 People make
anime conventions special, and Steve Bennett of Studio Ironcat loves to
sit down with those people at conventions and learn what they want. He
thinks it's one of the best ways to make sure that his small-press company
produces books that fans really want to buy. That responsiveness to fans
generates some great stories from the most ardent fans. At NekoCon, Bennett
told the tale of a fan who insisted that a scene had been deleted from
an episode of Futaba-Kun Change by Hiroshi Aro. Bennett went back to his
copy of the original manga and found that nothing had been removed, but
the fan kept (kindly) insisting that he wanted to see the "deleted" panel.
So Ironcat created an extra panel and sent it to the fan, who was delighted
with what he got. Just another example of how far Ironcat goes to please
its customers... |
|
 ...although
it's not simple to create the manga translations Ironcat handles. "Sometimes
we have to tear the pages out of the original (published) comics and work
with them," Bennett explained. "We don't always get the original artwork."
Ironcat continues to retouch and rework its first editions of its manga
when the works are assembled in graphic novel form, to elimimate the rough
edges. And Doug Smith has been kept extremely busy reworking and recoloring
Ironcat covers. |
 Ironcat's growth
in the last year has come from manga releases linked to anime companies,
with tie-ins planned with ADV Films, among others. Those links led one
fan to ask at Bennett's panel whether Ironcat would like to pick up the
Urusei Yatsura manga which has been an on-again, off-again proposition
for Viz Communications. Bennett replied that if fans really really wanted
that, they'd have to convince Viz to let Ironcat release the rest of the
Lum stories. |
