One of the most shocking announcements at Anime NYC last year wasn’t announced during a publisher or distributor’s panel. It came out in the midst of a simple discussion between industry legends Frederik Schodt (Manga! Manga!) and Matt Alt (Pure Invention) supervised by comics journalist and Mangasplaining co-host Deb Aoki. In a surprise move, they announced that Hisashi Eguchi’s comedy classic Stop!! Hibari-kun! would be published in 2025 by Peow.
Talk about a bombshell! One of the most beloved indie comics presses of the past decade plus was making a move into manga publishing, and their first pick was a title that fans have wanted for years. Who could have predicted this? I turned to a friend sitting next to me, somebody I knew to be very knowledgeable about the manga and anime sphere, to see what they thought. Their response: “What the fuck is Peow?”
Peow is an independent Swedish comics press founded in 2012 by Patrick Crotty, Elliot Alfredius, and Olle Forsslöf. (The W is a mystery.) For over a decade, it published books influenced by manga, video games, and whatever else their affiliated artists liked. These artists include Linnea Sterte, Mathilde Kitteh, and Jane Mai, among others. (Those in search of gossip should read Mai’s P.E.O.W. books, a typically acerbic rendition of the life and times of indie comics publishing.)
The Peow secret sauce
Peow didn’t just publish good books, though. They published books that felt good to read and hold in the hand. The studio became famous for its high production quality, consistent design sense, and use of risograph printing. Their books were deliberate and carefully crafted in ways that are just not practical for large corporate publishers such as Penguin Random House. If you see a book at an indie comics fair with manga influence and a limited color palette, it was almost certainly inspired by what Peow was doing through the 2010s.
Unfortunately, Peow couldn’t last. The daily grind of running an indie comics press caught up to Patrick and company. As a result, they closed the studio for good in 2021. But wait: if that’s what happened, how could Peow have licensed Stop!! Hibari-kun!? Why is it that they are now called Peow2? What inspired them to jump from graphic novel publishing to manga licensing?
To answer these questions, I reached out to none other than the P in Peow, Patrick Crotty. Our conversation, edited for clarity and content, covered such topics as his studio’s new identity, the Hibari-kun! printing process, early meetings with artist Hisashi Eguchi, and what the future of Peow might look like. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What the fuck is Peow?” look no further. Peow2 is here.
A publisher of international creators
WESCOTT: When did you first discover Stop!! Hibari-kun!?
CROTTY: The artist is a very well-known illustrator from Japan. I used to repost his artwork over ten years ago on my Tumblr inspiration blog. So, I was subconsciously aware of him for a long time. But for the manga, I became aware of it through the recent French translations by Lezard Noir.
We haven’t gone for this type of licensed work before. It’s only within the past couple of years that we’ve been looking at untranslated titles.
WESCOTT: Before this, Peow and Peow2 were going after artists that were relatively small and bringing them to a wider stage.
CROTTY: We’ve been a publisher of international creators. That’s been our thing ever since we started. We want to publish comics artists from around the world. Working with comics artists from Japan was on our wishlist, but because of the language barrier and our capabilities as a publisher, we decided it was most reasonable to work with artists either in Europe or North America.
We have worked with artists based in Japan on shorter stories in the past, but this is our first longer series. Lezard Noir publishes really cool work that we also just like. When we saw that they had picked it up, I thought, “I wish it would be published in English.”
We had our little list of works we would like to publish. We hadn’t done research into which publisher has the rights to these or anything like that. When we were reaching out to a licensing agent in Japan, Stop!! Hibari-kun! was on the first page of their catalog. We flipped through the thing, none of their other stuff was on our list. So we said to each other, “Hey, this is a cool find. You know what, let’s send in an offer.” It was a very smooth process.
A lot of what we publish is gut instinct and our personal art and story preferences. It comes down to what we think is cool.
Wrapping up the last bits of translation
WESCOTT: What size is Peow right now?
