Studio Proteus

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Studio Proteus was a Japanese manga import and translation company, founded in 1986 by Toren Smith and based in San Francisco. The company worked with many different publishers, but its main outlets were Dark Horse for mainstream titles and Fantagraphics' imprint Eros Comics for hentai titles.

Initially, Smith's instincts turned out to be right, even when his thinking was highly unconventional; when Dark Horse took Oh My Goddess, the publisher had so little faith in this manga, Smith had to guarantee the publisher against losses. The marketplace turned out to be ripe for a cute manga, and the series became very successful.

However, later, Smith became a conservative force in the American manga world: Studio Proteus would not publish shojo manga or "how-to" books, genres that became big sellers when other publishers tried them. Some once sure-fire successes were doing less well: after much initial enthusiasm, the Eros line of erotic comics were finding it difficult to find shelf space in stores, and the series Exaxxion sold very poorly, although Smith had predicted a huge success. And while the rest of the industry were shifting towards publishing small and inexpensive paperback-sized books in an un-flopped, right-to-left format (tankobon) similar to the Japanese originals, Studio Proteus was reluctant to give up the standard American comic book (pamphlet) format and continued to publish their manga in flipped, left-to-right variant to the very end.

In February of 2004, Dark Horse Comics announced that it had purchased Studio Proteus. Toren Smith was allowed to stay on as an adviser and translator.

Among its many projects are: