Looking for the best place to get a drink at next week's San Diego Comic-Con? Apparently, it's not the Hyatt - formerly one of the most popular watering holes for SDCC attendees - which is currently embroiled in a controversy over its (former) owner's political views. As comic professionals call for a boycott of the hotel during the con, one publisher dares to detourn. Details under the jump.

Retailer Chris Butcher was the first to point out the following to the comic industry's attention:

Organizers held a news conference in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, near Seaport Village, on Thursday. A coalition of LGBT community leaders and the labor movement spoke out against Doug Manchester, who contributed a donation in support of Proposition 8, which would allow only men and women to marry in the state of California. The group opposes the ballot measure because it threatens the recent state Supreme Court decision that allows marriage between men and women.

In a previous interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Manchester said that he decided to donate to Proposition 8 because he had heard that schools that teach that marriage is between a man and a woman could be sued for discrimination against homosexuals. He also told the Union-Tribune that he was motivated by his strong Catholic faith to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Butcher's response was short and simple:

I know it’s unlikely that anyone is canceling a hotel reservation for Comic Con at this late date, but if you wanted to take the time to tell the owner what an asshole he is on those handy comment cards they provide you, or perhaps in other more creative ways, well, I would support your decision.

For my part, the Hyatt can go fuck itself. I’ll be drinking elsewhere. I’d invite you to do the same.

This led to others discussing the idea of a party boycott of the popular hotel; many were in favor, although writer Brian Wood pointed out that such a boycott may hurt servers hoping for big tips, leading indie publisher Boom! to come up with an alternative protest:

As the sage Brian Wood stated, boycotting only hurts the wait staff… so given that the owner has decided to be a homophobic bigot the BOOM! DRINK UP is now the BOOM! DRINK UP/GAY PRIDE PARTY!

Everybody, come, wave your freak flag high, tip the waiters and we will be taking shots of the party and sending the pictures directly to the proprietor to let him know exactly who his customers are and how much money he looks to lose in the future.

(The Boom! party is happening on Thursday from 9pm, if you want to attend and support them.)

For his part, Chris Butcher isn't convinced:

There are probably 20,000 service industry workers in San Diego that all appreciate your tip-dollars more-or-less equally.

There are two or three properties in San Diego where your drinking money goes into the pockets of a homophobe who is working against human rights, and using the money he is given from those properties to do so.

It’s a simple decision to make, but it is a decision. Anything else is honestly just rationalizing. I’m not going to be holding a placard outside your hotel room or anything, but there are probably 200 establishments for drinking and congregating within 15 minutes walk of the convention centre. Drinking at any of those probably won’t fund jackholes, and drinking or eating (or, unfortunately, staying) at The Hyatt will.

This time next week, we'll see whether anyone's morals survived the promise of being able to get a drink right next to the convention center.

Staying at the Hyatt in for Comic Con? Guess where your money is going, The San Diego Service Industry [Comics212.net]
SD08: BOOM! Studios - #2543 [The Beat]

She writes:

I’m not sure that manga readers here are really manga readers and I would even go so far as to say that they’re not even comics readers. There’s a love for the medium, but only within the shojo or shonen genre... [T]he audience for manga is the anime audience, and they love the anime, but they’re young. And they’re not going to be loving this when they’re older. It really looks like this market is going to outgrow manga. That doesn’t mean that manga is some trend that will die, but that it’s going to take a lot longer for the market to mature than we’re anticipating. It’s not going to be within this generation. This generation is going to outgrow it and it’s the next generation going in that’s going to keep the current market as we know it alive.

The flipside of this fear - that the manga audience is not going to outgrow the material its currently reading - is what worries retailer Chris Butcher:

If you were the recommended age of 13 years old when Naruto Volume 1 dropped in August of 2003, you’re going to be coming up on your 19th birthday any day now. In Canada at least, that means booze, and College or University, and sex. Does it also mean Naruto Volume 30? Are childhood readers and watchers of the spunky young ninja going to become adult fans, emulating Japanese otaku in more than name? Is Naruto going to be one of those properties–entertainments–that cross age boundaries like South Park does, able to enjoyed all the way through your drunken frat/sorority years? Or is it a childish thing, and it’s time for you to put childish things away (except for getting drunk and joining a frat or sorority)? No one I’ve spoken to in the industry has been able to definitively answer that question ...I am outright terrified that the North American manga publishing industry is going to turn into a mirror of the superhero publishing industry; comprised of adult fans clamouring for vaguely more mature versions of children’s material, operating in a two-company system, growing steadily more insular and inaccessible to the world at large.

Both agree, however, that the successful manga titles in the US have been predominately based at a teenage audience, and that there hasn't been any sign that that audience is crossing over into more mature titles. A potentially greater worry is that any potential new audience for non-teen books seems to be staying away from the books because of the success of teen manga. Butcher again:

It’s a little bit like why I think the pleas for more josei and more seinen are misguided; there’s no market for these books. There isn’t even an effective delivery system for them, they aren’t even designed for their target audience. The [intended] audience for the books isn’t going to find them in the manga section, and the books don’t look like something that they’d like in the first place because they adhere so strongly to manga packaging conventions (likely in a bid to capture the existing market) that even if you put a josei title next to the women’s fiction (read: chick lit) most women would look at it like some child/freak/pervert dropped it on the wrong table.

While it's tempting to put this commentary next to news of manga publisher Tokyopop's dramatic downsizing (around 45% of the company was let go in June, and publishing plans were slashed) and run a "Manga is dying!" headline, the reality is less neat. Yes, manga sales are falling even in Japan and there may be widespread confusion over what will happen to the current audience when they discover girls/boys/drugs, but in addition to Kodansha's NY arrival, San Francisco's Viz Media are also an all-new line of original content in the near future. If these are the death-throes of the manga boom, it's clearly not the death of manga-based publishing in the US.

Manga: A Long And Winding Road [Genuine Article]
The Shape of The Manga Industry Part 1, Part 2 [Comics 212] (via The Beat)