2006 is promising to be another banner year for graphic novels. Marjane Satrapi‘s PERSEPOLIS (Pantheon) was named this year’s featured work in the Seattle Reads series and Alan Moore’s V FOR VENDETTA (Vertigo), which opened as the No. 1 movie in the U.S., brought the original graphic novel to No. 9 on Barnes & Noble.com’s Hourly Top 100 that weekend. “Having backlist titles reactivate is an important source of strength for the graphic novel category,” says Milton Griepp, president of pop culture publishing and consulting company ICv2. “The biggest opportunities are for the media tie-in titles.”
In 2005, the U.S. and Canadian graphic novel market reached $245 million in retail according to ICv2. Although the rate of growth declined in comparison to the previous two years, there was still more than an 18% increase in sales from 2004’s $207 million in retail. “The market is maturing,” says agent Bob Mecoy of Creative Book Services. “But what was significant for me was that there was not a single standout title last year, and despite that, the market rose in the double digits.”
There are three important contributors to the rising popularity of graphic novels according to graphic novelist Matt Madden, (whose 99 WAYS TO TELL A STORY: EXERCISES IN STYLE was voted one of The Village Voice’s 25 favorite novels of 2005): Hollywood franchises of superhero properties boost comic book sales in mainstream bookstores, literary comics – Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi – are gaining a higher profile and bringing in a wider variety of book readers who don’t normally read comics, and manga has brought in a deluge of young readers, most significantly, girls. This strong growth has caught the attention of major houses, many of which are starting graphic novel imprints.
Recently, HarperCollins announced a partnership with manga distributor Tokyopop to publish co-branded manga titles. Beginning this June, the arrangement will give the News Corp. publishing division distribution rights for all Tokyopop books in North America.
This month, Roaring Brook is launching First Second, its new graphic novel imprint which Editorial Director Mark Siegel believes will have an impressive range of readers – a key to future sales growth. “With THE LOST COLONY [a graphic novel about a mysterious island in nineteenth century America], we are getting incredible feedback from not even yet 10-year-old girls. One of them carries it around. Another sleeps with it under her pillow. Then 40 and 50-year-old men are reading it and finding that there is this incredible subtext about racism and slavery at this other level. You could compare that to The Simpsons. A graphic novel has the ability to be read at many levels. That’s something that First Second is very much dedicated to providing.”
Author Madden says that First Second’s program “is the most ambitious project to capitalize on the growing mainstream popularity of comics.”
While literary comics are building a reputation reaching the widest range of readers, James Killen, buyer for B&N, reports that “the bestselling genres are still manga and the superhero related graphic novels. Manga has turned into a genre that dominates the category bringing in a younger audience. With the older, more male-centric readership superheroes remain strong.”
With continued success from imprints like Pantheon and new players like First Second, competition to publish high-quality graphic novels is rising. “Production, art direction, and editorial are three practical ways we are working very hard to upgrade,” Siegel said. “Over many seasons, I hope we’ll be setting the bar a little higher, not in terms of making things more slick, but in terms of the artistry and the quality of the story.”
Mecoy said, “I think that there is something happening here that is going to endure, because what you are seeing with manga and with deeper penetration into the market, with the feed into games and movies, is a new vocabulary. It’s visual narrative.”
While fingers are crossed for a breakthrough title that will place graphic novels permanently in the mainstream, the real news is that graphic novels are a steadily growing market worth the financial investments required to publish these works. It will take more than a movie blockbuster or single-title campaign to bring the genre to its full potential audience. “It’s a slower thing that’s going to do that,” Siegel says. “We are going to try everything we can on the marketing end, but it’s ultimately about content. Persepolis has opened doors for a lot of people, because you have someone who is clearly a true author; she just happens to be working in this medium. The more that those kinds of works get out, the more people will get the idea.”
“What we have had are little tipping points, dominoes falling one after another,” says Mecoy. “We are only just now getting to the point where we can rise up and look down and see all those dominoes form a pattern that’s as large as traditional publishing.”
As publishers consider investing more of their resources in graphic novels, they might be motivated by Killen’s experience in the market. “We continue to reevaluate the business and after the last few years I still ask myself ‘how high is the sky?’ Whenever I think I’m ready to see a ‘peak’ in the business something like V FOR VENDETTA happens and sets off a whole new wave of attention, press, and sales.”
