Studio Proteus is a Japanese manga import, translation and lettering company, founded in 1986 by Toren Smith and based in San Francisco. Other staff included translators Dana Lewis, Alan Gleason, and Frederik Schodt, letterer Tom Orzechowski and translator/letterer Tomoko Saito. The company worked with many different publishers, including Viz Media, Innovation Publishing and Eclipse Comics, but its main outlets were Dark Horse for mainstream titles and Fantagraphics' imprint Eros Comix for adult (hentai) titles.
Early years (1986–1994) Smith first became interested in anime and manga after being introduced to it by James D. Hudnall in 1982. Smith had been involved in the comics business as a writer for several years, doing stories for Marvel's Epic magazine and Eclipse Comics. He felt that there was a market for Japanese comics (manga) in the United States, and with Hudnall, approached Eclipse Comics with the idea of obtaining rights to various titles including Akira. The unknowns and difficulties of dealing with Japanese publishers led that first attempt to fail. Smith then decided that the only solution was for him to go to Japan and arrange things directly. At about this time, noted manga expert Frederik Schodt introduced Smith to Seiji Horibuchi, who was then planning the foundation of the company that would be called Viz Media. Schodt felt that Smith's knowledge of the American comics industry and Horibuchi's connections to Japanese publishing giant Shogakukan would make an ideal team. However, a falling-out between Smith and Horibuchi after a year of working together to start Viz led Smith to found his own company, Studio Proteus, although Smith co-translated several manga for Viz, including Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (at the express request of the creator, Hayao Miyazaki).
In 1986, Smith moved to Japan to try to license manga for publication in America, having previously made arrangements with Eclipse Comics to provide the publication support. Studio Proteus was designed to be a "packager", delivering completed materials to an existing publisher. Studio Proteus would be responsible for choice (with approval of the American publisher), acquisition (contracts and negotiations with the licensor), and production of the translation and lettering, delivering completed pages to the publisher. The publisher would be responsible for advertising and soliciting sales, arranging for distribution, plus collection and disbursement of income. While the industry term "packager" is more accurate, to avoid confusion the relationship was generally referred to as "co-publishing". Smith preferred to work on a profit-sharing basis, believing it led to a greater sense of responsibility on both sides. Smith also insisted on shared ownership of the derivative copyright in the translations, which was to save his company in the future. By the early nineties, Studio Proteus was working with three publishers: Eclipse Comics, Innovation Publishing and Dark Horse. Work with Eclipse had begun within a few months of Smith's first trip to Japan. When Eclipse did not want to open any more publishing slots for manga, Smith went to the San Diego Comic Con in 1988 and licensed Johji Manabe's Outlanders to the fledgling Dark Horse Comics. Smith originally was unable to sell the comic to Dark Horse, but met fantasy writer Raymond E. Feist for dinner that evening. Feist gave Smith the advice he considers the most valuable business advice of his career: "Don't tell them how good it is; tell them how much money they are going to make." The following day Smith sold Outlanders to Dark Horse and Yuzo Takada's 3x3 Eyes to Innovation.
Studio Proteus was, from the beginning, quality oriented. Smith refused to work from photocopies of published books, instead shooting directly from the original art. The techniques for retouching the sound effects were developed by award-winning comics letterer Thomas Orzechowski, and later refined by Japanese manga artist Tomoko Saito. All translators had over a decade of experience and had written books, magazine articles, and fiction outside of their translation work. To encourage quality production, page rates for Studio Proteus letterers and translators were the highest in the industry, and they were also paid royalties—a practice unique to Studio Proteus. In some cases, original covers were commissioned from the manga artists themselves.