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Why Does Manga Succeed Where American Comics Fail?
Otaku_0245 writes "I read a really interesting article at slushfactory.com entitled 'Why Does Manga Succeed Where American Comics Fail?' discussing/comparing the comics industries in Japan and the US. It's basically a 3-way conversation including Frederik Schodt (author of 'Dreamland Japan' - one of my favorite books about Japanese pop culture), and very thought-provoking."
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"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
Cuz they have schoolgirls in their comics and stuff.
Why Does Manga Succeed Where American Comics Fail?
Because apart from a few good american comics, the rest are crap!
At least manga has more fun aspects to it...
There are so many Japanese manga cartoonists and most of them get paid peanuts that they roll their own pr0n manga X rated violence spinoffs.
IMHO, I think it has to do with the deeper stories about mans plight with technology and how it seems to be taking over our lives. Plus it seems the artistry is a little more alluring. Don't get me wrong, Comics are great in thier own right. It just seems that people can get a little tired of super heroes after a while...
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
The answer here is culture. Not so much traditional japanese vs american, but just a level of acceptance.
In the US comics are still seen as trash. the language of people who aren't bright and have nothing to do with their time better than waste life. This is not true however, the perception remains.
In the US there is of course a subgroup who appreciate such works, and know there is more to it
Japanese culture in general appreciates these things a little better. Without judgment on the content, there hasn't been such a strong surge of "these are trash" during the last 40 years.
Whether or not something is good or bad is often irrelevant. When it is pushed under it becomes a subculture, which in the US is what we have more than Japan
The female characters have much better/larger personalities
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Why Does Manga Succeed Where American Comics Fail i dont really think that american comics have fail either one has its own marked.. and target audience right? but also thing that manga is pure adult stuff. And not for kids...
it has variety, not afraid to discuss 'taboo' topics, and every series ends, unlike american comics where most of the super-heroes are still alive or are just re-introduced as X "Unlimited".
Since when did American comics fail? Last I looked Spiderman, Superman, Batman, X-Men and many others were on just about every newsstand. Not to mention MAD and other, more satirical comics. I, for one, read hundreds of comics set in the X-Men universe when i was younger (The New Mutants, X-Force, Cable etc). On the other hand I've only read a couple of mangas and wasn't too thrilled. Not to say manga is bad, just it's not very appealing to me. I found the storylines a lot more "real" in the X-Men Marvel universe, ironically. It spoke about real political and environmental issues affecting America today, whereas a lot of manga seems to be more about internal or personal issues... Perhaps traditional "geeks" can identify more with the latter, but for me tackling racism and the political environment head-on was a lot more interesting.
MAYBE THAT IT IS BECAUSE AMERICAN COMICS SUCK ASS AND JAP COMICS ARE DECENTLY DRAWN AND INTELLIGENTLY WRITTEN!?!!? GET OUT!!!
Also: Note the perponderance of fucky comics, which as the internet has led me to believe, are sold in telephone book-sized tomes and EVERYBODY reads them on the subways while jerking their pathetic little pricks.
Could also be that they're moderately priced and not utterly retarded? Last time I bought a comic book, the fucking thing cost three bucks. THREE BUCKS?! For about twenty pages of utter crap. Last time I bought a japper fucky-comic, I did so for about a buck, and I got more entertainment value out of it than I did out of whatever crap that Marvel shat into my eyes (Uh, I think it was a Spider-Man book, last one I bought... with the ALL NEW, ALL ORIGINAL enemy TYPEFACE. Yes, He rearranges letters on his face to kill his enemies... I think he wore purple tights and yellow panties over them, I have a hard time recalling. High Literature there, pals).
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
It's worth mentioning that here in France there is a very big market for manga-style comic books read by adults and teens - most book stores have big shelves of these comics. Japanese manga and anime is also available and relatively popular. The same situation also exists in Germany and Italy - Japanese manga is very popular in these countries. English-speaking countries really seem to be the exception here in that in these countries manga is virtually unknown and comic books are seen as inferior to text-only books.
For many (most?) of us, no sort of comic "book" succeeds, no more than Saturday morning cartoons do. Pictures are not necessary if a real writer is involved. Sorry. I'd rather read a book. Anytime.
Personally, I think it's all in the binding. In japan, you can get them as books (same size, etc). In america, they are this large thin peice of crap that will tear by looking at it.
It's people's perception of it.
I find it amusing that the title of the post is "why does Manga succeed where American comics fail," and yet the first answer to the first question in the article basically states that the manga industry is falling into decline in exactly the same way that the U.S. comics industry has.
It's simple, really. Manga is no different from American comics, in terms of writing quality and artwork. It's simply a matter of what's in style. Manga, like Anime, has enjoyed quite a lot of success in foreign markets like the U.S., where it is something of a novelty.
People enjoy the exotic flavor of things like this. Often times this is augmented by feeling like you're in part of a niche audience - it makes you feel like you're clued into something that everybody else is ignorant of. But these are not good foundations for any business that desires longevity and stability.
Manga is just the hip new thing, that's all. It's what's in style. But it is already starting to wear thin (Let's face it - there's only so far you can take an industry when everything is drawn with so little variance in art style). So I think this is a loaded question - manga has nothing to teach American comics. If anything, American comics have learned the hard lessons first, having had a lot more experience dealing with a fickle readership. I think they could probably teach the manga industry a lesson or two.
Probably because there's a stigma for adults in the U.S. to be reading picture books, just as there's a bias for adults to consider animation kid-fare.
Doesn't mean that it's right or wrong, but it's there. Aside from shorts, and comic strips, the adult audience in the U.S. is very unlikely to go out and buy serialized graphic novels, or watch 2D animated films, irregardless of quality (unless it's a Disney film.)
Also, "comic books" in the US has a very specific designation, for a maybe 30 page pulp story, sold in racks. If you broaden the term to include stuff like Doonsbury, Peanuts, and Garfield, then I'd argue that we have a pretty good penetration, which reflects format. The article mentions that japanese will buy manga to pass the time while on the subway - I'd just buy a newspaper, and take a glance at the comics while I browse through the business section. Different media drive different formats, for different audiences.
If you look at it that way, then US syndicated short format strip comics are not a failure. It's the traditional larger format pulp stuff that isn't selling well, probably because it's so damnned expensive. Hell, $3.00 for a single issue of Usagi Yojimbo??? For the cost of two comics, I can buy a remaindered copy of a Tom Clancy novel. That'd take up at least a week's worth of commuting on a bus or subway.
...the old "american-made animation/comics/whatever" is inferior to Japanese.
You anime fanatics just won't quit, will you?
ok if they said canadian cartoons id buy it!!!
there is a new resurgence of cartoons in america
dexters lab, power puff girls, samuria jack, sealab, harvey birdman, space ghost coast to coast, brak, batman beyond,jla, static shock,
thats just what ive seen
anyone got ones to add... i dont have a tv!!!
back in the day we didnt have no old school
I was never a hardcore comic book reader, but there were a bunch of American comic titles that I used to read back in the late 80's and early 90's. Around the early 90's, though, things started getting ridiculous. Comics wanted to be treated as *visual art*, they got much more expensive and "collectible". That first issue of McFarland's Spiderman comic was the beginning of the end. That thing was what, twenty pages long and cost three bucks? But the picture sure were pretty, and the paper sure was glossy. *gag*
Now, you can't even buy comics at the convenience store any more- at least not many of them. They're marshaled away in specialized comic book stores, where collectors go to peruse.
Manga, however, has always taken the opposite approach, the one American comics used until the time period I just described. Manga keeps things cheap, fun, and disposable. For the equivalant of a few bucks, you get a couple hundred pages of manga. Easy to pick up and put down, and it's not "collectible", so you can carry it anywhere. The stories are pulpy and fun, and they don't try to be more than they are. Sure, there are some though-provoking plots (Shirow, etc) but it never takes itself too seriously like a lot of American comics do.
(I know there's plenty of exceptions to the things I talked about. I'm talking "in general", not "absolutely and completely")
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Quoth the article: Hell, I didn't even know Ghost In The Shell 2 was out in Japan until I myself saw a guy on the Subway reading it. I remember I nearly blew my wad, then I raced out and bought a copy of my own. Slow down there, sparky. Blowing your wad on the subway could lead to embearessed stares and social stigma.
Maybe they all stopped to read the article...NAH!
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
The first is variety. There is manga about everything: Sports (pick your favorite), vampires, giant robots piloted by 14-year olds, biker gangs, romance, religious themes, (and, yes, porn)...the list goes on and on. It's true that US comics aren't just superheroes, but American comics don't exist in the variety of genres that manga does.
The second is literacy. People like to claim that Japan has a huge literacy rate; I don't have any figures on how true this is. However, most books are damn hard to read, especially if you're interested in something likely to have uncommon kanji like sci-fi. (I recently brought a copy of the Japanese translation of the Heinlein book _The Door Into Summer_ to the school I work at, and many of the teachers had trouble with it.) On the other hand, manga is very easy to read. A lot of the time, you don't even have to worry about the kanji, since it's accompanied by furigana. The fact that the story is a combination of pictures and text makes reading a lot less mental effort (which is good, because it's likely you're already mentally exhausted from school or work). In America, there doesn't seem to be a functional difference in the level of literacy required between a comic and a novel, so there's not as much reason to shell out $2 or $3 for a 20-page comic (with advertisements) when you could get a paperback for twice or thrice as much.
