Just a week after Bandai Entertainment announced it would stop releasing new material — and laid off three of its five employees — another anime and manga publisher looks like it is hitting the shoals. Media Blasters announced yesterday it’s laying off 60 percent of its staff, although there is no plan to cut the catalog.

Media Blasters is chiefly an anime publisher, although it does have a small line of manga, under both its own name and in its adult line Kitty Media. This 2007 Publishers Weekly article mentions the company had a catalog of about 20 yaoi titles and was planning a shift from shonen to yaoi. Three years later, it canceled most of those titles. Blogger Lissa Pattillo commented back then that quality had slipped quite a bit:

Pick up a book from MB in 2004 and you had a professional looking package – pick up a book from MB (boys’ love in particular) after 2007 and yikes. Crimson Spell and Yokai’s Hunger, both popluar series with high-profile creators amidst genre fans, had some pretty shoddy treatment in regards to lettering and adaptation, especially comparatively to their older books. It’s a real shame.

It sounds like Media Blaster’s marketing wasn’t up to snuff either. As Lissa points out, the company hasn’t been updating its website or Twitter account; its website takes visitors straight to Facebook (memo to publishers: Facebook is not a substitute for a proper website).

What I found particularly disturbing was this comment in the Anime News Network article from CEO John Sirabella regarding the employees who were laid off:

He noted that the company will ask former staff members to continue to work on a freelance basis, but he does not expect all of the laid-off employees to agree to this. Sirabella also stated, “All of the small publishers are going through this sort of thing right now. Not just anime. Everyone’s transitioning from full-time staff to freelancers.”

That may be true — Tokyopop did it, too — but it’s a terrible trend. Basically, publishers are converting solid, well-paying jobs with benefits to lower-paid, less-secure jobs with no benefits. This is not only disrespectful and downright harmful to the employees, who are now being paid less to do the same work, it is also shortsighted. Exploiting your staff is not the road to a quality product.

We just had a long discussion about the structural problems of the anime market, and I won’t rehash that. Media Blasters is very different from Bandai, and it looks as if the company was having issues for quite a while. For the moment, at least, Media Blasters isn’t shutting down, and anime fans can relax in the knowledge that Squid Girl is on the way. It’s depressing to see the company join the race to the bottom in terms of the way it treats employees, though, and I hope this isn’t just one more loop on a downward spiral.

The big news in anime and manga circles last week was the announcement that Bandai Entertainment will stop releasing new anime and manga. The current catalog will stay in print, and the company will focus on licensing its products to other companies, but three of its five employees have been laid off.

Like manga, the anime industry in the U.S. has been troubled for a long time, and it’s tempting to blame this on piracy. Indeed, that’s exactly what Charles Maib of Kotaku did. Maib admits he doesn’t follow the anime and manga scene much any more, but that doesn’t stop him from delivering some strong opinions. What Maib does know is what it was like to be an old-time otaku, when you made your own fansubs with love and VHS tapes and chewing gum and chicken wire (which may have been technically illegal but wasn’t harming the industry at all), and also how much work it is to make your own content. Maib himself is a content creator, and he has a long paragraph where he explains all the steps you have to go through to make an animated cartoon.

And nobody seems to care. “Consumers have become selfish monsters who are strangling an industry that is already on its knees,” he says, and he points the finger squarely at fansubbers and other pirates, and those who avail themselves of their services:

We created the beast, and we continue to feed it. We’ve reached the point that it’s not uncommon for major websites to publish links to pirated content. Pirating has gone mainstream, and unless we as consumers have the fortitude to reverse our actions, allow the market to work as it should, and develop the patience to wait for new products to become available in our region, or even not become available, the face of the internet and digital media will change. It’s inevitable.

First of all, this is not true, as those of us who have followed the anime and manga industry are well aware. Piracy has not gone mainstream. It exists, true, but it is not mainstream. In fact, the only major website I have seen that has knowingly published a link to pirated content is Kotaku itself, where another writer posted some scanlations of Skyward Sword—no, I’m not going to link to it—and got scolded it for it in the comments section. People do read scanlations, but as I pointed out a few days ago, they prefer not to, and if they really like the book, they buy it.

Also, I like how Maib thinks fans of a property should “develop the patience for new products to become available in our region.” Sorry, the days of clipper ships are over, and anyone who thinks they can enforce regional controls is a chump. Anime blogger Justin of Organization Anti-Social Geniuses sums up neatly the reality that anime distributors ignore at their peril:

For better or worse, we’ve been moving in a “We must get it now” mode for the past couple years, and the days where we A)patiently wait for titles to come for us and B)buy actual copies of series despite their price are over.

If it’s out there, and people want it, they will get it, from the publishers or from the pirates. Instead of blaming the consumer, publishers should be blaming themselves for not making the material available.

Over at Anime Diet, Michael Olivarez has a radically different take, and one that I think makes a lot more sense: The problem is structural. It’s a long and eloquently written argument, but here’s the gist: Most anime isn’t good enough to justify the cost of distributing it via DVD and Blu-Ray:

Thus comes the fatal flaw in the anime as a hard media commodity scheme. The very idea that we [as] consumers are asked to pony up roughly 4-6 dollars per episode for a show that may not be worth a second viewing comes at odds with the movie collector’s mentality. The people ultimately know what they want, and will pay for it. The problem comes when we are inundated with the latest, and are essentially given no choice in between. When this happens, and our homes are buried with bricks of material that we cannot even give away- it presents a serious problem.

