Dark Horse's Astro Boy Backlist Died After 2008

Seven Seas Entertainment is publishing Ultraman manga in English for the first time, betting on a property that failed spectacularly twenty years ago.

The 60th anniversary of Ultraman—a Japanese science fiction franchise born in 1966 as television spectacle, later serialized in manga form—has given the publisher economic permission to try what Dark Horse Comics could not. Dark Horse spent from 2003 to 2008 pursuing Astro Boy in the English market with every advantage imaginable.

Astro Boy was created by Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of manga itself, so the cultural pedigree was unassailable. The sales numbers looked healthy in the first wave. Then the backlist died—the collected editions stopped moving.

Dark Horse discovered that selling a classic is not the same as starting a conversation. American readers who picked up Astro Boy as historical artifact did not become readers who returned monthly to see what Astro Boy did next. The property existed in their minds as finished—complete, canonized, safe. Why reread what you have already consumed?

One position treats the reader as cultural student. The other treats the reader as someone trying to keep up with a living system.

The manga landscape in English has changed radically since Dark Horse's Astro Boy era. We now have a generation of readers who expect backlist depth and understand that manga properties generate endless spin-offs and continuations. But the real variable is appetite. Dark Horse assumed Americans would buy Astro Boy because it was important. Seven Seas is betting Americans will buy Ultraman because they want to understand something their children or younger colleagues are already consuming.