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
i find that most manga comic characters seem to have that subtle sex appeal that makes them interesting. it's not that i don't like donald duck but he doesn't have that expression on his face that i see with a lot of manga stars.
and i'm not talking about the pr0n stuff which i personally can't really find very pr0nific.
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my 5 cents and your 5 cents are ten.
We are all individualists!
Its all about story. And having one. And hacking off limbs... and killing main characters and... sex!
I went into a book store and occaisionally glance through the "manga for girls" (how embarassing, crazy gaijin doesn't know that's the girls section!) and its got as much sex and violence as the stuff for guys!
Well maybe not as much violence.
That's what superman's missing... some good graphic sex and cheating on Lois.
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
Grow up, man. They're fucking tits, okay?
My girlfriend has the best tits in the world *sigh*
Cheap, and thick. A lot of bang for the buck. Seriously. It is a comic book bargain.
Well who wouldn't? We're all hoping to see some wicked hentai content :-)
Japanese ideograms are so numerous that most Japanese can't read a complete newspaper.
Manga are cheap and easy enough to read for the above-mentioned people.
So this makes the Mangas a mainstream media which before being exported is financially successful.
In other countries, comics are as easy to read as literature so most people will read either, hence the subjective lesser acceptance of comics in latin-alphabet-using countries...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It's obvious most readers agree with me, or the parent would be modded down by now.
Enough with the anime crap! it's for LOSERS!
The apex of American comics was Underground Comix with classics like "Star-Eyed Stella" and "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers." It has all been downhill since then. I am thinking about finding my old Zaps and thumbing through them again - sigh...
http://www.lambiek.net/comics/underground.htm
"The truth is I am the last of the great Medieval Thinkers."
Sounds like an excellent thing to collect! Anything that is so common and cheap that it is disposable can become very valuable indeed if you keep a copy in good condition for a few years. This is because very few other people will do so, and yet the number of people who will appreciate the thing is fairly large. (this has happened in the past with other comics, books, fine art, furniture, etc. so there's no reason to suppose it won't happen again.) And it's not even a difficult or expensive thing to get into doing...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I guess others will point this out too, but the way young/old males in Japan get their thrills is thru these mags. The mags will expand into other genres, but sex is the bottom line.
The President of Winnebago motor homes, when asked if a bad economy would hurt his company, remarked "In America, there are two things the general public won't cut back on...one is sex and the other is weekends" - In Japan...it's soft porn via manga and the buzz from caffiene, cigarettes and of course beer.
...is better than ANY American OR Japanese comic. :-]
That was classic intercourse!
no she hasn't, my EX girlfriend has the best tits in the world unless... wait a minute! what's your girlfriends name?
oh yeah, manga vs marvel? easy - you can't read a comic while you're driving a Chevy Suburban vs you CAN read manga while travelling on a Shinkansen.
God, am I clever or what?
That was classic intercourse!
Even at the risk of being modded down for saying this, I think one of the reasons might be that us-american comics simply lack quality. Of course there are exceptions, but most of them seem to be nothing more than reiterations of the same worn-out themes and stories with the same worn-out character stereotypes - at least that is my own personal impression.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
2.'Anus' mouths.
"Get off the cross - we need the wood" - Tori Amos
Having recently spent time in Japan, I think one simple reason for the difference in "success" is that in Japan, graphic fiction is much more popular in America. I know this is common knowledge, but until I'd actually visited Japan, I didn't know the extent to which it is true.
On any train journey, you will see a significant proportion of the travellers will be reading graphic fiction. There is graphic fiction aimed at school girls, school boys, younger children, business people, homeworkers - every sector of society. And some of them are as big as telephone directories and weekly! This isn't an exaggeration, you have to see it for yourself.
In conclusion, graphic fiction is a completely different phenomena in Japan than the USA. To compare them is like comparing chalk and cheese.
your shit sucks.. how do you dare to compare your fuck to japanese art? :)
Even German comic books had (in the time of Hitler before they were replaced by Mickey Mouse) less pathetic patriotism and bullshit goin on than your overpriced.. poorly drawn.. innovation 'n story missing ("Hello, hollywood") toilet paper today..
From the CIA World Factbook
Literacy in Japan: 99% (1970 est)
Literacy in US: 97% (1979 est)
But those numbers are pretty meaningless being a generation out of date. Even if those numbers are accurate a difference of 2% is no difference at all. More interesting figures would be the number of people who read the newspaper daily, or who read outside of work. I suspect those numbers are quite low in North America.
This may be slightly offtopic, but I have been wondering, why there are no more Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comics in the US?
They still seemt to be very widespread in Europe, but I can't recall seeing any in the US recently.
big eyes I tell ya 0.0 they are like windows to the soul :)
Seriously tho..
its socially accepted for a 38 year old man businessman to read sailormoon in Japan on a train.. try doing that on your local train in the states and see how many dodgy glances you'll get.
Of course, it being cheap, sized perfectly for a commuter, and published weekly doesn't hurt.
-MDL
Who is happy that "One Piece" is being printed in Shonen Jump
Happy meals fund terrorism
comic books are seen as inferior to text-only books
Much as many see GUIs inferior to CLIs
See my blog for my free opinions.
The reason that comics in the US do not have the wide appeal of manga in Japan is obvious in just listening to a comic fan attempt to describe manga. It usally goes something like, "they're like comics, but they're about anything. Everyone reads them."
There's a perception in the US that comics (the name itself is skewed, which is why so many have tried to use terms like "graphic literature", etc.) can only contain "kids" stories and their only fan-base are otaku.
This is not true, of course, but it's correct for a majority of comics (getting less so over the past 10 years) and a majority of readers (still quite true). Until both of those change, the stereotypes will remain. There *should* be more comics about everyday life that appeal to everyone.
If you've been out of the loop and are interested in catching some of the more interesting comics out there, here are some of the ones that I've found interesting (note: not all of these are traditional comics, but some are and the rest are certainly not mainstream literature by any measure):
Superheros:
* Astro City -- What its like to live with supers
* TOP10 -- In a world where everyone from the meter-maids to the homeless are super-heros, what are the police like? Odd premise, great book.
* Rising Stars -- In a midwest town, a meteor strikes causing all in-utero babies in the area (113 of them) to develop unusual abilities when they're born. The 24-issue series follows their lives and deaths and the politics that surrounds them.
Fantasy / Alternate History:
* League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- An amazingly cool look at an alternate history where all of the late 1800s and early 1900s fantasy, adventure and science fiction books are true. Everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Captn. Nemo to Dr Jeckle are in the story, and it works well.
* Girl Genius -- A fun story about a world that can only do high-tech through magical individuals known as sparks.
* Lucifer -- The title character is the angel, cast out of heaven and formerly ruler of hell. This is a spin-off of the classic late-80s/early-90s series Sandman.
These are the books that I read now. Fantasy and super-heros are well established genres for comics, and they're done well in many cases. It's just too bad that there aren't more genres being allowed in. Real science fiction makes an attempt every now and then, and sometimes it works, but often it does not. The slice-of-life stories that really made manga are almost non-existant. In fact, the closest US comics came to that, AFAICT is Archie.
Manga is literature.
Comic books are not.
It's a cultural difference. Reading is discouraged in this society. There is also the fact that manga publishers see markets other than boys 8-15.
Presenting a shoujo manga to the average U.S. publisher would be like trying to show a medieval fisherman how to use sonar.
Also, there are more genres in manga. There are sports manga, business manga, sitting in the park and watching the sunset manga. They may all have 0.00001% of the market, but together, it's the most widely published form of literature in Japan, and like anime, it is slowly going to gain popularity in the U.S. until the competition either wakes up or goes out of business.
LadyStar - Your Magical and Mysterious Adventure Awaits
Only in the US all superheroes put their colorful underwear over their clothes...
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
I've noticed this trend for a long time now. When I was younger I would get a few comic books from my grandparents when I visited. All my younger cousins (a few more than a dozen on that side of the family) over the years did not ever get any, nor did they seem to care. They did read the old Beatle Bailey and other random comics from the 60's and 70's that they could find around the grandparents' house.
I'm partially attributing the demise of American comic books with the rise of other forms of entertainment. I've seen a marked interest from today's youth in Harry Potter, Pokemon. etc.. which happen to be fads. They are the popular thing at the moment so the kids drop everything else for the fad.
Tentacle Rape.
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Step 1. Conservative culture
Step 2. Lonely horny animators.
Step 3. ????
Step 3. Tentacle rape
Step 4. Profit!
In the U.S., yes comics are either trash or treasure. If you are a mainstream kid, they are cool. Mainstream adult, garbage. Fanboy adult, treasure. An audience of children and fanboys is pretty big, but when your material is not varied enough and prices for each book are high, you will attract zero new readers.
In Japan, EVERYBODY reads manga. It appeals to everyone. The appeal explains the saturation. The saturation explains the print quality. The print quality explains the cost. The cost explains part of the appeal.
The disposable manga marketing model is so profitable because of Japan's disposable culture. Don't fix or keep old things, especially at the cost of living/storage space, if newer and better things can be had cheaply. This profitablity attracts publishers big and small, which creates a demand for artists and writers. There's your variety. Think American comics industry in the 1980's on a bigger scale over a much longer period of time (decades).
