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Stan Lee’s Marvelous Manga Plans

Special thanks to The Japan Times and OTAKOOL

Stan Lee is the co-creator of some of the most loved comic-book characters of all time. As head writer and editor in chief at Marvel Comics during the 1960s and early ’70s, Lee presided over the birth of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the superheroes that populate this summer’s Hollywood blockbusters “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk.” Having transformed the landscape of the American comic book, Lee, now age 85, has set his sights on Japanese animeand manga.

 

New adventure: The title page from Stan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei’s U.S.-Japan manga collaboration Ultimo © 2008 by Stan Lee – POW! Entertainment/Dream Ranch/Hiroyuki Takei/Shuseisha Inc.

 

From the offices of his POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment company in Beverly Hills, Lee, born Stanley Lieber, explains: “I’ve been to Japan a number of times. I love the country. I love the people and I love what they do.” He continues in his usual affable tenor, immediately recognizable to millions of comic fans from many appearances in public and movie cameos. “I’ve gotten together with a number of Japanese people who have ideas for comics and animation, and I’ve had ideas — and before you know it, we’ve decided we’re going to do some things together.”

Lee’s first foray into writing manga is “Ultimo,” a robot-versus-robot story drawn by Hiroyuki Takei (creator of the popular “Shaman King”), which debuted in the pages of manga magazine Jump SQ.II in April. While simultaneously pursuing a host of projects with Disney and Virgin back in the United States, the busy Lee has also signed on for a new anime TV series for Japan called “Hero Man,” to be animated by studio BONES, home of the hit “Full Metal Alchemist.” With the manga industry battered by flagging sales at home and anime hit hard by piracy abroad, it’s easy to see why Japanese companies are eager to court a man with a track record for creating characters that stick in the public’s imagination. But Lee, ever a collaborator in comics and other media, is not working in a vacuum.

“Every one of these projects is based on my original idea, but obviously I’m not going to write everything,” says Lee. “I come up with the basic concept and the Japanese and I discuss it together. They take my story but put it into their style, which makes it a true collaboration.”

Lee, along with artist Jack Kirby, ushered in the “Marvel Age of Comics” in 1961 with the debut of the first issue of “The Fantastic Four.” The immediate success of his new batch of superheroes came as a surprise to Lee, who, with two decades in the comics industry already to his name, was growing eager to leave. “Unfortunately, comics got off to a bad start in America,” he remembers. “When they started, the publishers felt that they were for very little children or for grownups who were semiliterate, and they had no respect for their audience. Consequently, they never bothered to structure a well-written plot, they never cared about keeping the dialogue realistic, and they didn’t worry much about characterization. They just tried to get a lot of pictures of action and figured that would hold the reader’s interest. It was only years later, when I think Marvel Comics started publishing stories geared to older, more intelligent readers, that the comic book business began to expand. And now comic books are totally different than they were years ago; they have a lot more respect, mainly because so many multimillion-dollar movies are based on comic book characters.”

Yet even as superhero movies dominate at the box office, American comics now sell only a fraction of the millions of copies Marvel moved in their ’60s heyday. Instead, kids around the world are far more likely to read comics from Japan: manga. But Lee says, “I’m really not surprised at all. People get bored easily and they’re always seeking out things that are different, provided they are well done. Manga has a totally different look to it than the average American comic book. It has a different style and its own mystique. And the fact that it’s both different and so well done makes it very appealing to a growing body of American readers.”

Now that Lee is creating superheroes for Japanese clients, he’s had to change some of his creative methods. “Their (the Japanese) way of approaching a story is a little bit different. For example, when I write a story in America, I take a little time to introduce the characters and build up to a climax. Sometimes in Japanese manga they like to open with a lot of action and get the reader involved right away. It’s been very interesting for me, who is used to one style, to be working with people who work in a slightly different style. But the objective is the same: to have characters people can believe in and stories that are interesting and exciting and will keep the reader coming back for more.”

 

Comic book hero: Spider-Man creator Stan Lee is teaming up with Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei to launch a new manga. AP PHOTO

 

While Spider-Man and the X-Men have long maintained fan bases overseas, even predating their recent Hollywood movies, Lee now faces the task of creating superheroes that connect initially with a Japanese audience before being exported to his native U.S. But he isn’t worried about the possibility of a culture clash. “Except for the differences in tradition and social mores, people around the world aren’t all that different,” he says. “They speak a different language, but we pretty much all want the same things. And I think we can all respond to characters that seem to be realistic.”

Indeed, during Lee’s editorial tenure at Marvel, Spider-Man fought drug abuse, Captain America battled campus radicals, and his sidekick, the Falcon, was the “hero of Harlem.” Will this new crop of superheroes, such as Ultimo and Hero Man, continue this commitment to social commentary?

