Despite predictions of a down year in other sectors of the economy, publishers and editors of children’s comics and graphic novels at New York Comic-Con were optimistic that their category is poised for growth. Properties aimed at readers 13 years old and under were prominent both on the floor and in the panels and the booths for publishers with strong children’s lines, such as First Second, Top Shelf, Oni Press, and Archie Comics were bustling.
At the DC booth, fans lined up to have creators sign posters featuring Billy Batson, Tiny Titans, and the eighth-grade incarnation of Supergirl. Representatives from nonfiction graphic novel publisher Stone Arch Press were holding portfolio reviews all day Saturday, and Disney editors announced during their panel that they were actively seeking artists for their From the Disney Vault line. At the Kids Love Comics booth, a collective of kids comics self-publishers, Amelia Rules creator Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules will now be published by S&S) and his fellow all-ages comics artists were busy talking to a steady stream of admirers.
Sunday was Kids day and while traffic seemed lighter than on Saturday, the floor was still crowded and there were plenty of young people were on hand throughout the con.
At Saturday’s PWCW-sponsored Comics Industry panel, “Selling Good Books in a Bad Economy,”.Kuo-yu Liang, v-p of sales and marketing for Diamond Book Distributors, was bullish on kids’ comics. “We see the category growing,” he said, although he cautioned that titles needed to be priced sensibly and affordably. Publishers also have a variety of channels that can exploit to get graphic novels into the hands of children’s, including bookstores, libraries, schools and book fairs, and he noted the importance of licensing. “If you go down the kids’ aisles, everything is licensed,” he said, citing material like the Transformers books carried by mass market retailer Wal-Mart as an example.
“I think there is real growth in quality children’s literature in comics formats,” said literary agent Judith Hansen. “I see publishers coming to me asking for quality literature in the comics format.” She cited Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese as an example of a title that could be found in both the adult graphic novel section and the children’s section in a bookstore. “Books that have that crossover will be a growth area for the industry,” she said.
One trend that was apparent throughout the weekend is that companies are hedging their bets by developing graphic novels based on already popular prose properties such as Erin Hunter’s Warriors series or Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl. At the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference on Thursday, Jennifer Besser, executive editor at the Disney-Hyperion Book Group, said that the first Artemis Fowl graphic novel has “exceeded expectations” for sales and said the company is looking at adapting other popular middle-grade properties, such as Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, into graphic novel form.
Marco Pavia of Tokyopop pointed to his company’s publishing deal with HarperCollins, which allows Tokyopop to produce original manga based on HarperCollins properties. “We don’t transform the novel into manga,” he said. “We create original stories based on that universe.” So far the company has published manga based on Erin Hunter’s Warriors novels, and all of them have been BookScan best-sellers, he said.
At the Disney panel on Saturday, editors discussed several different lines. Original graphic novels remain a key part of the mix, with the second volume of Kean Soo’s Jellaby debuting in April. Literary adaptations include The Amulet of Samarkand, from the Bartimaeus trilogy, due out in fall 2010, to be followed by The Lightning Thief, the first Percy Jackson graphic novel. Also in the works is an adaptation of Colfer’s The Supernaturalist.
Disney continues to mine its existing properties as well, with a line called From the Disney Vault that will comprise 120-page graphic novels based on older live-action movies. Ahmet Zappa and Christian Beranek, whose Kingdom Comics will produce the graphic novels for Disney, were on hand to discuss the project but would speak only in “vagueries,” declining to name specific titles. Boom! Studios is producing a line of comic books based on Pixar movies as well as Muppet Tales, parodies of public-domain stories, such as Robin Hood, that feature the Muppets, and Gemstone continues to publish collections of the classic Disney series.
At the Random House Children’s Books booth, publicist Dominique Cimina discussed upcoming properties that include Babymouse: The Musical, Jarrett Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute, and Erik Craddock’s Stone Rabbit: BC Mambo.
For manga fans, the best news of the convention was that Yen Press has acquired the license for the popular all-ages manga Yotsuba&! beginning with the sixth volume. ADV Manga published volumes 1-5 but has not released a new volume in over a year. Yen Press publishing director Kurt Hassler said that his company would negotiate with ADV and, if necessary, the original licensor, to get the license for the earlier volumes. And Udon’s Erik Ko was showing off advance copies of Udon’s new children’s manga line, four Japanese series aimed at readers 7-12 that are due out in April, and both Viz and CMX spotlighted children’s titles in their panels.