CROTTY: The original Peow was 3 people: Patrick, Elliot, and Olle. W is an extra letter. Some people occasionally help out here and there, like freelance editors. Now we are just two people. We have a few more behind the scenes helping with distribution and customer support. We’re also getting freelance help. But we’re a small publisher, we don’t have a traditional business structure that you could compare to larger publishing.
WESCOTT: You got Jocelyne Allen to translate Stop!! Hibari-kun!, right?
CROTTY: I did the lettering for Okinawa by Susumu Higa. Jocelyne was the translator, so I met her working on that. This was long ago, six or seven years. We’d see her at Toronto Comics Arts Book Fair, and because we’d worked together, we would say hello. She moderated panels for an artist that I’d worked with before, Jane Mai. I thought the work that Jocelyne usually translates would be a good fit, and we were very happy that she was on board.
Right about now, we’re wrapping up the last bits of the translation, which is the main priority. We have done cleanup on the files behind the scenes, we’re adding a few little extra bits to the book. In November I had the chance to meet Hisashi Eguchi in Japan. I asked him, “Was there anything that you would like to add for the English edition?” He said that he had a bunch of extra illustrations; when this was serialized, each chapter would start with an illustration. Eguchi thought it would be cool if we could include some of the extras in the book as well. So, we are adding some new pages with additional artwork. It means that we’ll have to tweak the page count, figure out where we can fit these if they’re colored pages.
Communicating with the original creator
WESCOTT: Stop!! Hibari-kun! was published in the 1980s, quite a while ago. Were you thinking about adding historical context in there as well as the extra illustrations?
CROTTY: We’re planning on having a preface, similar to what Dark Horse has done with the Tezuka Foundation when they were releasing Astro Boy. There are some things in it that even Eguchi is aware are not okay nowadays. Most of these images are only in the first volume, but we are going to be bringing that up.
WESCOTT: I haven’t read Stop!! Hibari-kun!, but I’ve heard that it’s a series that is very much of its time, but also ahead of its time.
CROTTY: We’re not changing anything with the translation. The story will be the exact same. We’re expecting readers will have a mature brain and be able to analyze what they’re reading. But it was something that Higuchi also wanted, to have a note at the start. The reason why you’d meet with the creator is to say, “We want this book to be something that you feel good about. If there’s anything you want to change, or want to keep the same, let us know.” Often when older books are published, the artist has already passed away and it’s up to the publisher to figure it out on their own. For us, since we had that opportunity, I wanted to ask him directly. That’s the best way to do something like this, by communicating directly with the original creator.
Make sure that every single thing feels nice
WESCOTT: A defining part of Peow and Peow2 as a publisher is that it cares not just about what comics are published but also how they are packaged. It pays attention to cover design, the design of the paper, what kind of paper they use, what kind of printing process was used. Are you already thinking what kind of paper stock you’ll be using for Stop!! Hibari-kun!, or how it’ll be presented?
CROTTY: If you are going through all the effort to make a physical book, you should take into account all the aspects of the physical part of it. Making sure that every single thing feels nice. There are so many different ways to read books. You can read on your phone, you can read on your iPad or online. If the story’s good, it doesn’t matter where you read it. Printing a physical object costs more money and energy to produce and ship around the world. So we want to make sure it’s really good, as well.
We sent the printer original copies of Stop!! Hibari-kun! to find similar paper stock. We’re basing our translation on the collector’s editions that came out ten years or so ago. They are actually very nice and have interesting textured paper. We are making some small tweaks to the paper preferences, but we do want to keep it similar. We’re still in the process of figuring out if we’re doing a new updated design, or keeping it closer to the original complete editions. Once we have something we’ll share it online.
WESCOTT: It’s funny that Stop!! Hibari-kun! has been out for long enough that it has a high-quality collector’s edition release. Manga is often published via magazines with crappy paper quality.
