American: Native Empire

Chapter 155: Comics (2)

I’m a licensed teacher now.😊 Thanks to galaxytl, translator community and readers for your support.🙏 You helped me pass my exam with confidence. As a token of gratitude, I’ll give 5 chapters each for my novels today. Enjoy😍!

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As soon as he bit into it, Round Leaf’s interest soared. 

He sat down again.

“I’ll read the manuscript first.”

“Ah, thank you!”

White Paper’s face flushed with color. 

But Round Leaf’s eyes were already fixed on the manuscript.

He read the first chapter very carefully.

‘Wow…’

The manuscript had illustrations and speech bubbles drawn in small square boxes. 

It was a typical comic technique.

He had never seen or imagined such a way of telling a story in his life, so comics were very fresh to him.

‘And it’s very intuitive. When I read novels, there are often ambiguities depending on the description, but this is clear at a glance because it’s a picture.’

He realized.

‘This way of expression will definitely work.’

It would be nice to read something light while reading the newspaper. 

The newspaper was full of text, but this would be a good way to break it up and arouse interest.

He organized his thoughts and turned to White Paper.

“Did you say your name was White Paper?”

“Yes.”

“How did you come up with the idea of expressing your story with pictures?”

“Well, just…”

“Please feel free to tell me. I’m not interrogating you.”

“…There was no special reason. I just thought it would be nice to tell the story with pictures.”

“Is that so?”

Round Leaf nodded his head. 

In fact, it didn’t matter why he came up with this technique. 

It was much more important how he would use it in the future.

‘The story is not bad for a young girl. It’s a bit childish, but the novelty of this technique is much more impressive. The picture is a bit disappointing though.’

If he could improve the picture and tweak the story a bit, it would be perfect. 

At least it was a million times better than the trashy submissions that were lying around on his desk.

So he decided easily.

“I’ll make you an official offer. White Paper, would you like to publish your submission in our Dew Newspaper?”

“Right now? I heard it usually takes time to decide…”

“Don’t worry about that. If you decide, I’ll take responsibility and publish it in the Dew Newspaper.”

White Paper was right in principle.

There had to be an internal meeting before the final publication was decided.

But Round Leaf was sure. 

This manuscript in his hand was the one that would be published this time.

‘If this gets rejected, I’ll strip.’

He didn’t want to work for a newspaper that wasted such a treasure.

White Paper didn’t hesitate any longer with Round Leaf’s firm attitude.

“Okay! I’ll publish it!”

“You made a good decision.”

He proceeded with the contract with her. 

And after sending her back, Round Leaf visited the illustration team right away.

“What brings you here, Mr. Editor of the failed serial novel?”

“Haha. Did I come to the wrong place?”

“It’s not that, but you have no reason to come here, right?”

“I did until now.”

“Until now?”

“Yes. Now I have a reason. Please take a look at this first.”

“Hmm?”

Blue Rose’s face became interested at his words. 

He knew Round Leaf was not a man who did meaningless things.

Soon Blue Rose received White Paper’s manuscript and read it down.

“Wow…!”

And his reaction was the same as Round Leaf’s.

He finished reading the manuscript and nodded his head.

“This is a very fresh way of developing a story. I never thought of using pictures to advance the story.”

“Right? I think we were biased until now. Even though printing technology has developed so much, we still divided illustrations and text.”

“That’s true. We could have expressed it so intuitively with both illustrations and text.”

“It’s not too late yet. How about using this technique in our Dew Newspaper this time?”

“In the serial novel section?”

“Yes. Anyway, all the submissions that came in are so low quality that there’s nothing worth using.”

“That’s interesting. Then the reason you came to see me is…”

“As you can see, the quality of the picture is low. The author who brought this is only fifteen years old.”

“Fifteen? Haha. Young people are really smart these days. Haha!”

He smiled happily and then continued.

“Okay. I’ll do it if you ask me, Mr. Editor. It seems meaningful too.”

The veteran illustrator was finally hired.

***

Then, the manuscript revision began.

“You can’t draw like this. How do you expect the readers to be satisfied?”

“Y-yes… I’ll try to redraw it.”

Blue Rose was very professional when working. 

He pointed out the flaws in the drawing coldly and revised the manuscript.

At the same time, Round Leaf smoothed out the content of the comic.

As time passed, the original manuscript changed a lot in both drawing and content. 

But one thing was clear: it looked better and the content improved.

‘Phew… I’m glad I made it on time.’

Round Leaf sighed in relief. 

He had finished the revised manuscript before the internal meeting started.

And on the day of the internal meeting, he handed over his results to the editor-in-chief with nervousness.

“Is this the final manuscript?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is it a newbie?”

“Yes.”

“Haha. You’re very confident. If your eyes say so, then it must be true. Let’s see.”

He had praised him last time, but the editor-in-chief trusted Round Leaf’s eyesight very much, so he turned the first page of the manuscript with excitement.

But as soon as he turned it, his face changed.

“What is this?”

“This is the manuscript I want to serialize this time.”

