comics headquarters san francisco california website studioproteus.com studio proteus is a japanese manga import translation and lettering company founded in 1986 by toren smith and based in san francisco . 1 other staff included translators dana lewis alan gleason and frederik schodt letterer tom orzechowski and translator letterer tomoko saito . the company worked with many 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 . contents 1 early years 1986 1994 2 middle years 1995 2001 3 later years criticism and buyout 2002 2004 4 awards and nominations 5 publications 6 anime translations 7 see also 8 references 9 external links early years 1986 1994 edit 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 shogakkukan 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 nausica of the valley of wind at the express request of the creator hayao miyazaki . 2 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 . 3 4 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 . 5 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 the 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 considers 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 3x3 eyes to innovation . 6 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 . 7 in some cases original covers were commissioned from the manga artists themselves . the early years of publishing manga in america were surprisingly according to whom 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 imploded 8 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 numerous 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 . 9 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 . citation needed 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 . middle years 1995 2001 edit 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 very successful at this time and were mostly viewed as loss leaders for future sales of the collections . the dark horse studio proteus magazine super manga blast 10 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 edit as times changed however toren smith developed an acrimonious relationship with the more hardcore parts of manga fandom . as sh jo manga became increasingly popular fans berated studio proteus and dark horse for not releasing any sh jo despite smith s repeated explanation that since he did not enjoy sh jo 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 . at that time the comic book direct market was still shrinking while manga sales in bookstores were growing although not very quickly . smith had pointed out for many years that the problem with the bookstore market was a lack of support from the buyers at the chains and lack of designated shelf space comics were often racked with art books or science fiction and fantasy . smith often cited tokyopop s poor sales of their first experiments with unflopped manga as proof the problem was very real . in 2002 dark horse s graphic novel distributor lpc group went bankrupt hurting the presence of dark horse and thus studio proteus manga in bookstores . the fortunes of manga in america were changed forever that year when kurt hassler of borders who has been called the most powerful person in manga by icv2 11 a designation smith has publicly agreed with adding that he considers him t he most important person in the history of american manga attribution needed successfully