EW’s new book blog, SHELF LIFE, has the news that TWILIGHT, the insanely popular vampire series, is being adapted into a graphic novel. The book will be published through Yen Press, and Young Kim is the artist — with much input from author Stephanie Meyer.
This week’s EW will have exclusive excerpts of the comic. With Harry Potter author JK Rowling eschewing any spinoff media adaptations (except movies, video games and so on), TWILIGHT was next on the list of giant literary franchises ripe for GN expansion. With the manga style so popular with the target audience, this is a huge get for Yen.
What do you think? Will Twilight fans ruin comics the way they are ruining Comic-con?
I’d like to think it would convince people to say, “Oh, hey, there’s a comic book, Twilight has a place at a comic convention” — but more likely they’ll look at the art, see that it looks vaguely manga-esque, declare that it’s not “real comics” and continue looking down on Twilight fans.
Who me, pessimistic?
It’s not the fans to blame for Comic-Con, it’s the organizers. Their rules, people are just playing by them.
As for ruining comics? Please…..
You know what? I like this.
For years, everyone’s been complaining that girls don’t read comics (except for manga), and here’s a non-Japanese property that girls like.
More power to the Twilight franchise!
The debate about Twilight is amusing. i watched the movie on dvd, loved it. Loved the music, the pace, the characters, the setting and the angst. I don’t care if it’s “for” teenage girls, it was solid and worthwhile.
Then I started reading about authors who were snickering about it’s place in the Teen Fiction genre, and people who were lumping it in a category something like Harlequin Romances For Illiterate Teens, hilarious.
I picked up and will soon read New Moon, the second in the series. then I’ll have an opinion of a book, not a movie.
This will be great. This will easily be the biggest comic of the year. And everyone should be figuring out how to turn these Twilight-fans-who-are-willing-to-read-a-comic-book-because-it’s-Twilight into people-who-started-reading-comics-because-of-Twilight.
And I mean everyone, retailers, publishers, creators and ESPECIALLY the fans.
More of my friends read Twilight than read comic books. And anyone I have read a comic book will read it but not branch out. Friends who were devoted to “Y: The Last Man” (the best gateway book in recent memory) never felt the need to find something else. But Twilight fans are devoted and always looking for more. They read the books in one sitting and move on to the next one. The third book is still only in hardcover, because it sells at $22 and there’s no need for a $10 paperback. The people who like Twilight love Twilight.
So if there is a Twilight comic coming out, everyone should tell their Twilight loving friends about it and escort them to their local shop and say “here’s the Twilight book you wanted, but hey, take a look at this while you’re here…”
The Twilight comic could be exactly what Free Comic Book Day and the Stephen King comics want/wanted to be.
Twilight fans aren’t intruding into comic con, they should be welcomed and shown the other things they might like in addition to Twilight. Not “instead of Twilight.” Because we’re not going to expand our market by saying “what you like sucks, like what I like instead, it’s better.”
An interesting thing about vampire fiction is that the (sub)genre is dominated by women writers, to the point that people have commented on the imbalance. It’s easy to assume that women are better at writing about the erotic aspects of vampirism, whether they’re writing for teens or adults, just as women dominate genre romances.
I doubt there’d be much of a crossover effect in publishing TWILIGHT as graphic fiction, but doing the adaptation can’t hurt.
SRS
Of course it won’t be successful. It’s in black-and-white, and everyone knows black-and-white comics don’t sell that well. Plus it’s drawn in that manga-esque style, and it’s a romance comic, and an adaptation. Geez… the bookstore landscape is littered with literary adaptations and tie-ins that don’t sell: Dark Hunters, Anita Blake, Dark Tower, Odd Thomas, Warriors, Artemis Fowl…
Oh, and it’s an Open e-book, too. 9780759529892 $8.99
(And while it’s cool that Yen is publishing this, keep in mind that Hachette also publishes the regular books as well.)