Olivarez is talking about anime here, but the same is most definitely true of manga. Back in the boom days, there were a lot of titles that simply weren’t worth ten bucks, or the space they take up on the shelf. For a representative sampling, check out all the manga that are selling for a penny on Amazon.

Olivarez also mentions the choice of material, a point amplified by Rob Bricken of Topless Robot, who says that parent company Bandai Japan not only forced Bandai Entertainment to market 20-year-old Gundam anime, they forced BE to pay Cartoon Network to run it. That certainly rings true; much of that penny manga I just mentioned was translated not because the localizers were stupid but because the Japanese licensors forced them to take it—if you want this, then you must take that. Furthermore, the license-holders frowned on not finishing a series, even if it was tanking. One doesn’t hear as much about this any more, so either the licensors aren’t doing it as much or the U.S. publishers, of whom there are fewer now anyway, have stopped complaining about it.

While most manga publishers are independent companies, and can walk away from a license if it has too many conditions, Bandai Entertainment had to take orders from its Japanese parent company, Namco Bandai. Anime News Network interviewed Bandai Entertainment CEO Ken Iyadomi, who was clearly frustrated with the decisions coming from the home office:

“The pricing range for our products kept dropping in Western countries, and people tended only to buy sets with very reasonable prices, which we understand is what fans want, but it lead us to a different strategy than what Japanese licensors wanted,” he remarked. “So we always had a problem [with licensors wanting something different than what consumers wanted].”

What it comes down to is this: It doesn’t matter how much it costs you to make a product; you can only charge what the market will bear. The way out of this is to offer the iffy manga and anime at a low cost, which generally means digitally, and put the premium content onto physical media at a premium price. If people just want to get their weekly fix of some second-rate anime, but don’t want a special edition to treasure forever, well, let them watch it via streaming media, sell some ads, and make some money you wouldn’t have otherwise. This also solves the other structural problem in the anime industry, the delay in getting shows to foreign markets, because digital is obviously faster than physical distribution. Just as water seeks its own level, consumers will find what they want. The only question is whether they get it from publishers or pirates, and publishers have a lot more choice than they realize. Most of the people watching bootleg anime won’t pay $30 for it anyway—that’s not a lost sale. But put it online, throw in some ads, maybe paid memberships for the hard-core fans who want higher quality and fresher content, and now that anime is making money from new viewers.

Smart localizers are catching on. Crunchyroll, a former pirate site that has gone mainstream in the sense of going legit and paying its content providers, seems to be doing quite well with streaming anime. Digital Manga has formed the Digital Manga Guild, which publishes enjoyably trashy yaoi manga digitally for less than the cost of a print volume and keeps prices low by using amateur translators. Viz is making the boldest move of all, putting Shonen Jump magazine online at a relatively low price and posting episodes of the top six series in within two weeks of their Japanese debut. The speed scanners will still beat them to it—for now—but despite what Maib seems to think, manga and anime fans are basically decent and like to support the creators. Given a legitimate, inexpensive alternative, and a bit of education, many if not most will do the right thing.

Go back and look at that Tokyopop Facebook page I linked, and read the comments. There is a lot of tension between digital (by which they all mean bootleg) manga and physical copies. Readers use digital to read manga they can’t afford or that is not available in their country. Often if they like a series, they will buy it in print. This is exactly how people consume media nowadays. They sample, then buy. They don’t buy everything they sample, but if the samples are cut off, they won’t buy any more—and they might buy less. This is the new reality, and all the scoldings in the world won’t bring back the good old days. By ignoring this, and by charging champagne prices for a beer product, anime and manga companies are sinking their own ship, and they don’t need the pirates to do it for them.

Manga Music

Artist, musician and our buddy Akira the Don has released a new mixtape, titled Manga Music, featuring “a tribute to the monumental works of Manga Entertainment, who this year celebrate 20 years of serving us Westerners with the very finest anime.” Each song samples and is named after one of their releases, such as Evangelion, Full Metal Alchemist, Crying Freeman and, naturally, Akira.

“Twenty years ago I was a little boy living by the sea in North Wales gaping in awe at their advert for Akira in the back of my Dad’s copy of Vox magazine,” Akira the Don wrote on his site. “A little while later I was pushing a big VHS cassette into its slot, an a few hours after that my life was changed forever.”

You can find it on his site, along with a new T-shirt and hoodie, as well as on YouTube and, thanks to the magic of Soundcloud and embed codes, right after the jump.

Akira The Don – ATD26: Manga Music by Akira The Don

Kodansha Comics galvanized fans last spring with the announcement that they would publish a new edition of Sailor Moon as well as the previously unpublished (in the U.S.) prequel Codename: Sailor V. There’s no word on the anime yet, but here’s an interesting sign: Anime News Network reports that Great Eastern Entertainment has listed four Sailor Moon items for future sale (no prices or details were listed), all bearing a Toei Animation logo. (The page has mysteriously disappeared since ANN posted it, and it doesn’t look like Great Eastern responded to their request for comment.) As an alert commenter at ANN points out, Toei, the owner of the Sailor Moon anime, was shopping around “refurbished” episodes at the MIPTV market in Cannes last year. Perhaps someone bit, either there or elsewhere. The fansite Moon Chase reports (from an anonymous source) that there is another deal that has to be finalized at a higher level before the anime can be licensed in the U.S., and they are skeptical about this latest development, but some enthusiastic folks are speculating that an announcement could come as early as Funimation’s panel at SDCC.

