Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comicspro, manga, Saturday A.M.

ComicsPRO: Saturday AM Launches Manga Crossover Saturday Wars

Saturday AM is a manga anthology magazine founded by Frederick L. Jones as "the world's most diverse manga anthology", and they came to ComicsPRO.

Saturday AM is an ongoing English-written international digital shōnen manga anthology magazine founded in Morrisville, North Carolina in 2013 by Frederick L. Jones and published by MyFutprint Entertainment, presented as "the world's most diverse manga anthology" with series such as Apple Black from Nigeria, Saigami from Hungary, and Bully Eater and Clock Striker from the United States. And they have their first presentation at the ComicsPRO Summit this week in Pittsburgh with hundreds of US comic book retailers, abouyt bringing their digital manga to print. They also released their video presentation online.

Frederick L. Jones talked about how Saturday A.M, is a manga anthology inspired by Saturday morning TV cartioons, has been a successful manga, in that ut is in the top 150 of Shonen manga on Amazon, without an anime behind it and from non-Asian comic book creators. Talking to comic book retailers, Jones said that "as a geeky guy black kid who was too black for the white kid and two white for the black kids uh the comic industry was the first place I truly felt at home."

Jones explained how they publish three main branded manga anthology magazines, with different primary audiences, Saturday AM for younger male readers, Saturday PM for older, more male oriented readers and Saturday Brunch for younger, more female and LGBTQ audiences.

He described Apple Black is their juggernaut title by Odunze Oguguo, or Whyt Manga, a Nigerian creator, currently invited to speak at colleges, and a regula at Stanford Green's classes.

Clock Striker features the  first black female lead character in mangas," it is very popular around the world, Japan is very excited about this which shows that the idea that manga could not have diversity or can't be non-japanese is ridiculous."

And then there's Hammer by Jay Oden, who is also the artist on the upcoming Rick & Morty manga series from Oni Press. "This guy is a master, but when I first found his work… I had to explain to him who Walt Kelly was; I'd explain to him about some of the beautiful art that came from Carl Barks. Jay operates in that style, his cartoony style has such layers to it you will you will love this artist. He's one of the most wonderful people you'll ever meet."

But what Jones was really here to talk to comic shop owners was about the move to print, with British publisher Quarto Books, "they were going to give us the patience that we needed with a lot of young creators who are very progressive and also very young so they we didn't want them to have a lot of pressure about what they were do. At the end of the day is that they let us create the content the way that we wanted to create the content."

"The manga are not for sale in the app, the app is intended to aggregate traffic and then to push them to the graphic novels it is not there to cannibalize the sales, the books are 200 pages with colour, wither full colour or colour elements, and will have exclusive "post credit" scenes with cliffhangers."

"Kids around the world are creating manga, they don't care that people have this conception that manga is only Japanese. On Amazon, How To Draw Diverse Manga what's so special about that book is that you can't talk about diversity if you don't practice diversity, you've got to give ladders of opportunity to everybody… in the image there these are two female figures, one is slightly bigger than the other. In manga typically every female is thin has a very busty chest and that's not the level of beauty standards that we want to havem we want to see everyone represented. Likewise we do black hairstyles I can assure you I have never seen a how to draw a book that even begins to talk about black hairstyles so we get really deep in this and we've been really happy with response to it." They published eleven books last year, with thirteen to be published this year."

Talking about planned anime, being approached by Netfliz, Amazon and Apple, they are also recruiting new comic book creators around the world through talent drives, Jones clarified the message for comic book stores. "We're not going to be doing individual issues and floppies and things of that nature. We do books we do graphic novels and our belief that we can succeed in your stores is that… on the standard book side, you've got manga destroying it, you've got young adult graphic novels doing exceptionally well and then obviously most of your stores are built for traditional comics and trade paperbacks, we've done everything in our power to make sure that our books can sit on your shelves, whether wireframe or wood."

"We also know that one thing your stores love is a crossover and so we know that that's something that I love, you're never gonna see Naruto and Goku fight but you are going to see our characters fight. It's called Saturday Wars and we're releasing it in 2024."

More to come of course, and the full presentation is at the link.

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