What is "shogun jump?"

Just an observation, I'm not really sure if it carries much weight but there are plenty of grim and bloody manga and the Shonen titles certainly can get bloody and yet when I look at a lot of shonen promotional art and covers the heroes are often smiling and the art is quite colorful and inviting and showcasing lots of characters and the seriousness inside is often balanced with silliness. I was just looking at the latest DC solicitations and almost every one has some muscled up characters flexing and gritting their teeth or shouting angrily or scowling, usually in the process of throttling another character.

It's really funny. Just open up a bunch of cover images and then flip through the tabs:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=39637

And their Vertigo line often looks drabby too. I think they'd need more Why I Hate Saturns and stuff like that that actually demonstrates more emotional range and just looks like fun for adults, teens, or whoever. Maybe this Sandman series might do some of that.

Whoops typo, my fault...

"Shonen Jump" was a Japanese anthology comic as thick as one of those smaller marvel essentials, but with a cheap magazine cover. Sometimes had a few color signatures in the front.

I'm not so much referring to the content as the physical format. The content was always a wide variety of stuff, some so-so some no to so-so. But it struck me when I saw them that it would be a cool format for american comics to try out.

It's a pretty decent size and would be cheaper than the equivalent stack in regular comics but pricey enough to be able to get newstand distribution.

Hard to find photos that are not just flat, and that are showing the thickness of the thing, but here are a couple...

http://gigazine.jp/img/2009/02/09/dbz_rebirth/dbz_01.jpg

http://images03.olx.ca/ui/3/76/90/50137690_2.jpg


Imagine instead of three or four monthly bat books and a robin and batgirl, having all in one anthology, with some other appropriate characters like Green Arrow, Black Canary, or more, plus a Gotham PD story and some old silver or golden age reprints, for like $9 or $10 in one magazine. Like the Old Batman family comic but huge.

I'm not surprised the books couldn't find a new audience, as I can't imagine any new blood picking up a $3-per-10-minute entertainment habit, regardless of content.

But new readers were only half the goal, as I'm pretty sure lapsed fanboys was always at least half the target audience of the DCnU.