Judging from the reaction I got when I wrote about Sailor Moon at MTV Geek, there’s a huge fandom out there that is anxious to get their manga and anime back. While Kodansha’s deluxe-edition manga seem to be aimed at older readers reliving their youth, the anime has a lot of teen appeal, and if it is re-released in the U.S., we could see history repeat itself.

When the hell did that happen? I think I would have heard about that, right? I’m already confused about my name being used in press releases when I’m not credited on the screen, but making shit up? I presume this is the magic of PR that I hear about.

Well, no: Greg Pak pointed that Ellis had one book on the hardcover graphic novels best-seller list, the oversized edition of Absolute Planetary 2. Ellis remains unimpressed; since the book cost $75, he said, “One presumes it’s a dollar-number calculation rather than a unit-number count.” He adds:

I did note on Twitter that I was surprised the NYT did such a thing, because I’ve seen book top the Diamond best-selling GNs list with 6000 sales, at which point Bendis said “don’t pull that string. The entirety of our world will unravel.”

My advice: Just bask in it, Warren!

We got to see the first episode of the Iron Man anime at New York Comic Con, but it was subtitled, not dubbed. Now Marvel has posted a clip of the dubbed version on their website, so you can hear for yourself what the voice actor playing Tony Stark sounds like.

The anime will start running on the G4 network on July 29.

This year’s updates are no different, drawing notice for an OED first — the heart symbol becomes the dictionary’s first graphic entry — as well as the inclusion of such text-messaging/online abbreviations as LOL and OMG. Thankfully SMH didn’t make the list of 45,436 new definitions (this year, at least).

But one that did is hentai, a noun that the companion Oxford Dictionaries — the OED site is subscription-only — defines as “a subgenre of the Japanese genres of manga and anime, characterized by overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images and plots.”

Which I guess will all help make that errant “OMG I <3 hentai” text immediately, if embarrassingly, understandable.

A Swamp Thing cover being auctioned off for Japan

As the drama in Japan continues, we are reminded that comics are everywhere. Tokyopop CEO Stu Levy has been ferrying food and supplies to the victims, charting his progress on Twitter as he goes.

On this side of the ocean, the response is less dramatic but no less heartfelt: Creative types are coming up with all sorts of benefits for Japan. Comics Alliance has a nice roundup of events and art sales, and Daniella Orihuela-Gruber and Michael Huang have set up Anime and Manga Bloggers For Japan, a site where blogger can direct their readers, with links to Doctors Without Borders and Shelterbox. The fan-run One PIece Podcast is planning a 24-hour podcast marathon this weekend that will feature many bloggers and voice actors and hopefully raise $25,000 for the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. At the Otaku USA site, editor Patrick Macias explains why he is endorsing the Japan Society Earthquake Relief Fund. Dane Ault, of Monkey Minion Press, is auctioning off an original Swamp Thing cover on eBay. And Pinguino Kolb updated me on the We Heart Japan art auction, which happens tomorrow at Meltdown Comics in LA, saying that they are flooded with art and expect lots of celebrities to stop by, so if you’re in LA right now, that’s the place to be—and if you’re not, stay tuned, because they expect to do several more fund-raisers later this month.

So far, there has been no news of any anime or manga creators being injured or killed in the disaster, but the industry has been disrupted by the physical damage. As noted below, the Tokyo Anime Fair has been cancelled. Anime News Network has two lists of delayed anime and manga releases, which they updated again today. The American publisher Manga University, which is located in Japan, escaped serious damage and is donating 10% of sales from their store to the Japanese Red Cross.

Finally, it seems as inevitable as Rule 34 that where there’s a disaster, someone will try to blame the victims. This time the culprit is Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, the guy behind the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance, which placed tight restrictions on racy manga. During a press conference yesterday, Isihara said

Japanese politics is tainted with egoism and populism. We need to use tsunami to wipe out egoism, which has rusted onto the mentality of Japanese over a long period of time.

I think (the disaster) is tembatsu (divine punishment), although I feel sorry for disaster victims.

Isihara later retracted his comments, but they inspired the normally staid retailer news site ICv2 to abandon its usual neutral voice and deliver a stinging reply:

To anyone watching the events in Japan from anywhere else in the world, who has seen the amazing cooperation of the Japanese people, who initiated rolling blackouts before they were even asked to do so, who have totally refrained from looting, and who have cooperated with and executed relief efforts in a truly heroic manner, the comments of Ishihara’s are simply dumbfounding.

The announcement, made on the event’s official website, pointed to concerns about the safety of participants and attendees, given unstable transportation services and power shortages. Last year’s fair drew more than 130,000 attendees.

According to Anime News Network, the Tokyo Big Sight convention center, located on Odaiba island in Tokyo Bay, suffered unspecified damages during the quake.

This year’s fair, operated by the Tokyo metropolitan government, had been boycotted by a group of 10 manga publishers, including Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kodansha, following the passage of a controversial amendment further restricting the sale or rental to minors of manga and anime containing “extreme” depictions of sexual acts. As a result of the protest, the number of companies participating in the event fell dramatically, from 244 in 2010 to 161 this year.

