I am not, nor have I ever been, a tween girl with a crush on Edward Cullen. And yet, here I am, talking about him. Worse yet, you readers that have never touched a Twilight book know who I am talking about. When I mention the character Edward Cullen, immediately your mind jumps to a brain dead, red carpet image of Robert Pattinson, probably standing next to the blank-slate, vacant skin-job that is Kristin Stewart (seen below). I'm not sure if this is some sort of meta-addition to the grand social consciousness or just an overzealous teen craze that's seeped it's way into all of our lives. Either way, Stephanie Meyer's bastardization of the vampire myth is here to stay for the forseeable future.
Engraining Twilight into the popular culture even further is the announcement that Yen Press will be publishing a series of graphic novels, aptly titled Twilight: The Graphic Novel with Volume 1 hitting on March 16. Not only that, but it's rumored the first printing will be 350,000 copies. To add to the madness, the adaptation is being handled by Young Kim (with input from Meyer) as a manga-style comic that should further cater to Twilight's primary fanbase.
If you can't fully comprehend the gravity of this situation, let me lay it down for you. You, presumably (on average) an 18-30 year old comic book fan, have wandered into your local Barnes & Noble on a mission to check out their expanding-but-still-ridiculously-limited graphic novel section, only to find a litter of tweenage girls scattered about the aisles cluelessly engrossed in their manga. Now, to be clear, I have nothing against manga, it's as important a storytelling format as regular comics with just as much potential. However, the fact remains that a huge chunk of it is marketed towards the aforementioned demographic.
So imagine this gaggle of middle schoolers getting in your way from picking up the newest hardcover collection of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, and multiply it by about three. That's the uphill battle we are facing when Twilight hits manga in March. Extreme perhaps, but when B&N already has an entire table devoted to Twilight (including unauthorized celeb bios of the stars), what hope do we have when we add comics to the mix? Surprisingly, it may not be all bad.
There is a benefit to all the suffering we shall endure from this. Think of yourself as martyr for the comics medium; by traversing the sad little wasteland of pre-teen Tiger Beat aficionados, we are declaring our devotion to our favorite method of storytelling. We are showing the world that Meyer's little army of weirdos shall not deter us. More importantly, some percentage of these Cullen-philes will be cracking open their first comic with the Twilight adaptations.
While a large percentage will eventually realize that Edward and Jacob Black are in fact fictional, and throw away any memorabilia recalling their days as a member of the Twilight cult, another percentage will be fans for life. These are the folks that stand the best chance of staying on board the comics medium. Twilight may lead to other manga, which may lead to other manga-influenced books like Runaways, which may lead to other Marvel comics, etc. The potential is there, we just have to suck it up and accept it.
We have to consider this a win for comic books. After all, it's only good marketing. There are tie-ins for everything these days, from films to video games. As much as I hate having to admit it, there is a bigger picture here. My one goal in writing about comic books is to get new readers to jump on board, however previously skeptical they may have been. Nothing makes me happier than talking with someone about their enjoyment over reading their first trade paperback of Fables or The Walking Dead. And if in the future, I meet a comics fan that says their entry way into this wonderful world of graphic storytelling was through Young Kim's adaptation of the Twilight saga, then so be it.
I'll just have to avoid Barnes & Noble for a while.
