I’m genuinely disturbed by the Pilot Program. I won’t go into breaking it down with snark or point out why it’s ethically revolting, because – this – has – been – done – all – over – the – internet.

I opened an email from my artist this morning; she’s currently illustrating our original German manga release ‘Games With Me’ for publisher The Wild Side. Artists like her draw comics for a living—they live and breathe comics, and do it fast and efficient. On top of working on our book, she’s completing her own series which runs in China, and ran in Rush from Dramaqueen [when it was still printing]. She has a lovely Asian style that sells books to the right kind of fans—so it’s no surprise that Tokyo Pop’s been trying to recruit her to draw one of ‘THEIR SCRIPTS’, but on top of that, she’s considering the Pilot Program. As far as their script query was concerned, I told her if they can match your page rate—go for it. I may not personally like WFH, but I don’t begrudge anyone that engages in it to make a solid wage. Yet when she expressed interest in the Pilot Program, my stomach just turned.

She, and artists like her, can churn out pages of manga in a short time and so to her, a possible $750 isn’t so bad for what amounts to a quick job…but what bugged me was: ‘and I can have Tokyo Pop work on my resume.’ Ugh. This is what I call the ‘Tokyo Pop Crush’: teen-style emo-crushing that goes on with unpublished creators who could care less about actually getting paid but care more about having their work in print—from Tokyo Pop.

While I can see that some of the fault for this T-Pop-crushing lies in the minds of young artists, I also blame those they look up to for reinforcing this notion that—hey, draw like this and submit to Tokyo Pop. Who in their right mind does this and actually cares about a young creator’s future?

Now I wont deny that’s I’ve submitted to them; Yep, I submitted to Tokyo Pop once upon a time—why? They have an established presence in book stores, and direct market distro; and their page rates are nice enough that any artist I work with would be happy with them. It would’ve been an excellent way to get my book to as many readers as possible and get my artist paid for their labor. I submitted my outline, exchanged emails with an editor…and it was fine until I expressed that I had no intention of handing over exclusive multi-media rights to my work. I wanted to share them. What happened? My script [which was complete, with artist attached] went unread. It was a polite ‘well we have our way of doing contracts, sorry—’ and that was that. So no I’m not commenting here out of sour grapes because I don’t look at my attempt as being rejected—I’m pretty confident that, if I had played by Tokyo Pops rules, I could’ve sold the pitch. My goals and their goals weren’t the same and I could reasonably sit back and look at it from both sides and make a decision that best benefited me.

I don’t feel that many young unpublished creators are capable of doing this. This is not an insult, or me calling young creators amateur n00bs—I just know from experience that the desire to be published is so strong that it gets in the way of logical thought. I’ve been there [seriously, I really have been there] and I can tell you, regret sucks. It sucks the life right out of you. Perhaps not at the moment you sign the contract…but later, long after you’ve spent the money paid to you up front. Regret is a skanky feeling that sours your creative juice, I don’t wish a bout of it on anyone.

You know the expression they have in prison: You ain’t down up in here until you been fucked up in here? I just hate to think that creators might feel that ‘being fucked over’ by Tokyo Pop, is a rite of passage on the way to publication. It’s disturbing.

To me, this is what best summarizes the Pilot Program [which will ultimately be fueled by creators infected with the T-Pop Crush]. Sadly, if it succeeds and it probably will, we’re going to have other companies following suit and my predictions made here, will most likely come to pass. [Sadly, I wasn't even talking about Tokyo Pop in that post.]