The event will take place at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood on Thursday. Yes, this Thursday: In less than a week, the two have pulled together donations from a number of local artists as well as the anime companies Bandai and Geneon, the anime streaming site Crunchyroll and the anime convention AM2. They are still looking for donations, though; if you are a Los Angeles-area artist and want to contribute framed sketches, paintings or digital art, contact information is on their website (or direct-message them via Twitter). Anime actors and cosplayers will also be there to mingle and sign autographs; check the Facebook page to see who’s coming.

“Japan has always been a huge inspiration for those working in anime and comics, and we’re doing this show as a way to give back to the community there,” Kolb said in an e-mail to Robot 6.

Proceeds will go to the Japan NGO Earthquake Relief and Recovery Fund, which will work with Japan’s Give One initiative to relay the money directly to local charities that are helping with the relief efforts. And more events are in the offing; follow them on Twitter to get the latest news.

It also helped shape the manga industry as we know it today. A few years ago I talked to manga translator and scholar Matt Thorn, who was a freelance translator for Viz in their early days. Thorn described the atmosphere as “laid-back” and the company itself as having only three employees, including the president, Seiji Horibuchi. “For [parent company] Shogakukan, it was almost a vanity project,” he said. “They didn’t expect it to make money.”

And then Pokémon came along. Recalls Matt,

One day, I got a call from Shogakukan Productions. They said, “We’re going to try to promote Pokemon in the U.S., and we’d like you to help.” I said, “I’d love to, but I’m really busy these days, so I’m afraid I can’t. And to be honest, I don’t think Pokemon will fly in America.”

Despite Matt’s misgivings, of course, Pokémon went on to become a media phenomenon in the States, and Viz is now the largest manga publisher in the business, thanks at least in part to that initial burst of energy from Pikachu and his pals.

One Piece, Vol. 61

Publishing | The 61st volume of Eiichiro Oda’s insanely popular pirate manga One Piece sold more than 2 million copies in its first three days of release, according to the Japanese market-survey firm Oricon. It’s the fastest-selling book in the Oricon chart’s nearly three-year history, breaking the previous record set by the 60th volume of One Piece, which sold more than 2 million copies in four days. [Anime News Network]

Retailing | Heidi MacDonald talks to Dave Bowen, Diamond’s director of digital distribution, about the newly announced deal with iVerse Media that will allow retailers to sell digital comics in their stores: “The retailer will login using their Diamond retailer login and be presented with the opportunity to create store-specific, item-specific codes in whatever quantities they need. Then we’ll use some approved cryptographically secure method to generate random codes for the retailer to use. And we’ll format those in a PDF which they can then print out. Likely what will happen is, it’ll print easily on Avery 30-up laser labels. So what you have is a sheet of Avery laser labels with a bunch of different books and codes on individual labels. In that case the retailer takes that material and secures it and then when someone wants Transformers #16 they simply ring the sale and give the label or sticker or cut-out to the consumer. [...] It’s really very simple. Then the consumer that has that code, which is live, they could literally step out of the line, pull out their iphone or ipad or whatever other device and redeem the code and begin reading the material.” Meanwhile, Todd Allen dissects what he describes as “a particularly silly digital download scheme.” [The Beat, Indignant Online]

ComicsPRO

Retailing | Matt Price sets the scene for ComicsPRO’s annual meeting, which begins today in Dallas, and reveals the exclusive cover for The Walking Dead #81 given to attendees. [Nerdage]

Legal | Hiroko Tabuchi looks at the tightening restrictions in Tokyo on the depictions of sexual acts involving minors in manga, anime and video games. [The New York Times]

Legal | Eriq Gardner delves into the recent dismissal of Stan Lee Media’s $1-billion lawsuit against Stan Lee and Marvel: “We’d say that the long saga involving Stan Lee Media may be finally over, except we probably said the exact same thing at least a half dozen times in the past few years.” [THR, Esq.]

Creators | Writer Jim McCann talks about Hawkeye: Blindspot, a four-issue miniseries debuting next week from Marvel. Warning: The article contains spoilers for the conclusion of Widowmaker. [USA Today]

Creators | EmiTown creator Emi Lenox is interviewed on the Hideous Energy podcast. [Hideous Energy]

Fantastic Four #587

Publishing | Direct-market sales plummeted last month, down nearly 23 percent in units and more than 20 percent in dollars from January 2010.  Marvel’s heavily promoted Fantastic Four #587 was, unsurprisingly, the top-selling comic, while Vertigo’s Jack of Fables, Vol. 8, led the graphic novel list. Retailer news and analysis site ICv2.com puts part of the blame for the year-over-year decline on the weather. However, John Jackson Miller notes that Diamond Comic Distributors shipped 23 percent fewer comics last month — 555 different comics and trades (including variants), compared to 683 in January 2010. “This is more than can be explained by the holiday difference; this would appear to simply be the old pattern of publishers holding fire at this time of year and releasing fewer items,” Miller writes. “Some years, that effect is more in evidence than others; this could potentially be one of the bigger years for this kind of positioning.” [ICv2.com, The Comichron]

Digital piracy | A Japanese government think tank has released a study that concludes online piracy of anime series actually increases sales of DVDs. “One point of critique based on the main conclusions of the study, is that the observed relation only appears to be correlational,” TorrentFreak cautions. “This may mean that the results could in part be influenced by significant third variables such as promotion and overall popularity. Since the report is only available in Japanese we were unable to confirm whether this was taken into account.” [TorrentFreak]

