Do graphic novel adaptations bring new readers to the format?
Ruwan: Absolutely. Stephen King’s Dark Tower and The Stand have attracted many new readers to this medium and have resulted in new faces appearing in many different retail spaces. Respective series based on Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake and Microsoft’s Halo universe have all generated a tremendous amount of buzz, a great velocity of sell-through, and pulled a significant number of its core fan base over to the sequential arts side—which is a big win for the creators, Marvel, and retailers! Marco: You bet—we’ve seen that with our Warriors manga, which are original stories set in the superpopular Warriors YA novel (published by HarperCollins) universe. The consumer for the Warriors manga is the novel fan who is relatively new to the manga category. Ernst: Yes, they do. I have numerous emails from comic book readers who now read novels because of our work, and book readers who now read graphic novels. Betsy: They can definitely bring new readers to the author, at least as shown by our