The article points out the collector mentality that American comics fans have. I share this mentality, because I like to think of every purchase I make as SOME kind of investment. I also have a huge house and ample storage space for my stuff (in the bay area, it's a wonder I can afford food, but yes, my house is quite respectable and my collection is as well). So comics are expensive, because as a collector, quality media production isn't just a premium, it's a requisite for purchase. Problem here? Joe Blow sees the price tag and walks away from the neewsstand thinking, "I miss my 60 cent Uncanny X-Men books." No new readership? Then regardless of how shiny your book is, you will get no new readership.
Schodt had the whole thing covered. As I see it, America will never have the same level of saturation for this type of media as Japan. Their culture and the publishers' understanding to their culture facilitate high consumption rates. America isn't Japan. The differences shouldn't cause concern for anybody but Marvel and DC.
Japan is known as a more repressed society, so one can expect more to turn quicker to a comic reading fantasy world. I expect that most manga, however, is just as cheap and shallow as American comics when it comes to analyzing it for actual 'value'.
Also, it is more dense population wise, so their hobbies certainly are not as as likely to be horseback riding, or cross country skiing.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
and they suck because American comics are considered as childish, dumb and cheap. Honestly, I don't know why but I'm sure some people have theories.
So the whole business is seen as unattractive and people buying them are labbelled as dorks. Go to a Borders or BN and ask for the "Graphic Novels" Section, you will see the look they give you.
In Europe, comics are an art form. It's big business and therefore it attracts lots of creative people like writers and graphic artists. So there is some pretty strong competition going on.
There're books for every age but there're all pretty good. Usually, parents read comics too, so they can detect crap quite easily.
Also, it takes a lot more work to produce a volume. Profilic artists release two or three books PER YEAR. Books are also a lot more expensive (goes from $8 to $20), bigger (A4 is the norm), with a good paper quality and a hardcover. Such a book usually survives for 30 years.
I own a few american comics : the first Alien VS Predator, some Star Wars stuff... The stories, the graphics, the colors can't compare to some middle-quality european comics.
Of course, we do have our fair share of garbage too. Stories running for 20 books (at $12 at pop).. Computer generate drawings...
Finally, anecdotal evidence makes me think that the talent is there (the absolutely amazing Strangers In Paradise serie (www.strangersinparadise.com), strip comics, Will Eisner (The Spirit and some other books), movies...), but it isn't promoted.
Anyway, Europe's situation 50 years ago was similar to the US' situation today, so there is hope.
Nobox: Only simple products.
The large portion of people buying American comics only want super hero and fantasy comics. They can't comprehend that their is more to the medium. Hell, most of them don't even consider it a medium; they think it's a genre. Also, the American comic industry has a failing business model based around a distribution by Diamond Comics.
e ss.com/t surprising, the critically acclaimed co-creator of FROM HELL and many many other amazing works closes down his publishing company and all the news sites reported instead of Marvel's latest press release about their line of Tsunami comics.
Japanese comics do not spend so much time in the super hero genre. Some of them are sci-fi or comedy or drama. The Japanese comics that are most popular in the states aren't even the best of the best. Collected serials like EAGLE (a book about politics) was critically acclaimed, but no one in America bought it because A) their retailer didn't order it, or b) they can't see manga as more than sf or girls in panties.
Some helpful links if you want to know more about not super hero comics
http://www.artbomb.net/
http://www.onipr
http://www.eddiecampbellcomics.com/
-No
I didnt know that being in business for 60+ years, making assloads of cash, and spawning dozens of multimillion dollar movies was considered failure.
I must have missed something.
YOU DID NOT READ THE ARTICLE.
You may have clicked the link, your eyes may have passed over some words that your brain recognized as comprehensible English, but you did not READ the article.
Please do so at your leisure, then come back and post your thoughts when stupid things like the above quoted subject stop running around in your brain stabbing to death all the insightful comments trying to get out.
No offense, of course. I'm not insulting you. Brainfarts happen to me all the time, so I know where you're coming from.
So, people get bored of US comics because they've had enough of super heroes saving the world, and they get bored of manga because they've had enough of characters that all have the exact same gigantic eyes and pointy chin.
Maybe it's time to give European comics a try, and especially Belgian and French ones. Now, there's a wealth of diversity in drawing styles (you can tell the name of the author by looking at the drawings, unlike mangas) and topics (history, sci-fi, western, adventures, what not, and maybe even super heroes, if you really can't do without).
"Bande Dessinée", at least in the French speaking parts of Europe, is no longer reserved to pre-teen kids and mentally impaired people. It's an Art of a (not so) new kind, no less noble than novell writing or film making.
In most comics there are good and evil fighting ! At the end the good always win ...
... and event the bad got part of light... and the good not always win ...
... and historical facts included. If you've never heard of MCOG, go and get the VCD on any P2P ... if you either understand japanese or french do try to look at those version, because these are the "native" versions and do not suffer from "bad translation" syndrom !
In mangas, event the good, are not so good and have shadow
As a submary, manga are more versatile stories that can apply to each day life.
Now this difference has almost vanished because most new comics are manga tinted !
One of my favorite comics anime:
-Captain Future
-MCOG (mysterious city of gold)
-Grandizer
MCOG is realy a hit because of its story, complexity,
-SLK
I think it has to do with cultural differences.
It appears the Japanese have some sort of child porn fetish. Read some of their comics and you'll start realizing all of the sexual characters wear the school girl clothes and knee high socks.
eTrade SUCKS
In Europe, particularly in Belgium and France, both american comics and manga have a wide following, but there is a much larger reader base for other types of 'Bandes Dessinées': cartoons of all sorts that can be entertaining (the well known Asterix, Tintin for instance) as well as thought-provoking, very well written, complex and rich stories anchored in real life, history, politics, fantasy or sci-fi. /. crowd would be hooked to the wonderful and intelligent stories of the 9th Art.
Drawing styles follow very different and wider rules than comics and manga, from the hyper-realistic to the almost impressionistic.
I really find it a shame that the immense majority of this art form does not find its way into many other languages, I can assure you that the
1. Overused / unrelatable characters. In the US comic market, there are three types of characters: thoroughly recycled, new but testosterone saturated, and "girl's stuff." The "New" spiderman has been done for so many generations it is hard to get anyone interested. The Maxx was a highly accessable character with a surprising amount of depth... if you could get past the fact that he looked like a van with p3nises coming out of his hands. Most people can't. And if you are only selling comics in bastions of testosterone (comic book shops), how do you plan to sell comics about human issues? Japanese comics come in all flavors, all sizes. They're not as stereotyped, but they don't go out of their way to fit a stereotype. Not every manga cover in Japan involves a big sweaty guy holding a weapon. (Yes, I'm aware that Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is a small sweaty guy holding a weapon. That's why he's more accessable.)
2. Most American comic books are franchises of a successful main character, while manga are plot-driven stories involving characters. Many comics are written as independent stories by multiple authors, which makes it difficult to change anything canon about the character / world without getting a quorum at a committee. The character is left exactly where he started at the beginning of the comic book having gone nowhere. And there generally is only superficial interaction between the independent stories. Manga seem decidedly more plot driven, with characters serving as focal points rather than subject matter. Kaneda was hardly in Akira in any substantive way, and mostly served to allow the story to unfold. No one in their right mind would suggest an Akira 2 just because you could carry the character over. But such a thing is assumed in American comics all the time.
3. Comic books are unsatisfyingly short. After actively searching out a source, finding a comic book shop, and driving to it to get the latest copy of Big Sweaty Guy with a Gun: Reborn, you would expect to be have at least some entertainment from it... right? Well, unless you found that rarity of American comics, the compilation, chances are it is 20 pages long, 1/2 of which are action tiles and need no reading, and which can be finished in about 7 minutes. And don't forget to tune in again next month when they release the next 7 minutes of the story. Either your story is going to have a plot that wouldn't challenge the teletubbies, or your reader is going to get bored and move on in the year and a half it takes to finish your storyline. In japan, compilations seem to be far more common than they are here, with many, many more pages to read. I have never seen a japanese comic anywhere near as short as ours, page for page. It's just not worth bothering to spend 20 minutes every month for a year picking up a comic that you are going to read in 7... but picking up one of those ubiquitous manga in 30 seconds while shopping, and reading it for 2 hours? That's not a bad deal.
Sadly, none of the above seem to be changing any time soon. Plot driven comics with accessable characters served out in meals not bites? Sadly, not while the big two are still in charge.
The ______ Agenda
got a reply out of you, didn't it...ac's are such easy targets...like cleaning carp that are nailed to a board
Because it's not an American comic.
Seriously. A lot of people will prefer Japanese stuff to similar American, simply because it's different. Why? Because it's more interesting. When we perceive something as different to what we're used to, we can either find it intimidating (if it scares us or we don't understand it) or interesting (if it seems harmless enough and there's a chance we'll grow to like it). When it comes to anime and manga, it's rare that a person will find themself frightened by a mere foreign comic book.
There's also the fact that anime and manga are gaining popularity, and with good reason - they're generally rather good. Anime is an art form - the drawing of the characters, colouring, shading, movement, balance, character design, sound and storyline are all well thought out and well implemented. Compare this to a western cartoons which are very often unsatisfying in their portrayals of characters - they're just too flat and hard to empathize with.
The best manga and anime are most often the ones ported to the english language, which reinforces the idea that anime is good. Not to mention its wide range and the huge audience it can reach. Once someone finds an anime they like (many people start on a dub of something like Dragonball Z), they are much more likely to gain an interest in other series of a similar style.