One Piece, Vol. 61

Publishing | The latest volume of Eiichiro Oda’s wildly popular comedy-adventure One Piece has set yet another record in Japan: Publisher Shueisha said the first printing of Vol. 61 will be 3.8 million copies, breaking the record of 3.4 million copies set by the previous volume. [Anime News Network]

Digital comics | ComiXology CEO David Steinberger discusses his company’s banner year, its biggest disappointments, and the digital marketplace: “We don’t see a need to capture the traditional audience away from comic shops. We’ve done a few internal reports and sales from our retailer partners is a sliver of a percent of our sales, so I don’t think they need to fear us at all. ” [ABC Technology and Games]

Publishing | Gavin Sheehan interviews Dark Horse President Mike Richardson about the evolution of the company, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary. [City Weekly]

Publishing | Susan Michals profiles German publisher Benedikt Taschen, whose book empire began with a small comic store in Cologne. [The Wall Street Journal]

Retailing | Avalon Comics and Games in Macon, Georgia, is moving after three years in its current location to 2384 Ingleside Ave. [The Telegraph]

Basically, a U.S. company, Funimation, got the rights to show the anime Fractale online one hour after it was broadcast in Japan. This simulcasting is the holy grail of anime — nobody wants to wait months and months for a product that is already out somewhere else, so the usual solution is that bootleggers make their own subtitles and stream the anime on pirate sites. The simulcast gave anime fans a legitimate alternative. (Here’s Funimation’s Fractale page, which currently has three episodes up, if you want to check it out yourself.)

But some pirated versions of the anime got online anyway, and the Fractale Production Committee reacted by telling Funimation they could not simulcast future episodes until the bootleg videos were removed:

According to Funimation representatives, the committee requested that Funimation eliminates unauthorized videos of the anime on the Internet — including streaming sites, file-sharing networks, and file servers — before its simulcast will be allowed to continue.

That’s a pretty tall order, and frankly, it sounds unreasonable — Funimation has no control over bootleg sites. Funimation marketing director Lance Heiskell explained on the company blog that this is really about territorial rights:

With every new format, standards and territory restrictions need to be set so every country licensing content (live action series, anime or movies) can have their rights protected and be able to sell for their specific territories.

This is why when a person living in the United States wants to watch a Dr. Who episode on BBC’s iPlayer site, they get the following message “Not available in your area.” The video content is only offered in the UK for UK residents.

Except the Internet doesn’t work that way, and if you try to make it work that way, piracy is the inevitable result. In fact, had the Fractale committee followed through on their threat, they would have spawned even more piracy, because while they told Funimation that the second simulcast was off, they did not stop the simulcast of the French version in Europe — which the speedsubbers could have grabbed just as easily. (To give them their due, the Fractale committee did not pull the first episode of Fractale off legitimate anime sites—they just threatened to stop the simulcasts.)

David Brothers analyzed the incident at 4thletter and concluded that both sides look bad — the fans, for pirating something they were being given for free, and the Fractale commitee, for encouraging the pirates by shutting down the one legitimate channel for Fractale simulcasts. As for territorial rights, here’s David, quoted for truth:

It’s nice that you still have territory rights. It’s adorable. But it’s time to wake up and realize that your consumers hate it at best, and will actively bootleg your stuff because of it at worst. And, horror among horrors, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

David is right: Territorial rights are dead, and publishers must globalize or die. Teleread has a look at e-book territorial rights discussions at the Digital Book World conference this week, with links to more.

There are really two issues here. One is pirates simply posting the content on their own sites out of habit; the other is people using bootleg sites to avoid regional restrictions. Both are a part of modern life, and publishers can’t wish them away.

Meanwhile, Funimation has filed a lawsuit against 1,337 pirate sites (a cute nod to the leetspeak crowd), over illegal copies of the anime One Piece. The lawsuit has a nasty ring of the RIAA to it:

Funimation believes that the identities of the current 1,337 defendants and “additional infringing parties” will be revealed during the pre-trial discovery phase of the lawsuit, and it will then amend the suit to include their names.

Once the guilty parties are identified, Funi wants to “destroy all copies of Plaintiff’s [videos] that Defendant has downloaded onto any computer hard drive or server without Plaintiff’s authorization and shall destroy all copies of those downloaded [videos] transferred onto any physical medium or device in each Defendant’s possession, custody, or control.” That seems a bit… intrusive, and could easily backfire.

The question publishers should be asking is not “How can I end all piracy everywhere,” because that is not going to happen, no matter how much you beat up your licensors. The correct question is “How can I make money in this new environment.” Piracy is not going to go away; in fact, The Register has a very depressing article about how torrent sites continue to be popular despite the fact that up to 30% of the files are poisoned—some of them “zombie files” placed there by music publishers to thwart pirates. Bootleg sites are simply another competitor, and publishers who accept that and move on—as the Fractale committee seems to be doing now—will be quicker to develop profitable alternatives than those who don’t.

(Fractale image taken from Anime News Network.)

Comic-Con International

Legal | Two Los Angeles men accused of selling counterfeit passes to this year’s Comic-Con International have pleaded guilty to theft and were placed on probation for three years. Farhad Lame and Navid Vatankhahan, both 24, were each ordered to pay a $750 fine, complete 10 days of community service and pay restitution to the victims.

