The Direct Market puzzle doesn't look any easier to solve when you examine it closely, does it? This conundrum more than anything else is what's driving the vast majority of Marvel's current initiatives, from Tsunami to Epic... which in turn brings us to the bookstore market.

Graphic novels have something of a spotty history in bookstores. While such visionaries as Will Eisner and NBM's Terry Nantier have been pushing the format and trying to place it beyond the Direct Market since the 1970s, it wasn't until the late 1980s and early '90s that booksellers took any real notice. Then, it was a two-pronged push by a handful of art-comics (Maus, Love and Rockets) and a handful of genre comics (Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns) that attracted the attention of the wider world at large. Bookstores took tentative steps towards giving the new format a try, and for a brief moment, it seemed like the rest of the reading public had hepped itself to the quiet revolution that had been brewing in comic-book shops across America.

It didn't last, of course. Faced with a sudden potential for increased sales, publishers from across the spectrum began shovelling anything they could find into a squarebound format, calling it a "graphic novel" and offering it for sale. What genuinely good works as did exist were drowned in a sea of mediocre crap, and the emerging boom became a decisive bust.

It would take another decade before the momentum was regained. Neil Gaiman's Sandman proved to be something of a cult hit in bookstores, and the occasional ground-level artist like Jeff Smith would find limited room on the shelves. On the indy side, a slow trickle of works by the likes of Ben Katchor, Peter Bagge, Adrian Tomine and Seth kept the dim spark alive. Towards the turn of the century, things began to pick up again; Joe Sacco and Chris Ware began collecting awards and positive reviews for their works, Warren Ellis and Derrick Robertson's Transmetropolitan developed a small but devoted cult following, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell finally saw print in collected form, and the longterm diligence of such manga publishers as Tokyopop and Viz began to develop solid audiences in bookstores.

It was really this last trend that wound up pushing things over the top. In the last few years, Japanese comics became the economic engine which made the viability of the graphic novel look less like the result of a few isolated works and more like a steady stream of saleable product. Driven by the popularity of televised Japanese anime among both children and young adults alike, manga volumes have gone on to sell in respectable numbers even after the floodgates were opened and the new releases began piling up. It's hard to overestimate the success of these books — at the end of last year, manga volumes comprised 23 of the top 25 bestselling titles on BookScan's graphic novels sales charts; last April, the fifth volume of the popular series Chobits became the first manga book to appear on BookScan's Adult Trade Fiction list. Bouyed by this success, manga publishers have all but abandoned the "pamphlet" format preferred by an inexplicably hostile Direct Market — Dark Horse recently announced that its latest comics would appear directly in paperback, while Viz has stopped publishing traditional comic books altogether.