I don't think I have to mention the fact that while American comics and cartoons target kids who are used to watching costumed superheroes and anthropomorphic animals in their daily six hours of watching TV, Japanese animation has Dragonball-style dirty humour, Evangelion's depth and confusingness, and Ghost in the Shell's commentary on what it means to be human.
It seems to me that one other major factor was overlooked - furuhon-ya, or used book stores. Generally more than half-full of manga (which reportedly is half ot the published material in Japan,) these tend to be large, brightly lit, extremely efficient, and amusingly named. (Perhaps the best example: Book Off. [link in Japanese])
In the article, Tamai mentions that the price point of tankouban, or collected volumes of manga, is around 500 - 1200 yen. Most people I know in Japan who buy tankouban do so exclusively at used book shops, for much less than half of that price. It's not uncommon to be able to buy an older series for 100 yen per book, especially when buying many volumes together in a set. Of course, you can sell the books back after your done, again at a fraction of the price you paid.
The point is when you think "used comic shop" in the states, you imagine paying $10 a pop for some plastic-encased hard-to-find issue. In Japan, the idea of paying more than the original sale price is almost ludicrous. Anything that is even remotely successful will be published to death, and republished as long as any demand exists. In the meanwhile, it will be mercilessly imitated by other artists. Only a few classic writers (Tezuka, Shirow, Miyazaki...) have unimitable style that retains its market value years later.
I'm not sure whether these shops actually benefit the manga industry or not, but I would imagine so, as there doesn't seem to be any attempt to shut them down. Over the last few years, video game manufacturers started printing "Not for Resale" notices on their packages. This was overturned in Japanese court, thank god... in rental-forbidden Japan, used book stores are about the only sane way to try and buy games.
At any rate, this is another interesting aspect of the "recycling" motif that is prevalent in manga but completely missed by the American comic market.
heavy metal, heavy metal fakk 2, and spawn are the only american comics / cartoons / animated movies i've seen that have any chance of surviving a comparision to japanese anime / manga. maybe there's more, but i haven't run across them.
it's pretty sad, too, because the reason they are comparable, is that they don't assume the viewer has an IQ of 80, and are so impressionable that a bit of violence (within an intricate storyline) will twist their fragile little minds.
i mean, come on! our typical "american comic heros", spider-man, superman, batman, et al. have an amazing tendency to punch and kick their arch-nemesis for a good 20 minutes, and not once do you see a drop of blood spilled. (graphic novels notwithstanding)
if the american entertainment industry would take off the blindfold, and see that a good number of their audience can really digest media for what it is, they'd probably hide in shame.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
I have read Manga that appeared childish on the outside, but once you read it you notice that it was designed for adults, as the philosophy and cynicsm would only have been understood by adults. Sure there is also Manga written for kids, but that is not what we are talking about here.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Donald Richie has lived in Japan for over 40 years and is a well known cultural critic, specifically movies (I believe he did the commentary track on the Criterion Seven Samurai DVD and was interviewed extensively for the Kurosawa documentary on 20th Century Masters on PBS). He has also written several books on Japanese film and its stylistic differences from the rest of the world.
I think a very specific point in his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (which I recommend regardless) might answer this. Richie says that one of the fundamental differences between Japanese and Western (specifically American) cinema is the drama that they are derived from: Japanese plays (Noh, Kabuki) are presentational while Western plays are realistic.
Ok so what does that mean? Well in Western drama (and which was then carried over into Western cinema), there is an assumption of naturalism: things are as they seem, as they are in the Real World. Japanese drama though, with its stylized movements, its paramount importance of placement means that in many ways the form of the style dictates much of the logic.
This has meant that many things that are considered avant-garde (i.e. Adult) in the West (Expressionism, Surealism) are actually incorporated into all levels of entertainment in Japan.
An example would be a sword fight. In the West when someone is hit with a sword they are expected to bleed normally, scream out, and fall down dead.
In Japan you can have someone hit in the throat with a sword, stand there, say something ("The irony... to hear it from my own neck"), then a gyser of blood shoots out, and they tip over silently (ala Lone Wolf and Cub). Where in the West this would be seen as an experimental choice, in Japan it is commonly accepted.
This is important for anima as animation is a stylistic choice. So fans of Japanese cinema would have no problem accepting it while a standard Western audience, with their realism indoctrination, have trouble accepting such a Fantastical step is Adult entertainment. The touching adult morality of Neon Genesis: Evangelion is thus less than the realistic dopiness of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, based purely on how the form of each is perceived.
What is music when you despise all sound?
non-existent necks mean "fragile"
No shit?
I would even go so far as to think "dead".
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Sorry apparently you are saying actual knowledge of Japnanese language.
Most Japanese are able to complete newspaper.
I speak both Japanese and English. Completing
English newspaper is more difficult than in
Japanese. Yes we need to learn a lot of Kanji Character
but it gave us edge to increase vocabulary, as character iteself has meaning. Contray to this, english vocabulary is really confusing.
How you can know mare means female horse without dicitionary.
Only they're talking abount manga.
Blue hair says "fun"
Manga is usually in black and white.
exaggerated high-pitched squeaky voices mean "happy".
If you hear voices coming from manga, you may be having a psychotic episode.
In every single case, the guy who likes Anime has some sort of difficulty dealing with or confronting women sexually.
I think the whole point is why is it different in Japan, where just about everyone reads it (or watches it in the case of anime). Married, single, male, female, old, young.
I sense a great deal of anger in you. I don't quite understand it; are you terrified of the weaknesses you think anime displays because you worry about seeing those weaknesses in yourself?
"President Bush has signed a secret directive ordering the government to develop..."
Not so secret any more, is it?
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
WHY DOES MANGA SUCCEED WHERE AMERICAN COMICS FAIL?
0 2
According to Frederick L. Schodt's recent book, Dreamland Japan, "almost 2 billion manga books and magazines were sold in Japan in 1995, which means over 15 manga-related items for every person in Japan. The manga industry boasts $6 billion in annual revenues, which amounts to a staggering $50 spent on manga for every Japanese person." That means that nearly "every Japanese person" is a consumer of Manga in one form or another.
THE EXPERTS:
-Frederik L. Schodt (www.jai2.com) is the author of two highly respected books on Japanese comic art -- Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics and Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga -- among other writings.
-Tony Leonard Tamai (www.tonikoro.com) is an American Manga artist now residing in Nagoya, Japan. TAMAI is currently working on a project called Godland with Hollywood Comics (www.hollywoodcomics.com/leonard.html) for the Japanese market, and is a respected member of the PLASTIC ANIMAL STUDIOS collective (www.plasticanimal.com).
-Keith Giles is indie comic book creator with too much time on his hands, and an opinion column on the web. While not exactly an "expert" in the subject of Manga, he is more like a facilitator here for the discussion at hand.
The main question is, "Why does Manga enjoy such fantastic success?"
We've identified eight key elements that contribute to the dominance of Manga in Japanese culture for the purposes of this discussion. In no particular order they are:
1) CULTURE & HISTORY: For hundreds of years Japanese people have loved art similar to modern manga, such as scrolls, woodblock prints, or sketches. Those art forms primarily are composed of line drawings, and often are fantastic, violent, erotic, humorous, and narrative in structure.
2) TRAINS: The crowded, fast-paced, modern commuter culture of Japan's urban lifestyle has had a gigantic impact on the proliferation of Manga. Today a huge number of people in Japan spend a great deal of time on trains.
3) LANGUAGE: There are aspects of the Japanese system of writing that help contribute to a pre-disposition towards the sequential medium. The Japanese ideograms used in Japanese writing are a type of cartoon.
4) FREE EXPRESSION: The Japanese Comics Industry has never dealt with anything resembling the American Comics Code Authority. This freedom of expression has allowed them to enjoy a greater level of freedom, creativity and expression in their art.
5. DIVERSITY: Manga explores varied subject matters. Unlike the spandex-happy US market, Manga covers anything from sci-fi action to private school girls to basketball and every form of weirdness in between. There's literally something for everyone to enjoy when it comes to Japanese Manga.
6. PRODUCTION: Manga is done cheap and fast, printed mostly on newsprint, and published weekly instead of monthly.
7. MARKETING: No comics-shop love here. Manga are sold on newsstands, at book shops and at kiosks all over Japan.
8. DISPOSABLE MEDIUM: The Japanese Manga Market is largely a disposable one, as opposed to the "Collector" mentality that dominates the US market.
THE QUESTION IS...
With all this in mind, is there anything that the American Comics Industry can learn from Manga? Or is the widespread popularity of Manga simply a product of the unique Japanese culture, and therefore, something that cannot be duplicated here in the States?
GILES: Today, Manga seems to have reached a zenith of popularity in Japan that rivals anything the American comics market could ever imagine. Why is it so popular?
SCHODT: Actually, if you talk to manga publishers in Japan, they will sob and moan and groan about the poor state of the industry. There's a decade-long recession going on. Young readers are spending more and more time on video games and the internet, and spending all their disposable income on cell phones. Manga sales have been static, sometimes even declining for the last few years.
Of course, most publishers (comic and non-comic) in other countries would still be dumbfounded by the sales and profitability of manga in Japan. The problem for Japan is that from the early sixties to the mid-nineties, annual growth rates in the manga business were astronomical. People took it for granted that sales would continue to increase exponentially. But the manga market in Japan is now saturated, and the only real potential growth areas left are among senior citizens and overseas. It's one reason we are seeing so many more manga exported. It's not just the intrinsic popularity of the manga themselves; it's the fact that Japanese publishers are actively seeking overseas markets now, just like Japanese car manufacturers and computer manufacturers before them.