Prosecutors say the two photocopied Comic-Con badges and sold them on Craigslist to people looking for last-minute memberships. They were arrested in July after two of their victims attempted to enter the convention using the counterfeit badges, which the women bought for $120 each. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

Technology | Tech blog Chip Chick names DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson as one of its “Top 13 Women Who Impacted Technology in 2010.” [Chip Chick]

Archie Comics

Publishing | A woman who attended the junior prom with Archie creator Bob Montana contends recent Archie Comics developments — the introduction of gay Riverdale resident Kevin Keller, the death of Geraldine Grundy — wouldn’t have taken place if the cartoonist were still writing the stories. “It wouldn’t be what he would have written,” Jane Murphy says. [Eagle-Tribune]

Education | Manga and anime programs at Japanese universities are drawing more interest from foreign students. [The New York Times]

Retailing | Nathan Solis profiles Los Angeles store Comics vs. Toys, which last month changed its name from Mini Melt Too. [Eagle Rock Patch]

Best of the year | Johanna Draper Carlson and Manga Xanadu select the best manga of 2010. [Comics Worth Reading, Manga Xanadu]

Comic strips | R.C. Harvey concludes a two-part essay on the end of Brenda Starr. [TCJ.com]

Kiel Phegley

Blogosphere | I’ve somehow fallen way behind on linking to Tom Spurgeon’s wonderful holiday interview series, so I’m going to slap a catch-all “blogosphere” label on this and play catch-up: cartoonist and longtime retail/convention employee Dustin Harbin; Drawn and Quarterly Associate Publisher Peggy Burns; Malaysian editorial cartoonist Zulkiflee Anawar Ulhaque (aka Zunar); and Comic Book Resources News Editor Kiel Phegley. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Brian Heater begins a four-part interview with cartoonist Sarah Glidden, creator of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Comics | Douglas Wolk rattles off the comics he’s most looking forward to in the new year. [Techland]

Lolicon

Legal | The general affairs committee of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly has approved the government’s revised amendment to the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance, clearing the way for a vote by the full assembly on Wednesday. The controversial bill would further restrict sexual content in manga, anime and video games. A breakdown of the legislation can be found here. The Mainichi Daily News provides commentary. [Anime News Network]

Legal | In a surprise move, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has decided that the DC superhero- and Wizard of Oz-themed drinking glasses recalled last month because of high lead content aren’t children’s products and, therefore, not subject to recall. [The Associated Press]

Passings | Bluegrass musician and comic-art collector Don Lineberger, 71, died Dec. 5 after being pulled from a house fire in Valdosta, Georgia. Smoke inhalation is believed to be the cause of death. A banjo player who performed with the likes of Bill Monroe, Glen Campbell and Steve Martin, Lineberger was also known for his extensive collection of EC Comics memorabilia. Posters in this thread at the Collectors Society message board are attempting to compile a list of original EC work likely lost in the fire. [The Valdosta Daily Times]

DC Comics

Publishing | DC Entertainment is looking for an associate art director for its Burbank, Calif.-based digital department, and a direct-sales representative for its New York City-based sales department. [Comix 411]

Conventions | Gwendolyn Ng wraps up Reed Exhibitions’ Singapore Toy, Games & Comic Convention, which “appeared ‘on track’ to meet its target of about 30,000 to 45,000 visitors” for the weekend event. [AsiaOne]

Conventions | Siblings Regina and Mario Carpinelli are planning Comikazee, a comics and pop culture event to be held Nov. 5-6, 2011, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. [Girl Gamer]

Creators | Niki Smith, creator of the digital comic In Maps & Legends, is one of 20 Cuyahoga County, Ohio, artists awarded 2011 Creative Workforce Fellowships by the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. The one-year, $20,000 fellowships are funded by a cigarette tax. [The Plain Dealer]

Young Romance #1

Creators | Joe Simon talks about The Kirby and Simon Superheroes, and his legendary partnership with Jack Kirby: “I’m especially proud of having created the romance comics, the most successful line of comics ever produced – each issue of Young Romance and Young Love sold a million copies and up. Those titles took a smaller publisher, Prize Comics, and gave them a huge hit. We were sitting on top with the big boys inside of a year, and they were stealing our ideas in an attempt to copy our success. Jack and I were on the way to see my wife in the hospital, where she had just given birth to our first child. We stopped in a candy store to pick up a card and saw a cluster of girls crowding around the comic book rack for the very first issue of Young Romance. That was when we knew we had a hit. We loved all of the different genres in which we worked, but the romance books hold a special place for me. It’s a shame that so much of the diversity we once had in comics has practically disappeared.” [Big Shiny Robot]

Creators | Grant Morrison discusses Batman Incorporated: “I want to do Batman like Othello. I don’t mean as beautifully written, but in terms of a proper tragedy about watching someone and seeing things going wrong. It’s not going to be who people think it is, I hope, but that’s the plan.” [USA Today]

Creators | As part of a profile of Louisiana’s comics scene, Alex Woodward interviews Chew artist Rob Guillory. [Gambit]

Blogosphere | When Fangirls Attack has come back to life. Meanwhile, WFA founders (and former Robot 6 contributors) Lisa Fortuner and Melissa Krause have launched “a weekend supplement” Dispatches From the Fridge. [When Fangirls Attack]

