Tag Archives: grassroots

TokyoPop Hits the Road to Promote Manga

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Manga has hit hard times with sales down forcing layoffs in some the various companies that deal with the comic form.  TokyoPop is making moves to spread the word about Manga with a bus tour across America.  The TokyoPop Tour began in early July at the Los Angeles’s Anime Expo.  The tour ends in Chicago in August after hitting 28 cities in 54 days.

Steve Levy the CEO and COO of the company laid out why he’s making the trip:

The goals are simple: To reach out to fans nationwide to meet them and see how ‘otaku culture’ in America has evolved.

The tour is being taped with numerous updates chronicling the adventure.  The trip also includes six college students selected via audition, and an ongoing quest and contest to find “America’s Greatest Otaku.”

In a way this trip brings these comics full circle in their spread through American culture.  Manga has been an underground fascination for years and relied on word of mouth for fans to learn about the latest series or video and also the sellers to tell us the fans what we should buy.

In recent years the internet has allowed fandom to run rampant, making promotions lazy and instead rely on the pockets of the consumers to spread the word of what’s new.  With an economic collapse those pockets are empty leaving purchasing to shrivel and word of mouth to begin to flow slower.

A bus tour recreates the success of good grassroots word of mouth marketing getting the salesmen back to the streets to directly interact with their audience.  This is a lesson quite a few in the industry can learn from.

World Comics India and Grassroot Comics

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Sharad Sharma and World Comics India is a grassroots comics movement in India.  The concept allows common people great comic books to “express their own self.”  According to Sharma:

This has served as one of the most popular communication tool in peoples’ movement.

The workshops involves a trainer teaching people basic techniques in creating comic books.  The success of the grassroots comic movement in India is thought to herald from the wealth of story telling in Indian culture.  Unicef has used the technique there.

The project works by pasting comics up in all possible locations like villages, meeting places, bus stops, shops, offices, schools, on notice-boards and electricity poles or even on trees, creating an awesome string between the creator and his reader.

Replicated in South Asian, African and Latin America countries, the Middle East and Europe, grassroots comics originated in India in the 1990s.  The credit goes to a group of like-minded cartoonists, development journalists and activists who aimed to use their skill for betterment of the society.

Choice Quotes

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Each week we bring you politically charged quotes from the previous week’s comics.

Chew #10

Vampire – I’ve nothing to do with your proletariat revolution, little man…

DMZ #52

Liberty News – The longstanding preemptive war policy, commonly called “The Bush Doctrine,” while not originally designed to apply domestically, is now the de facto law of the land… “To defeat them in the purest military sense of the term.” is the soundbite on every pundits lips these recent days.

Iron Man: Legacy #1

Protester – From the same corporate spokes-liars who brought you “clean coal” and “safe nuclear power”… we now have Stark’s “arc reactor”… which some researchers say will create a black hole on Long Island the minute it’s turned on!  Well we say this is America!  We have the greatest energy system in the world!

and

Tony Stark –  These mean were identified as mercenaries for the Eaglestar Corporation… hired by Americans for Energy Awareness the quote-unquote “grassroots” group that organizes today’s protests… which my investigators have found is funded by big oil lobbyists Matville & Carlin…

and

Tony Stark – … and we will not be scared away by, uh… phony “astroturf” organizations!

Mayor Hundred the Original Obama?

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In the latest issue of Ex Machina, a flashback is shown as the Great Machine decides to give up crimefighting for politics.

Effective immediately, I am retiring from volunteer community crimefighting.  And running as your independent candidate for Mayor of the great city of New York.  I’m hoping to be part of a truly grassroots campaign, one that will finally utilize the internet’s true potential to reach all voters.  Starting today, contributions as small as one dollar can be made directly to my new website at http://www.hundred4mayor.net.  That’s the word hundred and the number four, so please don’t–

The interesting part of the above quote is the focus on small contributions and the internet as a grassroots tool for campaigning.  Both show an understanding of the tool and the history of it’s evolution of use by the writer of the series.  What caught my attention was the use of a real world website (not sure if there’s an alternative like 555 for phone numbers on television).

With great dialogue showing an understanding of the internet by the writer of the comic book, it seems DC’s marketing team doesn’t quite have the same level of understanding.  DC and it’s parent company Warner Bros. dropped the ball on this one.  Having shown a brilliance for alternate reality games (arg) for the film the Dark Knight, including a fake campaign site for character Harvey Dent, one would think there was a possibility that they’d do a similar campaign for this comic book’s fake campaign (hell you could use the Dent site and change some text and graphics).

To my surprise, on a whim, I decided to see if the above web address and it’s .com equivalent were available.  To my shock, they were, and without missing a beat I purchased both (both are redirected to this site).  We’ll see and keep you updated as to the traffic lost through this slip up.

No malice is meant, just an interesting missed opportunity by DC I think (especially in this political season).

SPOILER – With the books hint at a Presidential run by Mayor Hundred I wonder if DC and Warner Bros. will take the opporunity for a real cool website tie in.