TAMAI: All I can say about that is that if you consider the unfortunate drop in the Japanese Anime Industry's economics (domestically) and expenditures for big budget Anime (Like Ghost In The Shell, Jin Roh, or Akira), comics in Japan are like the one economic stable which has gone virtually unscathed by the recent recession. That's really amazing when you think of recent market conditions. To its credit, unlike the American-side, readership accounts for almost any age and gender demographic. That's a distinction that is not as exploited in the States, unfortunately.
GILES: Of all the key elements in Japanese culture that have made Manga such an ingrained part of Japanese lifestyle, the "Train factor" and the "Ideogram Alphabet" elements seem to be the most specific to Japanese culture. Would Manga have ever exploded into the Japanese mainstream WITHOUT the "Train" and "Ideogram" factors? Talk about these two factors and how they have specifically impacted the popularity of Manga in Japan.
SCHODT: I think that Manga would be popular in Japan even without trains and without influence from the Japanese writing system, but probably not as popular. Japan's cities are very crowded, and Manga magazines and books are a great way to entertain oneself. They're quiet (very important in Japan), and don't take up much space, and after working all day in an office or studying at school, they're a nice light form of reading material. Also, they're very portable.
It's no coincidence that audio books are far more popular in the United States, where people spend long hours in the cars commuting, than in Japan, where most people in cities commute by trains. Manga are also great for reading at coffee shops, barber shops, noodle eateries, and in other crowded places. Maybe if we had more coffee shops and ramen stores in America we would read more comics!
TAMAI: What's weird about the whole "read Manga while sucking up some noodles" thing is, most Ramen-ya (Noodle shops) I go to are so friggin' fast, I don't have time to sit and enjoy a Manga. But at a Manga-Kisa, I'm going there to read comics, so the food and drink come after the fact.
Most anyone you might see eating ramen in a noodle joint, riding a train, construction guys taking a break on a hot summer afternoon drinking a poccari sweat, or attendees at a "Manga-Kisa" (or "Comics Cafe"), are in some way contributing to that vast multi-million to billion yen economic consumption all over Japan. It can in many ways be considered an "escape" art form. Many will tell you it's "Jikan-Tsubusu" or "Killing Time." If you know the pressure of working and living in Japan, you'd seriously relate.
I can go into any convenience store in Nagoya and see not one, but several persons browsing a comics magazine. The same for bookstores here, twice the size of a Barnes & Noble, that have a devoted area or floor just for comics. Hell, I didn't even know Ghost In The Shell 2 was out in Japan until I myself saw a guy on the Subway reading it. I remember I nearly blew my wad, then I raced out and bought a copy of my own. That was nearly Fall of last year.
GILES: Japanese Manga consumers purchase thick, black and white, cheap digests to read on a long train commute and dispose of them when they're done. American comic consumers purchase expensive, thin, full-color pamphlets to read on the toilet and then save them in boxes forever. Manga is cheap. American comics are not. Is there any way, in your opinion, to change American reading habits and comic tastes in this regard?
TAMAI: In the States, the smaller monthly serial is more of a printing fanfare, and expensive, full 4 color art at that. I'd feel pretty jacked if I tossed out a copy of Frank Miller's Sin City or Mignola's Hellboy after giving it a reading, and a few months later to go buy it again in a TPB. And, if you recycle the pulp paper, you get more manga post consumer printed pulp. Also, I do know that the Japanese print industry has also been using Soy ink, so less chemicals end up seeping into the ground, and, more importantly, into your body. You'd be surprised if you knew how toxic some printing inks and varnishes were involved in printing a spiffy 4-color deal. But not all comics are printed in the States on totally expensive paper, it's just not the kind of thing you're going to toss out to recycle.
GILES: Here in the States the average fan would never dream of purchasing, reading and then tossing away a comic book.
Is there a way to make a shift towards "cheap and disposable" comics here in the States that you can see working towards improving the acceptance of comics in our culture?
SCHODT: I don't see any reason for the U.S. industry to import the disposabilty aspect of Japanese Manga. It would help, however, if U.S. comics were priced lower for children, and if they had more pages, so artists could tell more complex stories. The catch here, of course, is that in order to bring the price down, the publishers require an economy of scale that would be difficult to achieve in the U.S.
GILES: Is the disposability factor something that has played a positive role in the popularity of manga in Japan?
TAMAI: To Japan's credit, the recycle effort is a must to some degree in Japan.
Japan is roughly (not true scale) about the size of California. It is a crowded, congested ecology with only so much natural reserves, and it would suffer a serious burden if it did not make efforts to control natural resources and ecology. The same follows for energy, air quality & fuels, etc.. If you could imagine in the States, how many individuals would follow a strict program of separating plastics, paper, burnable, and organic trash? Hell if you get it wrong here in Nagoya, the trash men will put a refusal sticker on it and leave it there. So, Manga fits into that same recycle effort. The key for the Manga publisher is to make collected "Tankohbon," or the TradeBack. At maybe 6x8 or smaller, the tradeback is what you'd collect and keep on your shelf at maybe 500-1200 Yen a pop.
GILES: Because Manga is supported by so many Japan-Specific factors, is there really anything that American Comic Book companies can learn from the Japanese Manga industry to achieve similar success in our culture?
SCHODT: There is a lot to learn, and many practices of the Japanese industry are already being implemented here in the U.S. I believe the increased visibility of "graphic novels" in U.S. bookstores, is partly due to Japan's influence. Companies like Viz Communications, in California, and Dark Horse Comics, in Oregon, have been actively putting out comics in paperback format, a la the Manga tradition. Viz is a 100% owned subsidiary of one of Japan's largest Manga publishers, so it is not surprising that it is importing many of Japan's publishing conventions. Another aspect of Japan's industry that is being imported is the media-mix strategy; the increasing link between Manga and games, animation, and movies.
U.S. publishers have tried to do this to some extent with characters like Superman and Batman, but I think they see now that the Japanese formula is much broader, and ultimately more lucrative.
TAMAI: The Big Question. First off, American Comics as a business can learn, but it has to WANT to learn from foreign material industries. It has to diversify its range of story content to broaden it's reception to a wide audience, which should be more adult-oriented. After all, the adults make more money. Mo'money, Mo'money to buy comics. How can you do this?
Advertising and positioning.
When was the last time you saw Time-Warner make a campaign on Buses, or Subways in New York, or, God forbid, T.V.?
After all, Warner owns D.C., right? Got more money than the Federal Reserve, but what does the public get? A movie option that will push a few more sales and then they'll start a universe hot wire like the "Death of Superman" thing. That will get a nice little chuckle on Good Morning America, and then those already buying comics (Geeks, not new readers) will rush to the Ma & Pa retail store to get it. Kind of like ejaculating without the erection if you ask me. Jokes aside, Marketing and positioning are everything. Hell, branding a Comics Publisher should be no different than ABC, CBS, or the newest Hollywood Picture. If the Comics creators had the type of cash the MIB film hype had, you'd have people lined up at the stores to get a copy.
GILES: Wait a minute, you're saying that American Comics need to diversify to a more "Adult Audience." But, in my opinion, one of the main problems with American Comics is that they're only selling to adults and not to children. At the moment the industry is in a stagnation period. Without actively reaching out to a younger market, the American Comics Industry will die with the current generation.
TAMAI: Well, I think there's something in the formula of marketing Comic Magazines to specific age group and gender. If you were to look at Kodansha's HP (www.kodanclub.com) you might notice that the magazines and titles are categorized as such. In this the market is already factored. The States needs this. But also, kids now have a lot to contend with like video games, the Internet and television etc.. It makes it hard to compete with. Maybe if comics were becoming more technologically savvy, I don't know. But there might be something in that.
In addition, the US comics industry needs publishing tactics, and targeting to a wide age group beyond its normal and current readership. Would any American publisher push creators for a weekly or bi-weekly? Some creators have a problem getting monthly books to Diamond as is.
What's with Shojo Manga (Girls and Women's comics) in the U.S.? Women in the States buy tons of supermarket romance novels, How can comics fit that in the line-up? I was just mentioning recently how interesting it would be in the States to see more female creators creating and tailoring comics for women. Besides, in a male dominated media, women have been highly under-served unfortunately. Why aren't there some comics about American or World History? I mean true literary comics?! Hell, Shakespeare! I could see somebody doing something like Hamlet.
GILES: Actually, Ben Templesmith started something like that over at UnboundComics.com doing specifically an adaption of Hamlet that I thought was excellent. In fact, I agree with you. The idea of literary or historical comics could go a long way to breaking comics into a new market, get into the school systems, and possibly even attract a new, younger generation of comics consumers. Why doesn't Marvel or DC explore this?
TAMAI: We in comics must be prepared to push publications beyond our reach of experience and our particular interest. Editors of the comics industry need to challenge the platform, and vice versa artist/writer to editor.
Last but not least is the really deeper conspiracy for reform: DISTRIBUTION! Comics will, should, and have to hit the Barnes & Noble/Amazon.com level to see changes on a wider consumer level. As it is, Comics share some floor space at stores like B&N, but it's like one rack. You and I know there's more to comics than that. "Gentlemen, it is a War...a war that can be won!"
GILES: The Japanese Manga industry has benefited from not being constricted by a Comics Code Authority. How important has creative freedom been to the success of Japanese Manga?