The Pirate Bay

Legal | A Swedish court last week upheld the copyright convictions of three founders of The Pirate Bay, billed as “the world’s most resilient bittorrent site.” Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Carl Lundstrom and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg were convicted in April 2009 of copyright infringement, fined and sentenced to one year in prison. On Thursday the appeals court reduced the sentence to between four months and 10 months each for Sunde, Nij and Lundstrom while increasing the fine by about $2 million to $6.4 million. A decision regarding Warg’s appeal was postponed because of the defendant’s poor health. [CNET]

Legal | The Japan P.E.N. Club writers group and the Tokyo Bar Association last week announced their opposition to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s latest effort to tighten regulations on the sexual depictions of minors in manga, anime and video games. [Anime News Network]

Piracy | Johanna Draper Carlson and Tim Geiger wade into Colleen Doran’s recent argument against digital piracy. [Comics Worth Reading, Techdirt]

DC Versus Marvel Comics #1

Publishing | John Jackson Miller pieces together more sales estimates from the mid-1990s, when the direct market splintered as multiple distributors signed exclusive deals with publishers. [The Comichron]

Comics | Writer Kurt Busiek confirmed that he and artist John Paul Leon are collaborating on Batman: Creature of the Night, a follow-up to the well-received 2004 miniseries Superman: Secret Identity. [Newsarama]

Comics | Tom Spurgeon has compiled his annual, and exhaustive, holiday shopping guide. [The Comics Reporter]

Conventions | Organizers Eric O’Dell and Rhett Thomas talk about the April return of MaCon Comic Book Convention to Macon, Georgia. [Macon Telegraph]

Creators | Jeff Lemire is profiled following the selection of Essex County as a finalist for the CBC’s prestigious Canada Reads program: “It’s very overwhelming, really flattering, exciting.” [The Windsor Star]

Amelia Rules!

Creators | Amelia Rules! creator Jimmy Gownley talks at length about his deal with Simon & Schuster, moving to the graphic novel format, creating “all ages” material, and more: “[O]ne of the stipulations of going with Simon & Schuster was that we discontinue the pamphlet form. It wasn’t something they were interested in getting into, and they sort of felt it would be easier for them to be able to promote and publicize a book that was all original — which I totally get. And to be honest, the pamphlet form is just sort of dying in the comic book industry. I think Marvel Comics are now like four dollars a piece, which is just an absurd price to pay for a comic book. So I was more than happy to let that go — because even at the time we finished publishing Amelia Rules! through Renaissance Press, the trade paperbacks were selling multiple times as much as an individual issue was. So at some point we had to ask, ‘Why am I even bothering with the issues?’” [The Trades]

Creators | Sarah Glidden, creator of the travelogue How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, is spotlighted by The Associated Press. [ABC News]

Creators | Veteran artist José Luís García-López is interviewed at the release party for 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking. [Fox News Latino]

Alan Moore

Creators | Alan Moore is teaming with a local co-op supermarket for the holidays to provide tote bags filled with groceries to the underprivileged in Northampton, England. [Northampton Chronicle & Echo]

Creators | Collaborators Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col discuss their IDW Publishing series Kill Shakespeare. [Calgary Herald]

Creators | Stumptown Trade Review posts an audio interview with Y: The Last Man artist Pia Guerra. [Stumptown Trade Review]

Comics | Here’s a list of the 25 “awesomest” gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender comics characters, from Kevin Keller and Daken to Batwoman and Wallace Wells. [The Chronicle, via WildStorm]

Comics | Using criteria that excludes, among others, superheroes and titles sporting “scene after scene of characters in their mid-20s sitting around in cafes kvetching about their love lives,” Laura Miller highlights 10 new graphic novels suited for mainstream readers. [Salon]

Welcome once again to Shelf Porn! This week’s shelves were submitted by David Doub, publisher of Dusk Comics, who shares his collection of manga, graphic novels and more.

If you’d like to contribute to Shelf Porn, it’s easy — just send your photos and write-up to jkparkin@yahoo.com. We received a few submissions after our plea last week, but we could still use more.

And now let’s hear from David …

*****

My Name is David Doub and I’m the Publisher for Dusk Comics. I’ve been reading and collecting comics since I was 12 years old when I discovered comics in the spinner rack at the 7-11 in Hillsborough Ft.

The bulk of my collection are in long boxes currently in storage because of a moving homes. I honestly don’t know how many single issue comics I have. But all that is out at this point are Graphic Novels, Manga, Anime DVD/VHS.

In the first 3 pictures you can see my one bookcase that mainly has manga from a bunch of Clamp ones to some in raw Japanese. Also the bottom shelf is my whole collection of Heavy Metal Magazine from the 1990s to current.

The next 4 pictures are of my anime VHS tapes. I’ve actually had to buy extra new VHS players for fear they won’t be around any more. Also some of the Anime is currently out of print so the only form you get them in is VHS. Also when DVDs hit big, VHS became dirt cheap and I’m all about the cheap. I actually had to get rid of a bunch of duplicates because I was buying so many tapes in bulk I’d get a lot of dupes. I think some old fan sub copies are still in this bookcase.

The next 3 pictures are my anime DVDs and boxsets. Mixed in with the anime DVDs, is most of the current DC Superhero DVDs and some big VHS box sets of Xena (I still love that show).