“No, I mean… this is a drawing, isn’t it?”

Of course, the editor-in-chief had eyes too, so he roughly grasped what kind of feeling it was.josei

Round Leaf explained everything that had happened in detail. 

The editor-in-chief kept scanning the manuscript and listening to his words.

“…That’s all.”

“Hmm. A comic…”

“Editor-in-chief. This will surely succeed. Don’t you see that you can grasp the flow of the story at a glance thanks to the expression in drawing?”

“I get what you mean. It certainly makes sense. But, I can’t decide this by myself. I need approval from above. So just wait for now. Let’s end today’s internal meeting here.”

“Yes, sir.”

After finishing the internal meeting, the editor-in-chief did not hesitate. 

He immediately showed the comic to his superiors.

“Oh! This is really fresh!”

And fortunately, the reaction was very good.

“Let’s try this out.”

Thanks to that, everything went smoothly until the final decision was made. Not long after that, the first serialized comic was published in a newspaper.

***

The serialized comic did not cause much of a stir at first. 

There were so many kinds of newspapers, and Dew Newspaper was a newspaper that only loyal readers read.

But soon, things started to change. 

The driving force was word of mouth.

“Have you seen this?”

“Dew Newspaper? Hmm. I’ve never heard of this newspaper.”

“That makes sense. It’s not very famous. I read it for the first time too.”

“But why? Is the serialized novel interesting?”

Usually, when someone recommended a newspaper, it was because the serialized novel in that newspaper was interesting, so naturally this question popped up.

“Um… Should I call this a serialized novel? It’s serialized, but it’s not a novel.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ah, it’s annoying to explain, just read it yourself.”

“Let me see… What is this?”

“A story drawn in pictures, they call it a comic.”

“Ho-ho… This is interesting, isn’t it?”

“Right?”

People were very interested in comics that they could understand intuitively even if they emptied their minds.

“Do you have Dew Newspaper?”

“Haha. Of course. The demand has increased so much lately that I brought more. How many do you need?”

“Just three copies please.”

“Here you go.”

After that, sales slowly went up and then exploded at some point.

Some people bought several copies and gave them to their friends as gifts to introduce them to the new and interesting serialized comic.

“The market is screaming for more copies of this issue!”

“Damn it. What are you doing? Hurry up and print them out. Hire some external printers if you have to.”

“Yes sir!”

Dew Newspaper Company couldn’t catch their breath for a while because of the huge demand that flooded in. 

They even got inquiries from regions that they had never published before.

The publishing team screamed in surprise at the unexpected hit, but the people involved in this comic cheered.

“Hahaha. It’s a huge success!”

“You lucky bastard…! I knew you could do it this year!”

The editor-in-chief hugged the round leaflet with joy, as if he had been waiting for this moment.

“Let’s keep it up. If you do, I’ll make you the youngest editor-in-chief ever. Got it?”

“First, you have to get promoted, sir.”

“Isn’t that obvious? Anyway, now our only hope is this comic. We have to maintain the quality of the comic no matter what.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

***

The sales of the Dew Newspaper increased day by day. 

Every week, every week was a new record.

Before long, the Dew Newspaper finally entered the ranks of national newspapers. 

Its recognition also increased dramatically compared to before.

Then, the ones who felt the fire on their feet were the competing newspapers.

“What have you been doing all this time! You couldn’t even think of something so simple!”

“We’re, we’re sorry.”

“Does sorry end your career? Go out and find some decent serial comics right now!”

The competing newspapers that learned of the situation of the Dew Newspaper, regardless of their size, almost all jumped into the competition for serial comics. 

They quickly realized that serial comics would be the trend.

Where there is demand, there is supply. 

Thanks to the sudden boom of serial comics, the illustrators in the market temporarily ran out of seeds.

However, this increased the interest of artists in the genre of comics.

“Expressing a story with pictures… It’s quite interesting, isn’t it?”

At that time, artists were under a very big threat.

The reason was simple. 

Because of photos, their jobs were greatly reduced.

Of course, pictures could express various colors, but it was hard to catch up with the realism of photos.

Moreover, as time passed, photo technology advanced more and more. 

The perception that they would be able to take clearer photos faster as time passed made artists afraid.

That’s why their attention was focused more on comics, and in fact, the number of artists who knocked on the doors of newspapers increased day by day.

Thanks to that, it didn’t take long for comics to literally flood. 

Since there was no standard yet, the types of comics were very diverse.

“What do you think?”

“It’s quite interesting. Do you also run serial comics in the Empire Newspaper this time?”

“Yes. Even if we are the best newspaper in the empire, we can’t fall behind the times, can we?”

Kim Ki-woo nodded his head. It was obvious.

There were plenty of companies that had been at the top in history but fell behind due to complacent choices. 

Of course, it was a bit different because of the symbolism of the Empire Newspaper, but there was no need to take unnecessary risks.

‘Comics… They’re perfect for reading when I’m bored.’

Kim Ki-woo looked down at the comic serialized in the Dew Newspaper and smiled slightly.