SCHODT: Creative freedom is a huge factor in the popularity of Manga today. In the 1960s, 70s, and even 80s, Manga were a place where people with interesting, bold ideas could experiment. Manga attracted some of Japan's top creative people, who otherwise would have become novelists or film directors. Today Manga are not quite as exciting as they used to be, because video games, TV commercials, the internet, and other fields have siphoned off some of the creative talent. Nonetheless, ambitious minds in Japan still regard Manga as a place to try out new ideas, and, if lucky, to gain considerable fame and fortune.
TAMAI: This touches on some really interesting cross culture issues I can personally relate to. When I was younger, when Anime and Manga importation were still fledgling followings state side, I decided that being a comics creator in Manga (U.S. or whatever) was something I wanted to do. I studied Japanese to basically try and really grasp real Manga. In a sense, I've grown up being weaned on Manga. I'm age 30 now. I'm already seeing a good number of kids who are part of a generation that may take after Manga and the art form with more influence than say the "conventional" style. Out of that, a small percentage may decide to start studying Japanese to read Manga. That is a really interesting factor, culturally speaking. Like Fred mentioned...
GILES: Now that the CCA has been all but abolished here in the States, do you think there's any way to overcome the damage done to comics here in America?
TAMAI: I can't say much about the comics code, but I will say this, the CCA seems a bit of an antiquated Hoover-Era tactic to not only censor, but to enforce morality on the reader. A newer, more contemporary system is long overdue.
SCHODT: I sense a difference in the last few years in the States. I think there's a broadening of subject matter in comics, which should help. But comics have been terribly stigmatized, and it may be too late for them to ever regain the popularity (not to mention circulations) they once had in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I have heard that some schools in the U.S. are now using comics to teach children to create stories and narratives. This is a major step forward, and may help popularize comics considerably. Also, more and more American children seem to love Japanese Manga, and in the long run this should help the U.S. industry, too.
GILES: Is the American perception of Manga success a bit skewed? I mean, only a small percentage of Manga gets translated into English and distributed here. Isn't it true that we basically get the "cream of the crop" and the rest of the phonebook digest stuff is really just not worth importing?
TAMAI: We have to remember, the stuff that's been published in the States is for the most part adapted by about four (at best) publishing or adaptation houses. What we get in the States is a tenth, at best, of what our marketing can get comic buyers to purchase. There are some things in Japanese comics that culturally, might not perform due to lack of cultural comprehension in American audiences. By the same right, Japanese people don't always get the jokes in American movies, so they just sit there instead of laughing. But what Japanese people get into is the storytelling of the thing, and that is the more noble consciousness of the Japanese audience over Western audience.
If I can be so honest, Japanese people are not always as concerned about the articulation of the illustration as much as they are the thoughtful direction of story. Guys like Mignola, or any American creator re-printed in Japan, if they're popular for a minute here in Japan, it's usually at a cult-ish level. That doesn't mean they ever rise to the level of a household name like Matsumoto Reiji (Yamato, Harlock). In fact, in comparison to how much Manga is going to the States, I have completely no idea where I could get an American Comics ("Ame-Komi" as said in Japanese) title here in Japan.
SCHODT: The U.S. perception of Manga is completely skewed. It has nothing to do with what most people are reading in Japan. It has everything to do with the nature of the marketplace in the U.S. The only Manga imported and translated are those for which there is a market in the U.S. Since the U.S. comic market is still dominated by young males and collector-types, titles selected almost always are designed to appeal to them. With the influence of animation, this is changing somewhat, but by-and-large most Americans get what they seem to want. Simple, action stories with lots of cute girl characters.
GILES: Are there any Japanese Manga titles that you would like to see translated and brought to American audiences?
SCHODT: I'd love to see Taiyo Matsumoto's Ping Pong brought over, but it might not sell. There are dozens of Japanese Manga that I love that would have no market here. I have a huge set of award-winning Manga by Natsuo Sekikawa (writer) and Jiro Taniguchi (artist), based on the novels of Soseki [Natsume]. There are five books, each with 250 pages. It's beautifully done, but the readers in Japan are mostly in their forties and fifties, I imagine. It's hard to see how it could ever
be marketed here in the U.S.
GILES: I just heard that Matsumoto's Ping Pong is being released in Japan as a live action film. (Learn more about the upcoming film here: www.akadot.com/article/article-pingpong-01.html)
Are either of you familiar with a title called Blame by Tsutomu Nihei? (www.studiokrum.com/blame/blamepag.html) This title was serialized in the same digest as Blade of the Immortal, and yet it has been reprinted in nearly every major language and country except here in the States? What keeps certain titles from gaining a US distributor?
TAMAI: Yes, Blame would be cool. Also, Kamikaze by Shiki Satoshi, and Kumakuchi Yuichi's King of Bandit Jing might be cool. Older works from Otomo Katsuhiro, or retro-Japan Manga's like Cobra, or Matsumoto Reiji-era stuff would be great to see also.
SCHODT: I'm not familiar with the title you mention. It's usually a matter of market demand. Occasionally there are cultural issues involved, but mostly it's about economics and money.
GILES: One of the keys to Manga success is the extreme variety of titles and genres. American comics are now more diverse than ever, (although still spandex-heavy), but still nowhere near the level of that found in Japanese Manga. Could diversity be a key to expanding the popularity of the American Market?
SCHODT: I would love to see American comics regain the diversity that they once had, in the 1940s and 50s, when there were many romance and even sports comics. It would greatly help to erase some of the stereotypes people have of comics-- that they are only good for depicting super heroes and so forth.
GILES: Honestly, do you really think American Comics could EVER achieve the same level of saturation as that of Manga in Japan?
SCHODT: No. At this point it would be impossible. You would have to completely change people's reading habits, and life styles. You would also have to vastly increase literacy levels in the U.S.
TAMAI: I'm afraid I'd have to concur with Fred on the literacy level.
In Japan, the literacy level is quite high. There are more periodicals and publishers than you could shake a stick at here. Not to mention Bookstores are off the hook. In addition, we're talking just over 1900 kanji ideograms (in the Japanese Language) for the basic literacy level.
Ten years of studying, and I couldn't tell you how much kanji I know or don't. If you were to take the case of literacy in the States, we might be disappointed when taken seriously.
GILES: Ouch! Uh....ok. The truth hurts. You got us there.
Let's talk about how the Japanese Anime Market has helped in the proliferation of Manga? Is this symbiotic relationship something that could be mimicked here in the States?
SCHODT: I think I partly answered this before. In Japan today, Anime helps drive Manga sales, although most animated works are still based on Manga stories. I think we will see more and more attempts to mimic this relationship in the United States. Viz Communications will shortly be bringing out Jump, a translation of Japan's best selling Manga magazine, on a monthly basis. You can be sure that the stories selected for serialization in the magazine will mostly be works that are showing, or have shown, as animation on U.S. TV.
TAMAI: Manga and Anime are very skewed in the States. I'd go further to say Manga and Anime have on an art level been a bit mottled into a generalization of being the same thing. It's not. Of course, one influences the other, but you must keep in mind were talking about motion and static storytelling. The differences can be seen in some of the devices. It's not just the "Big Eye Syndrome," and a bunch of speeding lines and fancy screentone work that make up the art. Those who will study good Manga, do your homework. All the answers are there in the pages. I'm still trying to get it down pat.
GILES: One of the by-products of trying to survive in the phonebook digests market of Manga is the tendency for the stories to just "out-weird" the next guy and get the attention of the readers so they can stand out in the sea of other serialized stories. Is this something you think helps or hurts Japanese Manga Creators? Are more sedate, thoughtful and slow-burning titles left out in the cold because of this tendency?
SCHODT: The tendency you mention is most noticeable in the mass-market magazines for children and young people. There are lots of magazines that aim for something higher in Japan. Many go out of business, but there are always new ones that appear to replace them. It's sort of like the market for videos and fiction novels in the U.S. Frankly, as others have said in more colorful ways, most popular culture is trash. But when a certain scale is achieved, there are always people who try to do serious, meaningful things. I'm not trying to put down the trash. Sometimes trashy Manga (or books or films) can be great!
TAMAI: Right now I'm producing a comic, and one publisher I'm going to approach is a Weekly. These are publishers where some guys loose sleep for a few days, and have up to eight or nine assistants working on a particular episode. I find that hard to beat. I might need two assistants just for a bi-weekly or monthly. But all in all, that's what it takes to be a comic artist in Japan. Guys like Shirow are somewhat rare in the case of taking a few years in seclusion to do books like GITS 2. But it's well worth the wait.
I hear the happiest people are into Bi-weekly and Monthly. But popular artists make good money in Japan. It's all about keeping the readership. Manga recently is a driving influence of popular T.V. Drama, not to mention PS2 games, Anime, Toys, and other merchandise running down to telephone card graphics. Comics in Japan bring out a large element of competition.
GILES: Fred, I know your expertise is Manga, but are there any areas in the American Comics Industry where you can see a need for drastic changes?
SCHODT: Like TV and films, in comics I crave fewer formulas, and more interesting stories about ordinary life.
GILES: Tony? What about you, any last thoughts?
TAMAI: As far as drastic changes go, I'm not quite sure what I could say that would have readers signing up in the droves. I can say, there is a more pro-active approach we should consider. there are a lot of smart people in comics, we as creators should see the art for what it is, "Limitless." We should examine our readers, and give them stories that will influence them culturally and socially, and yet most importantly, challenge the very intellect of the reader.
