DC, Marvel Go For the Book Trade
Marvel is entering that field with a Marvel Manga format that it will introduce in November: digest-size books, printed in color, with a price point of $7.99 or $8.99. Sentinel, Mystique and Runaways are self-contained stories with ties to the X-Men and Spider-Man lines, appropriate for school-age audiences. The company is also making a play for teenage girls with YA prose book adaptations of top comics series: Judith O’Brien’s Mary Jane, a prose story focused on Spiderman’s girlfriend, was very successful (it will appear in paperback soon), and O’Brien’s Mary Jane II will appear in time for the Spider-Man II film’s opening in early July 2004.It’s good to see Marvel taking more steps to go mainstream. I think they need to tap into the prose market more than just for girls, though. Push out more novels in both young adult and sci-fi and hype them for boys and girls, kids and adults. It’s an open market, really.
