It’s a secret known to a few great manga readers: at the end of Plateau-Mont-Royal, in the shade of the incinerator chimneys, between the railway and Laurier Street, the mangaka draws tirelessly at home Tony Valente. In Montreal since 2010, this is where young wizard Seth’s father created the character for his hit series Radiant. A series that became in 2018 – back to the origins… – an anime on the Japanese small screen. Story of the initiatory quest of a cartoonist.
“We have an extremely well-known manga author in Quebec,” says Amélie Jean-Louis, from the O-Taku bookstore. “It’s even published in Japan…” That’s good, what does it do? we ask the specialist. ” Oh yes ! This is what I recommend to teenagers starting manga. It’s a shonen which takes up the classic framework of naruto, dragonball and One Piece : we have a hero who has a handicap. Here, he is a wizard who does not know how to use his powers well, but who, thanks to his other qualities, will be able to carry out his quest. There’s adventure, magic, humor… Tony Valente is a superstar! »
A superstar? When caught on the phone, Mr. Valente is nothing short of generous and modest, and also happy, truly, with the success of his Radiant. “Sales are still small for Japan compared to other big manga titles. I’m not published in a magazine, over there, it’s a huge showcase less. We are two, in French manga, [avec Reno Lemaire et son Dreamland, depuis 2006,] to have series which have imposed themselves and which manage to compete with certain Japanese manga. »
Because in France, manga has been an editorial phenomenon in its own right for several decades, which is beginning to surge in Quebec. Tony Valente, he started in “classic comics, 20 years ago, at Delcourt editions, very established. I was not a screenwriter at the start.
poor and misunderstood
It is with the author Raphaël Drommelschlager that he made his first series, The 4 Princes of Ganahan (2004 to 2007). He also started writing texts for the three volumes ofHana Attori (Soleil Productions), then returns to the only drawings for Speed Angels (Soleil Productions). “It was from bad to worse in terms of sales for me,” says the artist.
“ Speed Angels, when it came out, it was a disaster, tiny sales in bookstores. I make comics to be read. I was making very, very little money, but I grew up poor, that didn’t change the situation. But having no money and being ignored was more difficult. That it interests extremely few people, it played a lot on my morale and on my desire to continue. »
” I did Radiant, continues Tony Valente, just for my pleasure, before leaving the industry, because it became too hard. Fan of manga since childhood, he discovered the genre on the small screen. By the anime broadcast at Dorothee Cluba show that will mark a few generations of children – and which perhaps explains the mega-popularity of manga in France.
Stick to codes
“Me, it was really dragonball. And Ranma ½, which I still find awesome! This is the story of a boy who becomes a girl every time he gets water on his head”, created by Rumika Takahashi, Grand Prix d’Angoulême 2019. For Radiantalmost his farewell project to comics, Tony Valente is inspired by these pillars and the classics: he challenges himself to follow the codes of traditional manga as closely as possible.
Volume 1 appeared in 2013, and again: the book finds only a few readers. Who will be more numerous in volume 2. And much more numerous in volume 3. “Until today, in fact, each release of Radiant is more important than the previous one”, specifies the former cartoonist. The publication in Japan, and especially the anime, born in 2018, lead to translations everywhere, to the point where the author himself does not know how many copies, all volumes combined, he was able to sell.
“I asked for the numbers two years ago. It is complicated. There are many links in the chain, dozens of foreign publishers involved, because it comes out on all continents, in several countries at the same time. He knows he has sold several hundred thousand copies in France, and at least as many in the rest of the world. “But how much? wonders the mangaka himself.
From comics to manga, what strikes Tony Valente is how much the format and the form change…everything. Both in creation and in reading. “I release two volumes a year, 180 pages instead of 48 in classic comics. Just this meeting with the young reader, who comes back so often, is a big game-changer. It really is faster. »
Marathon weariness
He describes the pace of production as “a marathon that you have to do at the speed of a sprint… It’s very exciting to see the story moving almost in real time. When I was doing comics, I felt like I was working hard, but it was vacation all year round! says the one who does everything on his own in his books. Moreover, in manga, “we have space, more pages to develop the characters in depth”.
The use of black and white is also a huge change. “It leaves more room for interpretation, the reader has to fill a lot of space. Often, as we have to go quickly, we develop a spirit of synthesis to tell the hair, the faces, the expressions, we spend more time doing close-ups on the eyes: we quickly have to understand the emotions of the characters. And the color does not come to help us. »
His next dream? “The ambition is already to finish the series as it should. A few years ago, I saw well between 30 and 40 volumes. “In two years, he will sign volume 20, and envisioning the end suddenly seems less simple to him. “With the pandemic, I haven’t been able to meet readers for two years. It plays a lot on my engine to work. Between 20 and 30 volumes, I imagine it’s reasonable…” To be continued, then…
With Amélie Gaudreau