Bleeding Edge Gives "Princess Ai" the Royal Treatment

An interview with Steve Varner!

Being a dad has had a direct impact on the career of toymaker Steve Varner. A respected sculptor who also runs the company Bleeding Edge, he launched his line of Goths fashion dolls at the recommendation of his son. Now, he's turning his attention towards Tokyopop's manga comic book Princess Ai, in part due to his daughter Michelle's love of the title character.

Speaking by telephone on a recent evening, Varner explains, "I go to different (trade) shows, like the licensing show in New York, just to check it out. I had checked out Tokyopop, got some information, shared (business) cards with them. Also, my office manager, Toni, I had sent her to Wizard World in Chicago last year, just to get an idea of what was going on, and she had talked to people there. She left a card with (Tokyopop), too.

"These guys, out of the blue, after looking at our website, went through all their licenses, and they sent me the 'Princess Ai' book. They didn't send me any other books, although they do, like, forty titles. I gave it to my daughter and I said, 'Why don't you read this and let me know what you think?,' because she reads a lot of manga books. At the time, she was twelve, and that's really the target audience... Thirteen and up. She really liked it and she said, 'You know, I think you should go after this. It's really good.' I read the thing and I thought, 'Wow, this is pretty cool.' I looked through (Tokyopop's) press kit at some of their other stuff, but I really liked 'Princess Ai.'"

After buying additional copies of the comic for the rest of the Bleeding Edge crew to check out, Varner decided to move forward.

"We really didn't explore any other manga stuff other than that. I mean, we looked at some of the other stuff but we decided that ("Princess Ai") was a good fit for us."

Ai has generated a lot of media attention thanks to the notoreity of one of her creators, actress and grunge rock musician Courtney Love. It's fair to say that Ai and Love resemble each other to the point that Love has, in essence, come up with an alter ego for herself. Whether Love intends to portray Ai in a live action movie, or voice her in a cartoon version, remains to be seen, but such a move seems logical, even inevitable.

The association between "Princess Ai" and Bleeding Edge is itself almost to be expected. Public reaction to the "Goths" only confirmed Varner's ability to render sexy, stylish women in 3-D form. It wasn't much of a stretch for him to apply those talents toward Ai herself.

Varner calls Ai, "a strong woman figure, which is usually the stuff I like to go after. I've done Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the past, and Lara Croft. You know, the Goths are very, very female oriented. We did a couple of guys in the beginning, but (experienced) not a lot of success with the guys. The girls that I do, sell. People like 'em, and I like 'em, so I'm doing more of them.

"I felt that Princess Ai kind of fit into that category and yet was out in a direction that I wanted to go, which is manga/anime stuff. I would like to splinter off into that direction, and some other directions."

Asked if he's along time fan of any of the material that has come from Japan's ainmation and comic book studios, Varner says, "When I really started following it a bit more was when I first started doing 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' six years ago or something. At the San Diego Comic-Com, I checked out some of the anime studios and distributors that were getting hot. I talked a lot with them, but there's so much of it, just to wade through all of it (is difficult). Unless you're really into this, it's hard to know what to pick. There's just tons of stuff. It's really easy to get lost or pick something that's wrong (from a business standpoint).

"I go by what I like. Not a lot of things hit me, you know what I mean? But when something does, then I'll jump... When I bought (the license to) 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' nobody wanted it. Again, I started watching the show (while running on) my treadmill, by chance it was on at the time of night I went on there, and I really started getting into it. Look what happened to that."

Coming up: Varner discusses the challenges he faced when bringing Ai to life, the array of exclusives he has planned, Courtney Love's involvement, and much more!

By Claude Flowers