CROTTY: When I was there recently, I bought one of the original volumes of Shonen Jump that Stop!! Hibari-kun! ran in. Issue #38 from 1983. It was older than I am. But I like that paper stock. We do print on newsprint papers occasionally. We’re not going to be doing that for this book. But I do think there’s a certain charm to it, it just feels nicer in the hand. Certain kinds of paper just feel better to turn the pages than others.
When these collected editions were first released as single editions, they were little books that were about 100 pages each. The complete editions combine three of them into one, so there are three of them total.
That’s a nice spine on that book
WESCOTT: Something I’ve seen people in the manga industry argue about is print editions versus digital editions. A lot of people I know read Chainsaw Man on the Shonen Jump app. But Emuh Ruh, who runs Glacier Bay Books, told me that, “We’ve given up on releasing our series digital, because very few people buy digital as opposed to print books.”
CROTTY: A lot of what we do with Peow is imagining how a customer similar to us might think. Something like Chainsaw Man, or a Shonen Jump series that is ongoing, is a big investment if you buy each volume. Mostly it’s the length, because the release structure is every week or every month. Reading digital first on a week-to-week basis just feels more comfortable because it’s the fastest, most convenient way to get the story. One-off digital comics in digital are not as enticing, because if it is a one-off, it might have to be very specific for you to want to buy it.
Glacier Bay also does nice work with their productions, so maybe their readers think, “I know they’re going to make a nice book, so I’d rather just buy the book.” Also, buying a single standalone book is easier than committing to buying a series of books. Even if you’re reading digital, you still have your bookshelves. It’s the same with Peow. The best things that you can put on a bookshelf are between 100 and 400 pages. It won’t take up too much space but will look nice, and have a spine that will make you say, “Wow, that’s a nice spine on that book!” Everybody in publishing is doing so many different things nowadays. It’s possible to make digital or physical work, but you have to focus on it.
Many little pockets
WESCOTT: When I heard that Peow was licensing Stop!! Hibari-kun!, I thought, “Hey, this small comic press from one part of my life is crashing into manga, which is another part of my life. I can’t believe this is happening!” When I spoke to other manga fans though, they said, “What’s Peow? I don’t know what Peow is.” I was shocked. You’re not obscure; if you go to comics conventions, people will know what Peow is.
CROTTY: Comics are big. There are so many little pockets; you can become very invested in one and never interact with the others. To me, it doesn’t come as a surprise that some people aren’t familiar with Peow. We’re an indie publisher. We’re not on Amazon, we don’t sell on Barnes and Noble. If you just buy books from those places, you’re not going to see us. It does make me happy every once in a while to see our books on the bookshelves of manga collectors.
If you are someone who’s only into manga, there’s no reason to know about Peow because we haven’t published traditional manga before. But I do think that a lot of work we’ve done is adjacent to it. We’re working with a generation of artists who grew up with manga, not superhero books. I think that is a big difference between us and older independent North American and European-based publishers; mostly the US ones. A lot of them grew up reading American-based comics and were influenced by them. Many artists we’ve worked with have had a different influence, so it shows in the books that we’ve made.
Peow’s personal taste
CROTTY: None of the artists that we’ve worked with have intended to make manga specifically. Nobody wants to put a specific label on their comic. They just want to make a story. I think maybe that’s one of the things too that can make it feel different, is because we want to give the creators as much freedom as possible, rather than saying to them, “This thing could be popular, why not make this kind of story?”
WESCOTT: Would you say that Higashi Eguchi also embodies this ethos? That his art stands on its own and sets trends, rather than copying others?
CROTTY: That’s what we’re looking for. There are a lot of people who have unique styles, but some of them are a bit more out there than others. We still have our own personal taste that we can’t put a finger on. But Higuchi is one of those where, yes, his art is unique in the manga sphere. That’s why it’s a close fit for us.
When we talk to the artist, we say, “Do the story that you want to do.” Indie publishers especially have to compensate for lower pay and distribution compared to larger publishers. We balance it out so that at least they don’t feel creatively restricted while working on their comic.
