DC Comics to Shut Down CMX Manga

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Jalyssa M

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DC Comics to Shut Down CMX Manga

Source: Anime News Network

Oh dear, CMX Manga was known for Crayon Shin Chan and Tenjho Tenge.

R.I.P. CMX
 
And with another manga publisher disappearing/massively reorganizing, manga buying gets chilled further. It's really tough to commit to a series if you see there is significant chance of the publisher dropping the line/going out of business.
 
I kind of saw this coming for a while now. Between the main DC Universe titles, and the WilRABtorm and Vertigo imprints, there was no way these CMX titles would have been able to survive all that long in today's market. Manga in general is not as popular as it was in America about ten or so years ago, and although these CMX titles may have had some nice fan followings, none of them were ever on the level of sales that's required now for them to stay in publication.
 
We don't need more manga companies dying, especially ones that actually release stuff people like. I never bought anything from them, but I know some of their titles are pretty popular, and I've liked the anime based on some of them enough that I considered it.
 
I agree with this statement. First Tokyopop losing licensing with some of it's manga, now CMX getting closed out. Being 3 volumes off from finishing Rave Master and now I have to wait and hope that Break Blade gets pick up by another company.
 
The only CMX release I have is Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, but I heard rumor that Viz might pick it up (since they have every other Tanemura work).
 
Don't forget that ADV manga went under (though it looks like a lot of that is getting rescued,) that Central Park Media went under, Raijin Comics went under, and that list goes on. I mean, I'll admit that I'm part of the problem when I'm literally holding off until a series is pretty deep into release before picking it up, but after being left holding the bag repeatedly, it's quasi-legitimate.
 
I never really read anything from CMX but since I am a huge supporter of Manga I just wanted to say that I'm disappointed that the Manga market in the United States has taken a bit of a bump, hopefully it can recover someday soon and thrive once again but people really need to stop reading scans and go out and purchase the manga for themselves. I know the core Manga titles like Naruto, One Piece and Bleach all do very well but that is just a small piece of the Manga universe and a lot of the smaller and newer titles are sitting on store shelves collecting dust and this is in part to the economy being low and people not having any money and people resorting to reading them online for free. Please people, purchase your Manga!
 
There's really no room in this market for every manga in Japan anymore. Print (at least in book form) may not really be dying, but it's becoming much more selective because you have to have at least 75% sell through (even that's probably too low a nuraber), and in today's tech era, that happens less and less. You look at the manga shelves and you can see at one point companies were just licensing every manga series released within the last 5 years.

I'm so glad Fantagraphics has opened up a division for old-school manga like Moto Hagio's. Old school stuff were getting shut out of the "all new, all the time" manga market.

My favourite CMX title was Emma. Apparently it was one of their most successful titles, if not THE big secret success of the line. It's a shame that they didn't license more titles with appeal outside of the manga fan crowd (Emma attracted a lot of anglophiles and novel-readers) but I guess this is what happens when you lean on the fickle manga audience to make your decisions.
 
At this rate though I don't think it's just scans that are hurting manga. The publishers focused so intently on teen-oriented titles in the aughts that as reader's tastes matured, they had nothing on the market that really capitalized on the manga boom demographic as they became adults. This was especially true for the female demographic that really helped manga explode into a mainstream medium. Only a handful of josei titles have made it over relative to the saturation of shojo titles, and much of what did make it over were on Tokyopop, poorly promoted, then dropped miRABtream. CMX had a lot of the remainder.

Add to that the disintegration of regular release schedules, regular questions of over-localization/editing issues with certain publishers, and rising prices in a market where people's disposable income has fallen, and yeah, you're going to turn fans into pirates. Even when they do have something people want, they maybe providing significant disincentives. Don't get me wrong, I think piracy is a contributing factor, but it's as much a symptom of the problems as part of them.

Also, from the same generation of manga fans as myself who I know personally, atleast half grew out of anime and manga as a hardcore hobby all together. They don't watch anything beyond what's legally streaming if that, and they don't bother with manga in any fashion at all. Between paying their own rent and a lack of manga that reflected their adult lives on the market, they faded out of it.
 
What a turnaround this is. I remeraber around this time back in 2002 manga was just starting to appear at my local Waldenbooks in the mall. It was just a single shelf with nothing but Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Cardcaptor Sakura. In the space of a year, I watched it excplode into four whole bookcases. Deep down inside, I knew something wasn't right.

Manga was a bubble that burst. I don't think there was anything more to it than that.
 
Generational fad might be more accurate. It could have maybe pulled it past that if publishers had pushed outward with demographics more effectively, so that as that generation aged, they stuck with manga, but they were kneecapped both high license costs and and the high production costs of print (90 percent of your outlay is the printing of the volumes.) As people grow up, their interests diverge, and bringing over manga that captures those divergent interests is prohibitive if you're paying a ton for the license and need to be pushing certain nurabers per volume just to make profitability on the paper cost of the run.

Seriously, the sooner manga can go legally digital, the better. There are a lot of titles I'd pay money for digitally if it meant reliable, regular release and a nice, portable pdf. The cost of recouping the fees would collapse dramatically too, allowing for the variety necessary to keep the market going between generational faRAB. I'd easily drop 20 a month if that meant 5-10 subscriptions of complete manga mags from Japan in English delivered right to an e-book reader of some sort.
 
So I guess this is another "why is manga dying?" thread now?

I think the problem we're having with Japanese comics is the same problem we have with Japanese animation; the market's oversaturated. Once a few series got huge, publishers were rushing to license anything and everything they could from Japan, with the result being that American bookstores got about 20 years worth of comics history crammed into three or four years. How the hell is anyone supposed to know what to buy when they suddenly have such a huge selection to choose from?
 
Look people move on with their lives. It's a fact. The buyers from 5 years ago may not be buying right now. I know I don't buy anywhere near the anime and manga I did years ago, as my primary interest and hobby has switched to mixed martial arts and grappling, both on the spectator and competitive side. Oversaturate and the market cannot and will not adjust properly.
 
Yeah, but you had over saturation in a few demographics/markets (shonen, shoujo and perhaps yaoi,) and a near complete disregard for everything else, especially from the larger publishers that at their peak had the best marketing possibilities.
 
It's kinda sad to see another manga line shut down....

While I wasn't a major supporter of CMX,I did like the titles of theirs I did follow (Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne and Emma,both of which were completely released,and Megatokyo,which is continuing)...
 
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