“I don’t think you can help it,” he says. “It’s very hard not to write about things that are happening in the world whenever you are writing about them. For instance, when we look for a good villain today, who better than a terrorist? However, with the work I’m doing with the Japanese now, they’re really strictly fantasy stories, and in the beginning they don’t much reflect any problems in the world today. But I think as we keep doing them, little by little, some contemporary problems will start sneaking into the stories.”

When Lee helped to create Iron Man and the Hulk in the early ’60s, the shadow of the Cold War loomed large on the horizon. The original Iron Man comic, for instance, placed our hero behind enemy lines in Vietnam, while the new movie has upgraded him to Afghanistan. Based solely on movie ticket sales, it seems that our world wants Lee’s heroes now as much as ever. And Lee hopes that international comic collaborations like the ones he is undertaking with Japan might have special powers of their own.

“I hope it’s the way of the future for everything. Because I think the more that people from different countries work together, the healthier it is for the whole human race. We get to know each other, we get to like each other, and we get to understand each other. And when you know and understand people, there’s a lot less hatred and a lot less chance for unpleasant situations between countries. And after all, a good story is a good story no matter what the language is or where it takes place.”

Patrick Macias is editor in chief of Otaku USA magazine. He can be found online at www.patrickmacias.blogs.com

 

Getting Japan to Capitalize on its Innovation

By ANDREI HAGIU and ROBERT DUJARRIC

Special to The Japan Times

BOSTON/TOKYO — As they lament the West’s obsession with China and prepare to host the Group of Eight in July, Japanese fear becoming a minor planet in the Chinese orbit. Trouble is, Japan still sees manufacturing as the key to prosperity, despite the fact that it is vulnerable to offshoring.

To stay ahead of China, Japan needs to develop players who innovate at the top of the value chain — providers of things like software, content and services. But these sectors are the country’s Achilles’ heel, as exemplified by the absence of Japanese companies internationally in these fields as well as consulting, advertising and media. Unless it changes course, Japan could be crushed between the anvil of China’s manufacturing clout and the hammer of Western companies’ prowess in services.

Why can’t Japan lead in the industries of the 21st century, where success is no longer synonymous with manufacturing excellence? One key reason is that many of its sectors are still organized in rigid hierarchical structures, reminiscent of the keiretsu of the heyday of Japan Inc. in the 1980s. In a keiretsu, the industrial group’s top firms, linked by interlocking shareholdings, lead the conglomerate, while smaller players, often suppliers, depend on them for essential functions such as financing, marketing, export services and innovation. This practice can stifle entrepreneurship by creating a kind of planned economy within the keiretsu that fails to transmit market signals.

In contrast, in many modern industries, value is created through the coordinated efforts of constellations of interdependent firms — or “ecosystems” — organized in flatter and more flexible structures. The personal computer world is the paradigm of ecosystems that swiftly adapt to new technology and consumer tastes. Microsoft and Intel lead the PC ecosystem through their control of a critical set of standards, but numerous other players, such as original equipment manufacturers, software developers, Internet companies and wireless businesses not only remain innovative but control their destiny and even influence the evolution of the ecosystem., Moreover, the fear of U.S. antitrust litigation restrains Microsoft and Intel from abusing their power.

The Japanese hierarchical structure works well in industries where the ecosystem leader has the capabilities and incentives to conquer international markets. For example, Toyota makes it possible for its suppliers to sell in foreign markets they could never enter on their own. Similarly, Nintendo, Sega and Sony have created huge global opportunities for their affiliated game developers.

The situation is different in most “soft” goods and services where the Japanese environment has replicated the hierarchical structure of industrial ecosystems, but with leaders that are incapable or unwilling to export. Their inward orientation prevents innovative companies around them from spreading their wings abroad — the source of huge lost opportunities for Japan. Mobile telephony and animation illustrate our point.

Japanese mobile phones are technological wonders. They offer seamless access to a host of mobile Internet content and services, and enable their owners to use their handsets to pay for store purchases and train fares. But this success masks an environment that limits Japan’s mobile telephones to their home market.

The mobile operators — NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Softbank — dictate specifications to handset makers, running the ecosystem with an iron grip. Consequently, phone manufacturers, fairly passive subcontractors to the operators’ R&D, marketing and design teams, lack in-house marketing skills. As a result, they are ill-equipped to sell abroad.

Outside of Japan their sales lag far behind LG and Samsung (Korea), Motorola (United States) and Nokia (Finland), which have developed the skills to compete everywhere, since they originated in countries where they must be strong in marketing and skillful in negotiating with telecommunications conglomerates.

