Yesterday Entertainment Weekly teased their coverage of the upcoming Twilight: The Graphic Novel online, with the cover, a one-page excerpt, and a snippet of an interview with Stephenie Meyer. The full interview and a ten-page excerpt of the manga will appear in the new issue of EW, which is on sale tomorrow.
The Yen Press book is being created by Young Kim, who will be making her comics debut (?!) on what looks like it may be the biggest possible stage on which one can make one’s comics debut at the moment. The first printing will be 350,000 copies, it’s going to retail for $20 and it will go on sale March 16.
Brigid Alverson has the initial press release posted on her blog, as well as a few notes on what that 350,000 number actually means, compared to other manga and similar releases.
Given that Twilight long ago reached genuine phenomenon status, even before the film adaptations started rolling out, it’s no surprise that Yen Press is so confident in the property, and it’s probably safe to say they have every reason to be so confident.
Some thoughts on the project:
—I found the cover credits interesting. At the bottom of the cover it says “Stephenie Meyer” in bold, and in a much smaller font below that it reads “Art and Adaptation by Young Kim.” From what she told EW, Meyer didn’t actually script the graphic novel, and her contributions seemed to be supplying the source novel and then asking for changes and tweaking some dialogue. Obviously, hers is the bigger name and the one that’s going to be likely the one that moves books, but the credits don’t really seem to accurately reflect who did what (This isn’t at all unusual, of course, although it is perhaps unfortunate that Yen is adhering to the trend rather than breaking it).
—For some added context of that 350,000 number, check out John Jackson Miller’s analysis of the top-selling comics of the past decade. If Yen sells through that initial print, they will have outsold every single-issue comic book save the Obama/Spidey issue of Amazing Spider-Man. And keep in mind that the top ten books on Miller’s list are all priced at $2.99. Twilight will be over six times that price. If anyone still thinks that superhero comics constituted “mainstream” comics, that’s something to keep in mind.
—Simon Jones’ reaction is worth checking out just for the title of his post: “Yen prints 350,000 copies Twilight graphic novel, CCi attendees no longer allowed to complain.” Actually, Jones makes some quite salient points in his piece, including the fact that the book “will expose more fresh eyeballs to comics than any other single release, even series, in 2010” and that it offers a pretty perfect opportunity for retailers to get potential new customers in their stores. Personally, I hope a lot of ‘em are already planning their Twilight: The Graphic Novel release parties and working on their “If you like this, you’ll like these”-style displays.
—Expect a ton of press on this one, from mainstream media, comics media and Twilight fandom. The book is still two months out, and here’s what I found in my Google News feed since EW ran their preview piece: The BBC,The Guardian, The Independent, USA Today, MTV’s Splash Page, Anime News Network, OK! Magazine, Perez Hilton, Cinematical, The Hollywood Gossip, Twilight Lexicon, Zimbio.com and this person’s blog.
—I hate to judge a comic based on a single page, but man, that was not a very good single page of comics, was it? The character designs are very nice though.
—Much, much, much shorter comics adaptations of Twilight are already available online for free. The extremely talented Lucy Knisley adapted Twilight into four panels here (plus she handles each of the sequels in four panels, in addition to a killer strip about the experience of reading the Twilight saga), while Chris Sims managed it in a single panel while announcing this year’s 30-Second Recap Contest.
January 21st, 2010 at 3:23 pm
For those of us who loved the Twilight books before there were movies, the comic book scene they showed is promising because it’s much closer to the source material than what they did on film.
Plus, even though Twilight fans love to make fun of the Twilight movie… (it’s pretty much the ongoing pastime among the fandom – even Pattinson and Stewart’s DVD commentary is more like a RiffTrax) … it will be nice to have a visual representation of the first book that isn’t quite so primed for humor.
That said, good points all around. Here’s a new audience, comicdom. Go get ‘em.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:38 pm
A new audience, yes, but will they buy anything else? There are big sales on the Anita Blake adaptations and on some of the Stephen King adaptations and so on. But do those readers then try anything else?
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:12 am
There needs to be some sort of plan to segue the people that buy stuff like this into other comics. Other industries have marketing people to figure out ways to build their base. The comic world seems to be seriously lacking in this department.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:44 pm
It’s as good a gateway drug as any to snag new comic readers. I think the problem is that most of the sales of this are going to come from Borders and similar stores, where the comic selection isn’t as robust. Also, they’re less likely to be guided to Fables or Sandman in that environment just for lack of guidance.
January 24th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Considering that a large percentage of the Twihards are tweens and young teens, Fables and Sandman would NOT be my recommendations. I’ve said this on another blog – the real Twihards in my school refuse to read anything else, at least so far (and it’s going on almost 2 years now). They re-read all the Twilight volumes over and over and over … and they DON’T WANT to read anything else. Really. I find it very interesting that the girls who don’t like Twilight will read just about anything that catches their eye, from Harry Potter to books by Tamora Pierce to books by Robin McKinley to just about every other fantasy series suitable for young teens to classics to Broadway plays …