And the last 4 pictures are my Graphic Novels, More Manga and various Japanese Novels. I was enjoying Light Novels like Slayers the Faust Collection from Del Ray, but I’m currently hooked on any book by the Viz Label Haikasoru. By the way, Battle Royale is a much better book than it is a manga. Also since most of my American comics are single issues, I still haven’t made a big switch into Graphic Novels. Basically I got collections of series that were hard to collect now days. There is some themes in there, like I totally got hooked on the Dark Horse Omnibuses. And I must give a shout out to Adam Warren and his GN Series – Empowered.

And to complete the Nerdism of it all, the bottom of these shelves has RPG books. Mostly showing are Warhammer Fantasy and 40k.

And yes I took a copy of the British edition of my own comic, Dusk, so there is a hidden plug.

You can Buy Dusk Vol 1 and 2 on Amazon.

Lolicon

Legal | The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly is resurrecting a revised bill to tighten regulations on the sexual depictions of minors in manga, anime and video games. An earlier version of the controversial proposal was voted down in mid-June. The new bill removes vague defining terms like “nonexistent youth” and reportedly avoids references to “characters younger than 18,” increasing the likelihood that the proposed legislation will pass. [Anime News Network]

Retailing | As the small independent retail chain Joseph-Beth Booksellers files for bankruptcy protection, its president warns of even tougher times ahead for bookstores. “I think in the next three to five years, you’ll see half the bookstores in this country close,” Neil Van Uum says. [Lexington Herald-Leader, via ICv2.com]

Awards | The Webcomics List Awards is accepting nominations until Dec. 20. Winners will be announced on Jan. 31. [via Forbidden Planet International]

Conventions | A solid report from this year’s King Con, held Nov. 6-7 in Brooklyn, N.Y. [Secret Acres News]

L.A. Diary

Best of the year | Frank Santoro names his favorite comics of 2010, from Gabrielle Bell’s L.A. Diary to Daniel Clowes’ Wilson to Brandon Graham’s King City. [Comics Comics]

Creators | Sam Adams talks to Sergio Aragonés about his influences, his first exposure to Mad, his work process, Groo and more: “When I’m doing Groo, and suddenly there’s a double-page spread that takes a lot of cartoons, I have to do at least a page a day for Groo. So when my telephone rings, I put it aside and take this massive drawing and start adding things to it. After the conversation, I take the massive drawing and put it aside. So any breaks I take, I start adding things. So that page will take probably the whole month to draw. They say, “How can you do that?” They think of it as a one-pager or a two-pager. But it’s not true, that page took so long to draw because it’s not a regular page. It becomes natural.” [The A.V. Club]

Creators | Brian Heater continues his multi-part Q&A with Jaime Hernandez. [The Daily Cross Hatch]

Creators | Jeff Greenfield profiles cartoonist Garry Trudeau as Doonesbury turns 40. [CBS Sunday Morning]

Fishtown

Creators | Kevin Colden discusses Fishtown, and the pitfalls he experienced serializing the comic online before collecting it in print: “I spent so much effort promoting the serialized version of the book, that by the time it hit print, I think it was old news and had worn out its welcome. Also, the book was released at the end of 2008, and the economy had just shit the bed. In my decidedly biased opinion, as a book with as much buzz as it had, that won the Xeric and later went on to garner an Eisner Award nomination (Best Reality-Based Work), it had all the makings of a massive hit. There may have been a lot of people reading it online, or borrowing copies, or reading library copies; I don’t actually know! That might be the big negative.” [Go Home Paddy]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Chris Mautner talks to Jerry Robinson about his sale of Fred Ray’s original art for the cover of Superman #14. [Patriot-News]

Creators | Writer Brandon Montclare chats about Marvel’s Chaos War: Chaos King #1. [Cosmic Book News]

Comics | Douglas Wolk sifts through 33 years of Spider-Women and Spider-Girls. [Techland]

Anime News Network has picked up on a fascinating trend over on YouTube: Anime and manga fans who show off their swag to support the industry.

The manga industry’s push against scan sites, which resulted in the shutdown of OneManga, seems to have raised awareness across otakudom that watching pirated anime and reading bootleg manga online is illegal. The anime industry has been faltering for years—long before manga began to wobble in 2007—but the general tendency among fans is to blame the publishers (for high prices and bad translations), so this is an interesting shift. It also mirrors the trend of “haul videos,” in which shoppers show off the results of their latest shopping spree.

This particular movement was started by The Right Arm of Edward Elric, who appears to have been doing video reviews for some time. In her introductory video, she discusses the industry’s problems and says, “I don’t see anyone at all doing anything publicly to help. So I guess, let me be the first person to do it.” She pledges to buy either one anime DVD or two manga a month, and make a video showing her purchase, including the receipt, and she encourages others to do the same. A number of similar videos have sprouted since then, all with the title “Sustain the Industry.”

Smart industry insiders should be watching these videos, as they provide an interesting glimpse into the lives of anime and manga consumers. There’s quite a range of demographics (although the age range was pretty tight, maybe from 12 to 25), and commentary on what affects their buyingo Palkia 678, one of the younger-looking vloggers was quite articulate in saying that he used to watch anime online and didn’t realize he was watching it illegally, and explaining how he did extra work to earn money to buy his anime legitimately. Also, the backgrounds are fascinating, sometimes worthy of our Shelf Porn posts, sometimes suggesting a very modest lifestyle. It’s a marketing researcher’s dream, a direct look into a person’s house while they display what they bought and explain why they bought it. For the rest of us, it’s heartening evidence that the kids really are all right.