When you’ve finished reading TWILIGHT, give some LOVE AND ROCKETS a try! Maybe you’d like some X-MEN: FIRST CLASS or for the more adventurous, try Grant Morrison’s DOOM PATROL.
Okay, that last one might be too out there, but there’s always SANDMAN…
EVen though I knew otherwise, while watching Twilight the Movie my main thought was that this is live action Manga. I’m only surprised it’s taken this long to make it actual.
Oh, and SCOTT PILGRIM.
Kim and Dominique just took over what I laughably refer to as ‘my studio’ to rattle out 2 Twilight bags and 2 Twilight tees because they couldn’t find any to buy. When I read out the header here, they punched the air and said ‘yes’.
So, I’m for it.
Twilight fans don’t ruin Comic-Con any more than any other hardcore, selfish and fervent fanboy or fangirl does. Elitist fans can ruin a good thing, too, just as much as crazed non-comics fans can. I read all of the books and, while they weren’t award winners by any stretch of the imagination, they have the right to a fanbase, just as much as any other pop culture property.
As far as a Twilight graphic novel goes, I can’t say I’ll complain if it becomes a gateway to other graphic novels or manga for its readers. If nothing else, it’ll help with Yen Press’s bottom line, allowing them to license other awesome manga, manhwa and OEL material. So where’s the downside in that?
Can Tyrese Gibson please write this?
@Torsten Adair: Dark Tower didn’t sell well? I heard otherwise.
(Also you didn’t mention Buffy, which sells well and has very strong parallels to the Twilight phenomenon.)
As someone who co-created/writes/colors a vampire comic book (Dark Ivory), who’s a teen girl vamp) – this is only good news one way or the other as far as I can see. Any single reader who didn’t pick up a comic book before, who might as a result of the Twilight GN, is another set of eyeballs for a genre that wonders how much longer it will exist on an almost daily basis.
Joe (my partner, Dawn guy) says I have to watch the Twilight movie..for homework..before we dive into Dark Ivory II.
Um..do I have to?
And the villain in the Buffy comic is named … Twilight.
as for gate way, well there is a lot of vamp romance comics and mangas, what I hope for is my fav company to continue to be very well and have money to fund other stuff and up the mag circulation (please yen, I may not like twilight but keep it running in the mag for as long possible)
I despise Twilight.
I’m VERY excited about this. I got into comics because of the comics on the Matrix website, I know what intense fangirl-ism can lead to. Twilight has one of the most intense fandoms currently active. Furthermore, Stephenie Meyer read comics growing up, and she cites X-Men as an inspiration for the Cullen family dynamic (ok, she said they’re all based on Cyclops). She’ll promote this as much as she does the prose and the movies.
I don’t see how this can “ruin” anything. Is it going to take away the comics I or anyone else loves?
It seems like for years I’ve been hearing this mantra “How can we get more young girls to read comics? How?” and then when someone does something effective like importing more shojo manga or making Twilight comics, people complain about it.
I just hope they won’t stop at Twilight and from there they’ll go on to check at other graphic novels that could appeal to teenagers–glancing at my bookshelf I see Scott Pilgrim, Escape From Special/A Mess Of Everything, Unlovable, Girl Stories, and the Stuck In The Middle anthology. No vampires in those books, but they’d be good for that age group.
Umm…
First off, Twilight is probably one the worst pieces of literature ever created. Stephanie Meyer’s story lacks any real prose, the plot is inconsistent, and often goes for “It would be cool if (insert vampire doing cool but unnecessary thing)” instead of “A person of mild intelligence would do (insert a character doing something that makes sense.)
The romance is unrealistic and deranged, the characters are so simple that no one can really relate to them, and the villains are just glued onto the end.
[ Seriously people…the bad Vampire plan was a joke. Bella’s dad calls her mom (who is in Florida) when Bella leaves lolForks, and her mom beats EVERYONE back to Arizona? Bella is a retard to fall for something that stupid. And lest we forget that Bella’s mom lost her cell phone CHARGER, not her cell phone.]
