The slump in the comics market in the late 1990s affected the sales of all manga published in America. None of the attempts by American manga publishers to create a manga anthology magazine such as "Tokyopop Magazine" and Viz's "Animerica Extra" with several stories running simultaneously were very successful at this time, and were mostly viewed as loss-leaders for future sales of the collections. "Super Manga Blast", the Dark Horse/Studio Proteus magazine, gave Smith an opportunity to bring readers in via titles of known popularity, such as "Oh My Goddess!", and get them to try something different, such as "Club 9". As times changed, however, Toren Smith developed an acrimonious relationship with the more hardcore parts of manga fandom. As shōjo manga became increasingly popular, fans berated Studio Proteus and Dark Horse for not releasing any shōjo, despite Smith's repeated explanation that since he did not enjoy shōjo manga, and knew little about it, he had no interest in releasing any. Studio Proteus' initial output was predominantly science fiction and action; this may have reflected Smith's tastes as a writer and member of SFWA, but also reflected the tastes of the American comics direct market (who were the primary purchasers of manga at that time) and manga fandom of the 1980s and 1990s. However, Studio Proteus also released non–science fiction manga such as Makoto Kobayashi's relationship comedy "Club 9" and the pet manga "What's Michael?" However, Toren Smith continued to vocally defend "flopped" manga up until 2002, at a time when it was growing unpopular even among mainstream manga fandom. He became perceived as a conservative force in manga publishing, despite his publication of non-mainstream manga such as the transhumanist manga "Version", and "The Rebel Sword", a manga about Kurdish revolutionaries, and his decades of effort in popularizing manga and dedication to quality production. However, by the end of 2002, Smith was convinced that his belief that readers would have difficulty adapting to read manga "backwards" (also known as "unflopped", reading right to left as in the original Japanese publication) was incorrect, citing the fact that an entire generation of new manga readers have grown up since he had started Studio Proteus and they did not have the mindset of early manga readers, most of whom came to manga from regular comics. However, he maintained that as long as the distributors were reluctant to buy unflopped manga, there was little anyone could do to try to change the industry.