That is the power we hold.
*******
EVER WONDER WHY THAT MANGA COST SO MUCH IN THE STATES WHEN THE JAPANESE VERSION WAS PRINTED SO CHEAPLY?
FIND OUT THE ANSWER HERE:
http://anime-tourist.com/article.php?sid=3
*****
Frederik L. Schodt's book, Dreamland Japan: Writings On Modern Manga, is available for US $16.95 from Stone Bridge Press, P.O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707. E-mail: sbp@stonebridge.com.
Keith Giles is one of the world's greatest enigmas. Ruggedly handsome, and yet surprisingly gentle and compassionate with small animals, Keith actually has a very weak grasp of reality and often talks to himself in the bathroom mirror. He's currently writing his own original sci-fi novels and putting together a few comic books of his own in his spare time.
I have really taken to the Greek comic artist Arkas and his work. Very funny. Most of his jokes are dirty and are clearly not meant for children.
Is he popular in Greece? Is there a stigma for adults to read his comics? (I would not know I live in New Jersey, I just know to read Greek from my Greek family and I buy his work off the internet.)
The Japanese are extremely good at taking an existing technology and improving it, and taking it to its full potential. Take for example cell phones - the buzz when I was in Japan in Dec/2000 was all about G3, and the full motion (color) video on cell phones. Or cars - Honda makes the best, most economical internal combustion engines out there. Its about quality.
At the same time, try and think of a technology which has done fantastically well that was a purely Japanese invention. They take others work and improve/perfect it.
I think this follows through to animation. While north american companies such as disney and warner brothers put out their Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, the Japanese realized that with animation, you could do *anything*. You could create completely alternative universes, limited only by your imagination. So they made their animation for all levels of audience - from children to adults. It really opened up the market in their country - and all ages accepted animation. In north america, we grew up with our childish animations - so we have this concept that animation is for children.
Thats why, in my opinion, north american animation never took off as a form of entertainment for all ages - and not just for children.
.
Personaly i love both manga and american comics, I have found no lack of artistry in either side, and no lack of inteligent, thought provoking plots in both. As such i dont see how the issue lies there.
Culturaly the japanese are more prone to buying and getting rid of larger bulks of lower quality products... Which allows the consumer a greater pick of cheaper comics. Americans dispite their increased disposable income do not like to buy anything they cant use for the next 60 years or give to their kids. This of course tends to stagnate markets that arent entirely disposable such as comics.
I have always preferred american storylines and alternative artistry mixed with the manga precision, and i cannot stand the gimmicy short-cuts common in many manga series (such as the water drop by the eye, or the simplified cartooning used to show a character is emotionaly outraged or excited) and this may be due to the fact that most manga is probably working off of smaller margins.
However, i dare say americans need to take the emphasis off of collecting since most collecting doesn't amount to anything, and allow these markets to flourish.
just my 2c.
--enter the sig--
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
This was supposed to be attached to "Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare".
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
No joke, the Japanese read more comics because of their lower rates of literacy.
No, this isn't because they're stupid or their education system is poor, it's because of the complexities of their written alphabets. The Japanese have 4 written alphabets in regular use: 2 phonetic ones, hiragana and katakana; the chinese alphabet, kanji; and the english alphabet, romanji.
The problem is that the more high-brow the text, the more likely it is to be written in kanji. Kanji is a one-symbol-is-one-word system. You have to have a bloody large vocabulary to make any sense of it.
These comics tend to be written in one of the phonetic kanas (hiragana or katakana), so they're easy to read and accessible to anybody with a gradeschool education. This makes them more popular.
Just imagine if all English books were written in Shakespearean english, or worse Old English. How popular would comic books be with adults then?
Went to ComicCon last year. They had a breakout session on the annual state of the comic industry (a lot of dry numbers). There was one observation to be made. While it was generally accepted that the Manga industry dwarfs that of American comics/graphic novels, no effort is being made to quantify it. Its either a "dirty little secret", or the "majors" just don't care that there getting there butts kicked.
I feel sorry for them one symbol = 1 word
What a pain in the ass. They should find a new writing system. Maybe they will discover the joys of an alphabet.
Yeah, "really interesting." What about those paintings you find in Mexico? You know those beautiful paintings, on black velvet? Your level of artistic comprehension equates perfectly. Ever read a book--without pictures?
Well... american comics have had soft pr0n for decades, buxom babes/buff dudes, all in skit-tight uniforms. I switched to the 'funny animal' comics, like Usagi Yojimbo some time back, because 'hero' comics were getting to soap-opera.
Manga, like euro comics, do a better job of just trying to tell a story. It probably also is attractive in the sense of Monty Python (in relation to american audiences) of being slightly arcane (due to cultural differences), which triggers some little thing in the mind which release the 'hey that's cool' hormone which makes us feel good about something. Also, having CmdrTaco toss Anime stuff (I'm looking right at an Animefu banner ad as I type. Coincidence?) in front of /. readers establishes a sense of community.
Personally, I've tried it, but it's just not my thing. The stories are too preposterous for me (unlike a wandering rabbit ronin, which makes perfect sense!)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The article was not about the few the Manga titles that get imported to the USA from Japan. But rather the state of the industry in Japan and how ubiquitous comics are in Japan. Also the fact that the majority of manga is in very thick, low quality, cheap volumes that are read and disposed of (like a newspapers or cheap paperbacks) rather than the expensive pamphlets of the US (oops my WEF roots are showing).
Also you're dismissal of the entire Manga industry on the basis of Ranma 1/2 is the equivalent of dismissing the publishing industry based upon romance novels, or the film industry based upon childrens movies like "Home Alone" and "Free Willy". If you don't like one example it's not a case for condeming the entire medium. But then I guess straw men are much easier than real opponents to knock down.
The success of Cerebus is actually similar to that of Manga in that it is the collected volumes not the original comics that are the final repository. Also Dave Sim has control of his creation which is a very rare thing in the US comic industry. His story also has a specific goal and will finish soon. This is extreemly rare in the US industry and more than anything leads to the repetition and unenven quality which is why a large number of people stop reading comics after a certain time.
In Japan Rumiko Takahashi, responsible (you may prefer culpable) for Ranma, has created 4 major series the first three of which reached conclusions and stopped (the fourth is still ongoing). Rather than the concept becoming stale and repetitive she finished and started another new story. Also her stories are about the characters. Whilst the situations provide the background for the drama and conflict it is the characters which make people want to read them.
Whilst the best of American comics may reach this level sometimes it is normally in only one small area (superheroes) which do not appeal to a great number of people. In Japan the breadth of the subjects of manga are those of any literature and so most people can find subjects that are interesting to them. So whilst areas of this may go through peaks and troughs as a while it continues in strength.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
I haven't read the rest, but I second the recommendations for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Girl Genius. Both are wonderful examples of graphic storytelling and a lot of fun.
Mind you these are also the only 'American' comics I collect. I used to do single issues of everthing I liked, but sometimes the series would disapear (Shotgun Mary) and other times I would miss an issue or two and end up buying the collections anyway. So I promised myself I would always wait for the collections.
But then I sort of know Phil and Kaja, so I started buying Girl Genius from day one after running into them at an SF convention right before they launched it. And, as for LoXG... Well I did wait for the collection for the first set. And it was so amazing I that I went down the local comic store and started a pull list for the new series.
I am weak, weak person...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
...just wondering.
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
If you want to see how good a serious novel in comic form can be, get yourself a copy of The Watchmen. It's a fascinating book.
http://www.mrdowling.com/800literacy.html
Japan has HIGHER literacy rates than the US does... perhaps Japaneese comics are actually well written, rather than the banal crap that US media companies puch out?? I don't know, I have never read Japaneese comics, but I just couldn't watch while someone who blatantly bullshits his facts gets modded up as 'insightful'
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Everyone should check out the Seven Myths about Literacy in the United States. Turns out that the perception of American literacy rates rapidly sliding downhill is largely due to (surprise surprise) media frenzy.
But I guess the hackneyed old tradition of U.S. bashing is still in vogue. Will it ever go out of style?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Ok, I've lived in Japan over 4 years, read manga everyday, and am pretty fluent in Japanese (for a white guy).
1) Manga has more variety. It isn't just your superhero beats up bad guy shit. They have stuff for car racing, fantasy, sci-fi, sports, girl-romance crap, etc. Anything you want, there's a manga for you. They even have serious crap which requires INTELLIGENCE and knowlege of OLD JAPANESE. Kids CAN'T READ IT! So adults don't feel childish when they do.
2) The culture is more accepting. Old guys can read manga withouth losing their job or being osctracised. It's ok.
3) How did you get you fat American ass to work this morning? By car, right? Japanese overwhelmingly are taking trains/subways/busses. That's just the way things are over here. Whatta you gonna read? The latest Grisham novel? Yeah, right. Manga is a quick and entertaining way to endure the daily commute.
4) Cartoons are just part of the culture. This relates to #2, but, if you ever buy Japanese appliances, or anything (cars, etc.), the manual has cartoons to explain everything. It's normal.
5) American comics have catered to collectors in recent years. Big mistake. Ever hear of the VCR? That USED to be an american invention, not that anyone would believe you nowadays. Mass market is everything boys. Give the people what they want!
Go into a comic shop and you'll invariably see some fifty year-old guy with a bushy mustache beind the counter. He's still stuck on 'Batman' or 'Superman'. He hates all this 'Japanese shit' but stocks it anyway out of necessity.
