slated for release next year. Yen Press's publishing director Kurt Hassler talked to us about the book, and Darren Shan chimed in via e-mail.

PW Comics Week: Darren, how do you feel about having your novel turned into a manga?

Darren Shan: I was delighted! I've always been a big comics fan, mostly British comics as a child and teenager, though I branched out more when I was a bit older and was able to get access to a wider variety of material. It was brilliant to have my work adapted at all, but even more exciting to see it come out as a manga, which is a bit more exotic!

PWCW: What were the differences between the two presentations?

DS:The artist obviously had to make changes to make the story work in a visual format, but he stayed as faithful to the tone of the series as he could, and didn't make any major plot alterations.They did cut out a lot of the circus scenes from the first book, which is probably the only thing in the entire manga run that I wish they could have done differently. But because the manga were originally released in weekly installments in Japan, they needed to ensure that every week's section moved the plot a bit further along—they didn't have the luxury which I had of slowing the tempo down and taking plot detours.

PWCW: Did the manga move the story in an unexpected direction?

DS:It was fascinating to see my characters reinterpreted through an artist's eye—they don't look exactly how I imagined them when I wrote the books, but then again, I'm sure that no fan imagines them to exact same way that I do either! I think the artist gave certain characters even more flair than I could, and he was also able to have the fast-paced scenes flow more smoothly than in the books. He was also, of course, able to learn from my mistakes and boost certain parts of the storyline. I actually think that the second manga volume,The Vampire's Assistant,works even better than it did as a book!

PWCW: Kurt, how did Yen Press get Cirque du Freak?

Kurt Hassler: I read the books prior to working at Yen, when I was still working at Borders, and I was a fan of them then. When we established Yen Press, we sort of had in our minds the things we would like to work on manga adaptations for, and Cirque du Freak was on that short list. We didn't know at the time that it was being done in Japan. We found out it already existed at a meeting in Frankfurt, and we started making phone calls and expressing interest.

Obviously, with Little Brown Books for Young Readers [a division of Hachette] publishing the novels in the U.S., it was a very natural thing to keep it in houseand we have great opportunities to cross-promote. In fact, they have gone back and are repackaging the series with new covers. Darren has another series,The Demonata, and we're going to be putting excerpts of the manga for Cirque du Freak into the Demonatabooks. We are going to be giving away samplers cross-promoting the prose novels and the manga and we did an interview inYen Plusmagazine with Darren Shan and the manga-ka.

PWCW: How did Shogakukan, the Japanese publisher, choose the artist?

KH: They had an open competition by invitation of the editors, and Darren made the final decision.

PWCW: Who is the intended audience?

KH:It is definitely a boy book. It's an adventure story with a young boy as the main character, so that is going to be the intended audience- boys in the 12 and up range.

PWCW: The story has now been translated from English to Japanese and back to English again. Did your translator and adaptor refer to the original English text?

KH: They were given the novels to get a feel for Darren's prose style and then did the adaptation from the Japanese, bearing the tone and the voice of the novels in mind. After that translation was done, we did our editorial passes on it, but Darren takes passes on these books too, so he feels the dialogue is true to the series and the tone of the characters. Even though Darren was involved [in the manga adaptation] and was seeing the art all the way through, he hadn't gotten to read the material in English until we did our translation. As we were doing our editorial passes and sending them to him, he has been nothing but complimentary.

PWCW:How closely do the manga volumes correspond to the 12 novels?

KH: It's one to one.

PWCW: How has the manga altered the world of the story to make it work visually? Did that change the age level from the expected readership of the novel?

KH: I wouldn't say the manga is a different age level than the novel. In terms of enhancing it, I think bringing that visual quality to it but in a way that is appropriate for the intended audience was done very effectively . It's so visual, the characters are so interesting, that for that reluctant reader, you not only have prose but you have the manga to bring them into the prose. For a librarian that's like manna from heaven.