Comfortable for the artist to make
CROTTY: Nowadays, because making a comic takes such a long time, we are trying to branch outside of traditional graphic novels. If you math out the hours for how much people get paid within the indie comics space, it’s not super amazing. We’re being a bit more particular about when and how we will be releasing new original comic books just because we want to make sure everything around it works well.
With translated books, the artwork has already been made, so we don’t have to say, “Oh no, we’re stressing out this artist by having them meet these deadlines! We’re also enjoying artbooks, because it gets these creative juices flowing. People will see artwork and think, “Wow, I want to draw something like this, too!” Those are also collecting work that already exists, but also trying to figure out different ways to tell stories.
Our EX.Mag anthology series is great because we’re putting shorter stories in a big collection and giving people the freedom to test out things they wouldn’t be doing in a larger format. We do have unannounced stuff that is in the works, but we’re thinking hard about how to make comics that are one of a kind feel comfortable for the artist to make.
Sloppy artwork can be cool, too
WESCOTT: That’s challenging. From what people say, making comics is far more labor-intensive than people realize.
CROTTY: It’s wild how much time can be put into it. You can also do fast and loose stuff, we support that. But there aren’t as many artists as you’d think who are really fast. A lot of times you’ll work with people who are putting a lot of care into what they make. They’re not happy with putting sloppy artwork out. But sloppy artwork can be cool, too.
One of my inspirations for books I would want to publish is One Punch Man by ONE. The original drawings are the pinnacle of, “I will draw this as fast as I can just so you can understand what’s happening.” But the story is so good. Also, Yoshihiro Togashi. When you read the serialized chapters of Hunter x Hunter and Yuyu Hakusho, there will be blank panels and speech bubbles covering up spaces.
It’s all about cheating as much as possible with the artwork to reach the deadline. That kind of stuff is so inspirational. With these artists, you sometimes become so invested in the story that you look as fast as possible at the artwork because you want to read what happens next. But it’s rare to find that kind of artist.
Movies can add a “2,” and that’s fine
WESCOTT: So Peow is currently Peow2. What’s the story behind that? Does it have something to do with what you said earlier about looking at translations and artbooks?
CROTTY: When we retired a few years ago with Peow 1, we were set on closing up. We sold off some book rights to other publishers to continue publishing. Others we decided to keep in print and sell ourselves because there were still people who wanted the books. We didn’t consider ourselves a publisher at that point, we were just selling books so that they wouldn’t have to become collector’s items.
But I don’t know, something happened… Whatever burnout we’d been feeling, time passed, and Olle and I thought it would be fun to make books again. So we asked ourselves, “If we did start up again, what would we have to change to make it feel comfortable?” It was nice to do a fresh start. When you’re running a business with just a couple of people, it’s hard to make a big change and still keep everything moving. It’s like repairing a car while it’s driving. But we pulled over, threw away the old car, and got a new car.
When we were thinking about different names, we thought, “Why don’t we just call it Peow2?” A little bit as a joke, but it was actually very smart. First off, it sounds like a video game or a movie. Movies can add a “2,” and that’s fine. So why not do it for a publisher? The other reason was that we could keep the same social media handles, websites, and accounts. It would be easy for people to remember.
We publish work by artists, not necessarily books
CROTTY: The “2” is also because we want to differentiate it. We don’t want to limit ourselves to just being a comic book publisher. We will publish work by artists, not necessarily books. The majority of those things will be books because that’s what we know how to do best. But we want to give the artists more freedom. Let’s say we reach out to a comic book artist and they say, “I want to do a music album instead.” We would say, “We will support your decision and figure out how to do a music album with you.”
Or, if somebody wanted to do a short animation, or a booster pack of fake trading cards, instead of a book. We’re thinking, “How can we work together with somebody to create something new and cool without having to have a set framework of only books?”
