The first volume of CoryxKenshin‘s manga Monsters We Make has sold a whopping 200,000 physical copies in its first week of release, according to publisher New Edyn Press.
To put that in perspective, One Piece–one of the most popular Japanese manga of all time–sold 1.9 million copies in the United States through all of 2023. My Hero Academia, another top Japanese title, sold 900,000 over the year. Those series have been running since 1997 and 2014, respectively, so have the oomph of legacy in the manga world. They also have the biggest publishers in the industry behind them.
CoryxKenshin’s manga is all indie, and his oomph is coming from his audience of nearly 22 million YouTube subscribers. There are also more sales not accounted for by this number: New Edyn Press is offering digital copies of the volume as well, but didn’t say how many have sold.
Even without counting digital copies, though, he’s pulling some insane sales numbers, and has set a high bar for number of debut copies sold by a content creator-turned-mangaka.
n case you missed the backstory to all this, CoryxKenshin (aka Cory DeVante Williams) has been a YouTuber since 2009, and is a prominent voice for gamers and anime enthusiasts. He gained more prominence in 2022, after he challenged YouTube’s moderation team for allegedly playing favorites, and gained support from Markiplier. Then, in 2023, he vanished. No notice. No explanation. His subscribers were baffled. Was he retired? Was he okay?
Turned out that no, he wasn’t retired, and yes, he was more than okay. He reappeared in December 2024 and announced that he’d spent the past 18 months writing Monsters We Make. The series follows main character Jabari Booker, a musician who (in true manga style) just wants to go to school, but instead finds himself battling a corrupt tech corporation and its mutated creations.
Now, on the heels of its 200K debut, Monsters We Make is confirmed to get a second volume.
“Monsters We Make is a playground for me to exercise all the ideas and life experiences I’ve collected from the decades of being a spectator. Creating a story that scrutinizes humanity and what makes us tick, injecting some of the Black representation I’ve been longing to see in this space, and finally adding in some sprinkles of my faith in God, were the driving forces behind this project,” Williams said in a statement.
He added, “It meant a lot to me to see a character like The Raikage from Naruto in a space where you don’t typically see Black characters, let alone powerful ones. My hope is that my main character, Jabari, can be to people what Goku was to me growing up. This experience, while a ton of work, has been incredibly fun and fulfilling.”
Like most other mangaka, Williams hopes his story will catch on enough to get an anime adaptation. If it does, that adaptation would likely also be produced stateside, putting him on Rooster Teeth‘s path to making a fully American anime. (RT was responsible for RWBY and gen:LOCK, two of the most prominent American anime to date.)
While Williams’ sales number is pretty staggering set against Japanese series sales, we’re not surprised it’s getting this much attention from his fans. We’ve seen more and more American creators with established audiences build their fannish enthusiasm for manga and anime into businesses: Valkyrae recently launched her own anime-focused production company, Hihi Studios; and Tony Weaver Jr. and Brandon Chen founded manga production studios Weird Enough Productions and Inspired Productions, respectively.
It’s also worth noting that Williams is following the same model as many filmmaker YouTubers. Just like Inoxtag and Sam and Colby self-distributing their original films in theaters (to record ticket sales), he didn’t wait for a major studio to pick up his manga. He put it out there himself.
What we’re curious about is whether New Edyn Press–which is named after the core city in Monsters We Make and we’re guessing is owned by Williams–will now start publishing stories by other anime-enthusiast content creators. Clearly there’s a market for them.
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