Studio Proteus is a Japanese manga import, translation and lettering company, founded in 1986 by Toren Smith and based in San Francisco.
[1] Other staff included translators Dana Lewis, Alan Gleason, and Frederik Schodt, letterer Tom Orzechowski and translator/letterer Tomoko Saito.
At about this time, noted manga expert Frederik Schodt introduced Smith to Seiji Horibuchi, who was then planning the foundation of the company that would be called Viz Media.
Schodt felt that Smith's knowledge of the American comics industry and Horibuchi's connections to Japanese publishing giant Shogakukan would make an ideal team.
When Eclipse did not want to open any more publishing slots for manga, Smith went to San Diego Comic-Con in 1988 and licensed Johji Manabe's Outlanders to the fledgling Dark Horse Comics.
Smith originally was unable to sell the comic to Dark Horse, but met fantasy writer Raymond E. Feist for dinner that evening.
The techniques for retouching the sound effects were developed by award-winning comics letterer Thomas Orzechowski, and later refined by Japanese manga artist Tomoko Saito.
successful, buoyed by the new popularity of black and white comics in the direct sales market, and Marvel's bestselling colorized version of Akira.
Studio Proteus was heavily involved in the promotion of manga and anime during the early years, and Smith gave numerous interviews, appeared on television and radio (including MTV and Canada's Basic Black), and spoke at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian as well as writing dozens of articles for magazines.
[6] As soon as other spokespeople for manga and anime appeared (such as Trish Ledoux of Animag), he retired from the public eye and rarely gave interviews after approximately 1993.
When Eclipse declared bankruptcy, Smith paid all outstanding royalties due to his Japanese licensors out of existing Studio Proteus funds.
[citation needed] All Studio Proteus titles were Toren Smith's personal picks, which were then accepted and approved by the publishers.
[citation needed] The crash of the direct sales market in the middle nineties had a tremendous impact on the manga business, another blow after the previous bust in 1988.
Studio Proteus responded by streamlining the production process and working with smaller bookstore distributors to whom manga represented a valuable percentage of their sales.
Super Manga Blast, the Dark Horse/Studio Proteus magazine,[7] gave Smith an opportunity to bring readers in via titles of known popularity, such as Oh My Goddess!, and get them to try something different, such as Club 9.
In February 2004, Dark Horse Comics announced that it had purchased the publication rights to Studio Proteus translations (not, as was widely and erroneously reported, the company itself).
All [bookstore retailers] care about is how it's formatted and what it costs...For a long time, America has seen nothing but the best of the Japanese comics, but there's lots of crap over there.
[11] The trend has continued with Viz cutting 60 personnel[12] and DC shutting down their CMX manga imprint[13] and Tokyopop finally shuttering their U.S. publishing operations in May 2011.
Despite the relatively small output of Studio Proteus compared to the major manga publishers in America, the company collected a large number of awards and nominations for their publications.