Yo I think I missed something. What's up with Tokyopop?

Hey anon! 

Tokyopop had a panel just a few minutes ago at Anime Expo 2015, in which they encouraged artists to “bring portfolios and show their artwork” and unveiled a tapatastic/webtoon/comicpress/etc-like webcomic publishing app they claimed “would be like Youtube, but for comics.”

Twitter immediately exploded.

Tokyopop has a bad, bad, baaaaad history with treating artists right and IP/property hoarding. 

Their “100% Authentic” JP manga releases, while introduced many a young comics fan to manga, were poorly translated, printed cheaply, and sometimes just sloppily put together.

Artists who previously were published under Tokyopop have been sounding off all day and warning young artists to not touch whatever TP’s offering–not to mention the fact that new app is practically useless out here because now with Patreon/comicspress/etc, there’s no need to have a middleman w/ self publishing your stuff. 

Final sidenote: hilariously, Colony Drop got sent a cease and desist from Tokyopop because they put a photo of Stu Levy’s (head honcho of TP) on their twitter account. Accordingly, they updated their account to be nothing but pictures of Stu Levy.