Tokyopop Appoints Marc Visnick as COO, Publisher

Tokyopop announced on Thursday that the company has appointed Marc Visnick as the COO and publisher. The company promoted Visnick internally from the post of vice president of publishing.

In his role as COO and publisher, Visnick will manage all North American operations of the company including print, digital, editorial, marketing/PR, sales, and distribution. He will report to founder and CEO Stu Levy.

Visnick joined Tokyopop in early 2022. He previously served as the director of sales for Callisto Media, Inc. and Lonely Planet / BBC Worldwide before serving as senior business development manager at Ingram Content Group. He also previously served as the vice-president of sales and business development at the indie comics publisher TKO Studios.

Levy founded Tokyopop, originally called Mixx, in 1997 and published manga in serial form in its Mixxzine magazine. Tokyopop later pioneered the publication of “unflopped” manga (shown in its original right-to-left reading format) for all of its titles in 2002 and launched divisions in the United Kingdom and Germany, as well as an imprint devoted to boys-love manga called Blu, between 2003 and 2005.

Tokyopop shut down its North American publishing operations in May 2011 but collaborated with other companies to release manga and world manga after the closure. Tokyopop announced at its Anime Expo panel in 2015 that it was planning to begin publishing manga again in 2016, and announced its first new manga licenses in 2018.

Source: Press release