The first Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2), held April 16–18, was a low-key event with little movie and video game presence but plenty of opportunities for attendees to browse new comics and meet with their creators.

Milton Greipp of the retailer-news site ICv2 kicked off the show with a white paper that showed a sharp drop in manga sales for the second straight year. The reasons? Publishers are releasing fewer titles, Cartoon Network is no longer showing anime, and teenage shoujo manga readers aren’t staying with the medium as they age. “Twilight is now the teen girl favorite,” Greipp says. “To the extent that manga popularity was fad driven, there is a new fad.” He also noted that graphic novel sales to libraries were flat, saying, “Graphic novels are more popular, but libraries are more broke.”

In the retailer summit before the show, Viz Media reported that its Kekkaishi anime would be shown on Cartoon Network beginning May 29, which should stimulate interest in the manga, and announced plans to market its best-selling “Vampire Knight” series directly to Twilight fans.

Most publishers promoted upcoming releases rather than announcing new titles that have been recently released. Del Rey marketing director Ali T. Kokmen highlighted several upcoming books, including an Airbender prequel illustrated by Nina Matsumoto (Yokaiden) and the second Odd Thomas graphic novel, Odd Is on Our Side, written by Dean Koontz and Fred van Lente and illustrated by Queenie Chan. Del Rey has begun releasing some of its longer-running manga series, such as “School Rumble,” as three-volume omnibuses rather than single volumes.

Dark Horse has jumped on the omnibus bandwagon as well with reissues of the classic CLAMP manga Clover, Chobits, and Cardcaptor Sakura, but its plans for short manga, or “mangettes,” by CLAMP are on hold. Dark Horse also plans a series of single-issue superhero comics featuring the characters Dr. Solar, Turok, and Magnus, and it announced at its panel presentation that Jim Shooter will write all three. 

The Oni Press panel featured Jamie S. Rich, author of Spell Checkers, the story of three girls who steal a spell book and use it to rule their high school. “It’s rude, it’s crude, it’s everything you love in a teen comedy,” he said. “No lessons learned. Badness rules.”

Oni marketing director Cory Casoni also highlighted JAM!, a book about roller derby written by real roller derby competitors, and Super Pro K.O., which he described as “Shonen Jump meets old-school high-impact wrestling.”

A dedicated webcomics area on the exhibit floor allowed creators such as Lora Innes (The Dreamer, IDW), Thom Zahler (Love and Capes, IDW), and the Cyanide & Happiness (It Books) team to meet with fans, while in the Artists Alley Josh Howard (Dead@17, Image Comics), Dave Roman (X-Men: Misfits, Del Rey), and Raina Telgemeier (Smile, Scholastic) signed autographs and chatted with their readers.