Studio Proteus was a Japanese manga import, translation and lettering company, founded in 1986 by Toren Smith and based in San Francisco."Our Web Site Info." Studio Proteus. Updated on March 30, 2003. Retrieved on October 10, 2010. "Studio Proteus PMB #926 5214-F Diamond Heights Blvd. San Francisco, CA 94131-2118." Other staff included translators Dana Lewis, Alan Gleason, and Frederik Schodt, letterer Tom Orzechowski and translator/letterer Tomoko Saito. The company worked with a number of different publishers, including Viz Media, Innovation Publishing and Eclipse Comics, but its main outlets were Dark Horse for mainstream titles and Fantagraphics' imprint Eros Comix for adult (hentai) titles.
History Early years (1986–1994) Smith first became interested in anime and manga after being introduced to it by James D. Hudnall in 1982. Smith had been involved in the comics business as a writer for several years, doing stories for Marvel's Epic magazine and Eclipse Comics. He felt that there was a market for Japanese comics (manga) in the United States, and with Hudnall, approached Eclipse Comics with the idea of obtaining rights to various titles including Akira. The unknowns and difficulties of dealing with Japanese publishers led that first attempt to fail. Smith then decided that the only solution was for him to go to Japan and arrange things directly. At about this time, noted manga expert Frederik Schodt introduced Smith to Seiji Horibuchi, who was then planning the foundation of the company that would be called Viz Media. Schodt felt that Smith's knowledge of the American comics industry and Horibuchi's connections to Japanese publishing giant Shogakukan would make an ideal team. However, a falling-out between Smith and Horibuchi after a year of working together to start Viz led Smith to found his own company, Studio Proteus, although Smith co-translated several manga for Viz, including Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (at the express request of the creator, Hayao Miyazaki).The New Miyazaki Generation
In 1986, Smith moved to Japan to try to license manga for publication in America, having previously made arrangements with Eclipse Comics to provide the publication support. Studio Proteus was designed to be a "packager", delivering completed materials to an existing publisher. Studio Proteus would be responsible for choice (with approval of the American publisher), acquisition (contracts and negotiations with the licensor), and production of the translation and lettering, delivering completed pages to the publisher. The publisher would be responsible for advertising and soliciting sales, arranging for distribution, plus collection and disbursement of income. While the industry term "packager" is more accurate, to avoid confusion the relationship was generally referred to as "co-publishing". Smith preferred to work on a profit-sharing basis, believing it led to a greater sense of responsibility on both sides."Inside Studio Proteus: A Talk with Toren Smith". Amazing Heroes. July 1990, pp. 27–38.2004 - A good year to get out of the manga business? Smith also insisted on shared ownership of the derivative copyright in the translations, which was to save his company in the future. By the early nineties, Studio Proteus was working with three publishers: Eclipse Comics, Innovation Publishing and Dark Horse. Work with Eclipse had begun within a few months of Smith's first trip to Japan. When Eclipse did not want to open any more publishing slots for manga, Smith went to San Diego Comic-Con in 1988 and licensed Johji Manabe's Outlanders to the fledgling Dark Horse Comics. Smith originally was unable to sell the comic to Dark Horse, but met fantasy writer Raymond E. Feist for dinner that evening. Feist gave Smith the advice he considered the most valuable business advice of his career: "Don't tell them how good it is; tell them how much money they are going to make." The following day Smith sold Outlanders to Dark Horse and Yuzo Takada's 3×3 Eyes to Innovation.
Studio Proteus was, from the beginning, quality oriented. Smith refused to work from photocopies of published books, instead shooting directly from the original art. The techniques for retouching the sound effects were developed by award-winning comics letterer Thomas Orzechowski, and later refined by Japanese manga artist Tomoko Saito. All translators had over a decade of experience and had written books, magazine articles, and fiction outside of their translation work. To encourage quality production, page rates for Studio Proteus letterers and translators were the highest in the industry, and they were also paid royalties—a practice unique to Studio Proteus. In some cases, original covers were commissioned from the manga artists themselves.
The early years of publishing manga in America were surprisingly successful, buoyed by the new popularity of black and white comics in the direct sales market, and Marvel's bestselling colorized version of Akira. This grace period came to an end when the black and white comics boom implodedBlack and White and Dead All Over in 1988. Both Viz and Studio Proteus had been experimenting with a wide variety of manga genres, but when the market tightened only those which appealed to the core "comic book store" market survived. It was not to be until the early 21st century that manga would again cover so large a range of subjects.