Oh. And making something ‘manga-style’ is a joke. What has this industry come to? This book will sell like crazy, and anyone who ever truly loved comics will continue to watch it’s descent into the abyss of market analysis and the generic product.
To Mr. Santo:
All the properties mentioned are listed among the top 100 bestselling graphic novels on BN.com. (Search “graphic novels”, then select “bestsellers” from the left-hand menu.) I was co-opting the nay-sayers opinions (that black-and-white comment was a common belief in the late 1980s).
I did not mention Buffy (or Heroes, or…) as that property was developed from television, not prose literature.
To John P.: If it’s crap and it sells, it’s not crap. I don’t read most manga (days are too short), but if it sells and brings more people who enjoy the medium, then I’m all for it! Sure, manga is now the default romance style. But there are many styles in comics, and I as a bookseller, librarian, and Seducer of the Innocent do not care what people read, as long as they read SOMETHING.
And consider this… someone reads Twilight and then wants more, but there isn’t any more. So they look for recommendations. “If you liked that, you might like this…” “If you liked this, then try…”
At my day job at the comic shop, we have LOT of women and teen girls coming in already looking and hoping for a Twilight comic. Now, I have good news to tell them! They bought up all the Twilight trading cards we had like an army of insatiable locusts- but many of them also bought Buffy comics, Anita Blake hardcover graphic novels and Mercy Thompson comics as well. The teen girls bought manga, too, along the lines of Rosario+Vampire and Vampire Knight. So hey, some of those Twilight fans are already prepared to spend money on other, non-Twilight products, which is not a bad thing at all.
The art is horrible, it’s not quite manga and not quite western style. It looks like they couldn’t decide which direction to take on this thing. Frankly I don’t think it should have been manga – I really have begun to hate publishers forcing a style onto an existing property just to try and make it sell better. If memory serves Yen did this with Maximum Ride too. And by the way manga doesn’t sell the way it used to. Some say the young girls spent their money on Twilight and took money away from manga – there are only 4 books in the Twilight series and unless these girls were buying multiple copies of the books they should have had some babysitting money leftover to buy manga.
What I think is happening is that the first adopters of manga have grown up and the series that are being published are still aimed for the teen market. Yes it still needs books for that age, but does someone who is now 20 still want to read books aimed at teens? If manga is to expand in thsi country it needs to grow up.
^Fanboy wank
Though I am a definate anti-fan of Twilight, (I’m trying to read it now and it’s like rubbing my brain with a cheese grater) I see this as a good thing. As I read through Twilight I keep getting deja vu~ have I read this before? No, Twilight just reads like every generic shoujo manga I’ve ever read. Every cliche, from Bella’s insane clumsiness to Edward’s super duper sparkliness, I’ve seen before in shoujo manga.
So if this manga attracts Twilight fans, they might start sorting through the shoujo manga. That means they’ll spend money in comics, which means more sales and a bigger industry for people who want to import/draw comics.
Anyways, I like Yen Press. If this stops them from collapsing like almost every other manga/graphic novel publishing house on this side of the ocean, I’m all for it!
I’ll probably get it. Looks interesting. Might be a bit lame. All the Twilight obsession is starting to annoy. I mean yeah, it’s a good series, but it’s no amazing work of literature. Sheesh. Oh and all the complaints from comic book geeks is just ridiculous. If you don’t like it, then don’t buy it! There’s no need to whine about it “ruining comics”. Ugh, whatever, I’m going to stop wasting my life writing on this thing and go have a life. Advice the rest of you should follow.
When I read the books, I pictured all the stuff in manga style.
But thank god it’s not based off the movie..
WHEN DOES IT COMMEN OUT?! >O
I don’t know If I said it already but …This blog rocks! I gotta say, that I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)
A definite great read….
Does anyone know where i can find more info on this.