WESCOTT: When Peow2 was announced, I couldn’t tell if Peow’s closure was a meta joke. But this also makes sense to me, and I’m glad it came out of wanting to create a better environment for people at the studio than was previously the case.
CROTTY: This happens with people who retire young from something they’re very good at. Just quitting cold turkey when it’s been such a big part of your life feels very strange if you think about it. I’m happy we had that time. I’m very happy to be back because we have a lot of fun stuff in the works that we’ve always wanted to do, but are just doing now for the first time.
Asking for help when you need it
WESCOTT: Stop!! Hibari-kun! was announced at Matt Alt and Fred Schodt’s panel at Anime NYC. How did that come about?
CROTTY: We go to comic shows throughout the year. Usually at these shows there has been a manga industry panel update that Deb Aoki has put together. At the one that we saw at San Diego Comic Con, in between larger publishers they were also saying, “And Star Fruit Press is coming out with this book, and Glacier Bay is coming out with this book.” Since I know both of the people who run those publishers, I thought, “Oh, that was cool that they announced it there.”
Deb Aoki is a person that a lot of people know and are familiar with, she’s great for the manga publishing community in the US and is always there to help people out. When Anime NYC was coming around, I messaged her to say, “We’ve got our first manga license. Is there any way we could announce it at a panel?” Since Anime NYC is a lot bigger, each publisher had their own individual panel versus San Diego Comic Con, where they were all together. So she said, “You know what, I have an idea, it can fit at the beginning of this other panel.” There were some mixed wires because I thought they would just mention us briefly, but they thought we were going to be there. But it was still very cool, asking for help when you need it.
Even though it feels large as an outsider, the publishing industry is actually very small. I used to work at Penguin Random House, which is a big book publisher. Once you’re there for a bit everybody knows each other, or you’re just one link away from knowing the next person. It shrinks further when you go to a specific industry. Comics within book publishing, that’s even smaller. So, I think it’s the same there. If people are doing good work, it rises up, and people will see it. I knew that Deb Aoki had supported our books before, like EX.Mag. Which is always cool to see, since it’s outside of manga, you know?
Discovering something new
WESCOTT: If you were going to recommend a book from Peow as it exists right now to folks who read a lot of manga but don’t read many indie comics, is there one in particular you’d think of?
CROTTY: If you are an indie manga reader, and lean more towards Glacier Bay, then I would say A Frog in the Fall by Linnea Sterte. If you’re more into Star Fruit or Smudge, I’d say the new EX.Mag Volume 5. It’s a good mix of stuff.
WESCOTT: If you’re looking for Studio Trigger style maximalism, then…
CROTTY: Then I would say Internal Affairs, which is my book series. If you just look at the cover, you’ll say, “Oh, this is for the Trigger fandom.”
When we started making comics, doing stuff internationally, we were just this small group in Sweden who was very far away from anybody else doing comics that we liked. We found artists through the internet who were living in different places, and thought, and said, “Wow, we wish we could share your work with people in our community so that they could learn about cool comics.” While we’re not necessarily an online company, that idea of feeling far away from everything and getting to discover something new has been very important to us.
Everything is going to plan
WESCOTT: Is there anything more you’d like to tell our readership about the upcoming release, or about Peow2 continuing to chug along in this day and age?
CROTTY: Everything is going according to plan with the release. We’re still aiming for this fall. We’ll hopefully be releasing an updated cover reveal in spring or early summer. It’ll be three books. We’re looking forward to more people who are not familiar with Peow finding out about us through this book as well. We’re excited to share Eguchi’s work with readers across the US or in English-speaking places.
For Peow2, you can always follow us via Instagram or Bluesky, or check out our website. We’ll be at upcoming shows throughout the year in the US, although nothing is scheduled yet because many festivals still have their applications open or haven’t written down dates yet. But we’re online so you can find those dates when they do appear.
Article editor by: Anne Lee
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