Studio Proteus was heavily involved in the promotion of manga and anime during the early years, and Smith gave multiple interviews, appeared on television and radio (including MTV and Canada's Basic Black), and spoke at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian as well as writing dozens of articles for magazines. Working together with anime company Gainax, Studio Proteus also organized the first large anime and manga convention, AnimeCon '91. However, Smith publicly admitted that, as a very private person, he was not fond of these promotional activities."Out of Japan: Comics like you've never seen them." The Calgary Herald. August 28, 1992, Sec. C, pp. 1, 3. As soon as other spokespeople for manga and anime appeared (such as Trish Ledoux of Animag), he retired from the public eye and rarely gave interviews after approximately 1993.
In 1994, due to Eclipse Comics' failure to pay owed profit share monies, Studio Proteus legally acquired all shared translation rights and production materials for all of their co-published manga. These were re-licensed to Dark Horse Comics and immediately made Dark Horse the second largest manga publisher in America. When Eclipse declared bankruptcy, Smith paid all outstanding royalties due to his Japanese licensors out of existing Studio Proteus funds.
All Studio Proteus titles were Toren Smith's personal picks, which were then accepted and approved by the publishers. If it was rejected by the first publisher, it was offered to another. If rejected by all, it was abandoned. Smith's instincts turned out to almost always be right, even when his thinking was highly unconventional. In 1994 Smith convinced Dark Horse to publish Oh My Goddess!, although Dark Horse had so little faith in this manga (despite cross promotion with the AnimEigo OAV release), Smith had to guarantee them against losses. Oh My Goddess! became a surprise hit, and for years was one of Dark Horse's bestselling manga titles. In addition, it was one of the first translated manga to attract a large female audience, along with Ranma ½.
Middle years (1995–2001) Throughout the 1990s, the team of Dark Horse and Studio Proteus was one of the two largest manga publishers in the U.S., competing with Viz. The crash of the direct sales market in the middle nineties had a tremendous impact on the manga business, another blow after the previous bust in 1988. By the time the market had reorganized, there was only one distributor left (Diamond Distributors) and over half of the comic stores in America were out of business. Manga's growing popularity saved it from the worst, but nearly one third of all manga titles were canceled due to lack of sales, and continuing difficulty in getting the trade paperback collections (graphic novels) into bookstores left manga stalled in the marketplace for several years. Studio Proteus responded by streamlining the production process and working with smaller bookstore distributors to whom manga represented a valuable percentage of their sales.
The slump in the comics market in the late 1990s affected the sales of all manga published in America. None of the attempts by American manga publishers to create a manga anthology magazine such as Tokyopop Magazine and Viz's Animerica Extra with several stories running simultaneously were successful at this time, and were mostly viewed as loss-leaders for future sales of the collections. Super Manga Blast, the Dark Horse/Studio Proteus magazine, gave Smith an opportunity to bring readers in via titles of known popularity, such as Oh My Goddess!, and get them to try something different, such as Club 9.
Later years, criticism and buyout (2002–2004) As times changed, however, Toren Smith developed an acrimonious relationship with the more hardcore parts of manga fandom. As shōjo manga became increasingly popular, fans berated Studio Proteus and Dark Horse for not releasing any shōjo, despite Smith's repeated explanation that since he did not enjoy shōjo manga, and knew little about it, he had no interest in releasing any. Studio Proteus' initial output was predominantly science fiction and action; this may have reflected Smith's tastes as a writer and member of SFWA, but also reflected the tastes of the American comics direct market (who were the primary purchasers of manga at that time) and manga fandom of the 1980s and 1990s. However, Studio Proteus also released non–science fiction manga such as Makoto Kobayashi's relationship comedy Club 9 and the pet manga What's Michael?
However, Toren Smith continued to vocally defend "flopped" manga up until 2002, at a time when it was growing unpopular even among mainstream manga fandom. He became perceived as a conservative force in manga publishing, despite his publication of non-mainstream manga such as the transhumanist manga Version, and The Rebel Sword, a manga about Kurdish revolutionaries, and his decades of effort in popularizing manga and dedication to quality production. However, by the end of 2002, Smith was convinced that his belief that readers would have difficulty adapting to read manga "backwards" (also known as "unflopped", reading right to left as in the original Japanese publication) was incorrect, citing the fact that an entire generation of new manga readers have grown up since he had started Studio Proteus and they did not have the mindset of early manga readers, most of whom came to manga from regular comics. However, he maintained that as long as the distributors were reluctant to buy unflopped manga, there was little anyone could do to try to change the industry.