Japan is also missing opportunities in an important part of its entertainment industry. Although it is the Mecca of anime, there is not a single Japanese global heavyweight in this field. The largest producer, Toei, is 10 times smaller than Disney. While Disney and Pixar may spend upwards of $100 million on a new animated film, Japanese production budgets never exceed $10 million.

In this case, one obvious problem is weak protection of intellectual property rights and a reluctance on the part of Japanese banks to lend to businesses with no tangible assets as collateral. As a result, Japanese anime producers cannot build content-based empires like Disney or Pixar, whose revenues flow not only from films but also from the licensing of toys and other products. Instead, the Japanese anime ecosystem is one where producers are at the mercy of television networks, advertising agencies and DVD retailers that control financing and distribution.

Since these ecosystem leaders focus solely on the domestic market, it is impossible for producers to establish global brands. And ironically, Disney, that quintessential U.S. company, may conquer the Japanese anime market, as indicated by its recent deals with Japanese producers.

Japan can build globally competitive industries outside of manufacturing by adopting a number of changes:

* Strengthening intellectual property rights. This would alter the balance of power in favor of knowledge-intensive companies.

* Developing the venture-financing sector, which today is virtually nonexistent in Japan. This would ensure that access to capital is no longer a bottleneck for creative entrepreneurs, a situation that forces them to yield control over their ventures to large ecosystem leaders that have no incentive to turn these startups into corporate giants.

* Enforcing antitrust legislation more strongly to help smaller but creative companies grow, as in the U.S. and Europe, where businesses with dominant positions adjust their behavior with respect to smaller firms in their ecosystems to avoid the wrath of the courts and regulators.

* Lowering barriers to entry for foreign firms so that Japanese players can escape the grip of domestically oriented Japanese ecosystem mangers.

Implementing these changes would create flatter industry structures, leading to more entrepreneurial innovation and allowing existing Japanese companies to capitalize on their creativity on a global scale.

It is too late to build a Japanese version of Silicon Valley, but in industries such as mobile telephony and entertainment, where Japan already leads in innovation, such reforms could allow Japan to claim the value that today it is leaving on the table by finally creating the Toyotas and Sonys of the 21st century.

Andrei Hagiu is an assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. Robert Dujarric heads the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan.

Live Sensei – Illsheep Interview

An innovative new project brought to by the folks at Live Sensei. Their program is basically a fun and easy way to learn and practice English using video as the primary learning tool. Take a look at this Live Sensei interview with the founder/creative director of Illsheep, David Simpson.

We are also proud to be working with Live Sensei Entertainment Network to provide coverage of Illsheep Events.

Illsheep Event Video – Miles @ Pure April 5, 2008

Pure Event Update!

This last Illsheep party might have the best one yet. The vibe and atmosphere at PURE Night club was so cool and chill due to the right mix of the people, Illsheep fashion, and the great entertainment.

Around 1:00 am Miles Jones, Canadian hip hop artist came on stage and rocked the crowd with his tight rhymes, and smooth sonics. The lights and cameras flashed as he flowed back and forth across the stage like a true star. Canadian hip hop has landed in Osaka, keep your eyes out for more of this young up and comer!

This event was presented by Illectric Sheep and Mojo Records and Publishing. We would also like thank PURE Night Club and Live Sensei for their support.

A Look Back:

Party @ Pure – This Saturday!

Upcoming Event

Event: Illsheep Days Special Live Performance – Miles Jones / Debut Release Show!!

When: April 5, Saturday Night – Live Starts @ 12:30

Where: Pure Night Club, Osaka – All You Can Drink!!!

Website: http://osaka.clubpure.com/

Guest List: All Mail Magazine Members – 500 yen Door Discount!! – SIGN UP NOW

Presented by: Illectric Sheep and Mojo Recordings

Illsheep Event – Saturday, April 5th @ Pure

Upcoming Event

Event: Illsheep Days Special Live Performance – Miles Jones / Hip Hop Show

When: April 5, Saturday Night

Where: Pure Night Club, Osaka – All You Can Drink!!!

Website: http://osaka.clubpure.com/

Guest List: All Mail Magazine Members – 500 yen Door Discount!! – SIGN UP NOW

Presented by: Illectric Sheep and Mojo Recordings

2008 Spring/Summer Catalogue Coming Soon!

2008 Spring/Summer Catalogue Front Cover: Release Date – TBA.

ILLSHEEP DAYS EVENT COMING!!

ILLSHEEP DAYS – APRIL EVENT

SPECIAL LIVE GUEST FROM CANADA

MILES JONES

MORE DETAILS COMING SOON

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