Truth is, this art form (graphic literature) is fucked eternally in the US by a combination of puritanism, narrow corporate control (DC, Diamond, Marvel) and creative conservatism. Imagine if rock'n'roll had stopped in 1955 and the music industry was still pushing Chuck Berry and Little Richard on kids as "the hot new thing". Hoo boy, how exciting!
Why are people looking overseas for their comics? Because the US industry is a joke.
Glin
Even those who purport to understand Japanese culture around here (and then proceed to talk about manga as child porn) are so off base I just had to act...
The Japanese consider their culture to be nearly impenetrable to westerners. Even if you go in with an extremely open mind, there are many aspects to the culture that we, as westerners, could probably never understand. Simple direct observation of the culture from within (yes, you have to actually *go* to Japan to understand this) along with said open mind doesn't hurt, though, and having a Japanese wife certainly helps too.
Looking at manga in terms of western comics is completely misguided from the start. Manga in Japan is simply the way quite a lot of literature is presented to the public; it's the accepted method of reading most less serious fiction and non-fiction for both children *and* adults. How-to books, instruction manuals, even novels come packaged in the same artful style and the variety of subjects is endless. There's not what you would even call a "manga industry" in Japan in the same way as there is a "comic industry" in the US - the manga industry is simply the Japanese publishing industry. They obviously have non-illustrated books too, but illustrated literature is a standard, accepted form of literature in a way that it is not here. Manga in Japan is quite literally everywhere - it's not something you go to the "manga shop" to buy. You couldn't get away from it if you tried.
Many of the causes for manga's success listed in the linked article are actually effects. The fact that there is so much variety in subject matter is less a reason for success than it is an effect of the cultural acceptance of the legitimacy of illustrated literature. The Japanese are very visual people, and I would argue that their alphabet itself - which is itself entirely symbolic - is one of the root causes for this. In other Asian countries you see similar phenomena (illustrated literature is very popular in Korea as well, for example). The Japanese are used to looking at iconography and determining meaning from it - it is necessary for them to get through life - whereas we largely are not. I would argue our brains are wired more for conceptual analysis than iconographic analysis; we assign meaning from text and speech rather than visuals.
It's also completely untrue that there's no collector culture in Japan. The fact that many "manga" books are disposable doesn't mean they all are. You may buy a disposable paperback at an airpot to read on an airplane here but that doesn't mean that hardcover first printing of "A Farewall to Arms" you've got at home is in the same category. Again, this just shows a lack of understanding and acknowledgement of the fact that the "manga industry" is simply the publishing industry in Japan - the variety in manga extends not just to the subject matter but also to the durability of the literature. My wife has illustrated books of Miyazaki stories that she's had since she was a kid, and most Japanese people I know are the same way. And these are not even otaku - hardcore fans - who actively collect as much of this stuff as they can.
Anyway, the main point is that it's a mistake to look at anything in Japan through western eyes. You need to at least *try* to look through Japanese eyes, as impossible as that is. There are things you can at least begin to understand if you attempt to delve deeply into the culture, but you'll never get close if you insist on looking through our perspective.
Japan is a nation that relies almost entirely on mass transit. People spend a lot of time on the train, or the bus, or waiting for the train or bus. Rather than sit around and be totally bored, many fill the time with reading manga. More recently, people are just as likely to sit and play games or message friends on their cell phones.
For the same reason the super-high-tech japanese cell phones and DoCoMo features haven't really caught on here in the US. While this might also work in New York City, the vast majority of the US is much more spread out. Most Americans own cars, and few outside major cities use mass transit. Even less use it for trips longer than a half-hour/hour (which is common in Japan). The critical mass for this sort of thing just isn't there.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
Personally, I think there's one oft-overlooked answer: quantity. MOST manga sucks donkeys. If you can read Japanese, you probably agree. Pick a random comic book up at a book store and try to read through it without crying in boredom. Fortunately for foreign audiences, generally the REALLY bad stuff gets weeded out and isn't released overseas. Unfortunately, some of the really good stuff gets weeded out too, but that's another story.
However, there are a MASSIVE number of manga that come out daily. Unbelievable quantities. It is inevitable, then, that in a continuous tidal wave like that, good stuff comes out too. If 0.1 percent of manga are worth reading, and there are 100,000 manga released every week, that means 100 good manga a week.
Of course, that's not the only reason. Aiming at multiple markets, variety of subject matter, cheapness, "ownership" by creator, etc. etc. etc. are massively important, but have been commented on by pretty much all the other posters anyway.
But, then again, the stuff that sells well abroad still tends to favor Big Titted Superhero Chicks with Robots (Masamune Shiro tripe) instead of the really cool stuff (Kabachitare, a dramatic story about judicial scriveners).
While reading these posts, I thought about Michael Chabon's book, "Kavalier and Clay" which concerned the rise in interest in comics during the post WWII years in New York City. I wonder if the Japanese interest in manga is not simply a cultural thing, because the US has already experienced a similar phenomenon. Is interest in comics/manga/graphic thingies tied to some sociopolitical state? (Don't ask me I'm a scientist, not a sociologist).
I guess this argument could be refuted by mentioning the length of time that the Japanese have been interested in Manga as compared to the American interest in superhero comics. I can't say anything about European comics, because I don't know who and how many read them.
The interviewees seemed to have forgotten some aspects of American comic book history. First off, the "other genres" besides superheroes were certainly in full swing from the 40s to the 60s, and comic-book renditions of "the classics" were the cliffnotes of the time, helping many a kid scrape his way through high school english classes. However, those died out for the same reason comics today are 1) expensive, and 2) a collector's hobby only. They don't seem to realize that the collectibility and financial factor of comic books changed everything. Kids might as youngsters still get "archie", but as kids learned of the history of comics and what the old ones fetch nowadays, it makes them very choosy over what from the current selection they get. Its not like music or movies where there are thousands of releases, but only a few sell millions of copies/dollars. Its more like real book publishing here. Either it sells well enough because people think its quality will make it collectible, or its utterly forgotten and never talked about again...and that decision is made within 4 issues, or even within a "preview" of the material as guests or 2nd stories in other comics. Thus, comic publishing companies have in a sense more at risk than the movie studios. To keep that quality up takes time (hence the monthly release schedule), and money. Collectors want stuff that will survive over time (how many copies of Action #38 were lost just because they fell apart?), and thus will pay the higher price for the higher quality paper and ink. Add to that the fact that this expense, which shrunk the customer base, has led to a reduction in the # and size of comic book stores (and thus, reduced shelf space for holding more "latest issues"); the retail stores are also very heavily hit by distribution costs -- the gas price rise of the '91 gulf war and '92 recession hit the market fairly hard. The price is set by the distributor/publisher, and incorporates shipping costs into it. But when the price doesn't change in reflection of the increase in shipping costs, the retailer is the one that eats the loss. Many couldn't afford it and had to diversify into carrying toys and games, especially the collectable card games ("Magic", et al) in order to stay afloat during the 90s. Cheap distribution is a BIG deal in Japan. Americans get quite worked up with how "cheap" things are in other countries like England, France, Japan, Italy, etc, and forget that those places are TINY compared to us. Its a day's drive to deliver things in most european countries, compared to a week or more for coast to coast, more than 7-10 times the cost regardless of the gas prices. Like with "clerks" as a movie, or other low-budget works in other media, its possible that a "high quality product" can come out of a low budget release (i.e., trying to put a comic book out for less than $1 an issue), but one has to be absolutely sure of the product to manage it. Truthfully, one really can only sell as many issues as the best selling comic out there, and if you can't make a profit on that #, you can't enter the market. Joe
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
It seems that comics in the U.S. peaked in the 1940's. They seemed to be rapidly picking up popularity, and branching out in strange new (often gross, but hey) directions. I truly believe that comic books would have bloomed into a much large industry, if it weren't for the dastardly deeds of Concerned Parents(tm), and their puppeteers Big Media(tm).
But seriously, it was the ridiculous public outcry (comic books are warping out kids' minds!) that led to the censorship and neutering of our fledgling comic book industry. Let me show a quote from The Media Violence Myth:
"If it were my task, Mr. Chairman, to teach children delinquency," he [psychiatrist Frederic Wertham] testified before a Congressional committee in 1954, "to tell them how to rape and seduce girls, how to hurt people, how to break into stores, how to cheat, how to forge, how to do any known crime, if it were my task to teach that, I would have to enlist the crime comic book industry. Formerly to impair the morals of a minor was a punishable offense. It has now become a mass industry. I will say that every crime of delinquency is described in detail and that if you teach somebody the technique of something you, of course, seduce him into it. Nobody would believe that you teach a boy homosexuality without introducing him to it. The same thing with crime."
Listen to that fucker go. Can you believe this was a man who defined public policy? Can you believe he even had a degree in psychiatry? If I didn't believe in free speech, I'd want all perpetrators of this incessant Blame Game hanged, drawn, and quartered.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Look, I like Douglas Adams as much as the next man. I've got everything from a hardback of _Last Chance to See_ to a DVD of The Pirate Planet.
Yes, he was well-educated. Yes, he was a clever writer.
But if Douglas Adams was one of the greatest writers of our time, that says a lot more about our time than it does about Douglas Adams.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
There are many reasons why it might be so popular.
First, the highest selling manga in Japan is a serial that prints several comics called Shonen Jump. The comics in this serial are aimed toward oun boys, but frequently, you'll see several businessmen together reading the same issue of Jump. The book is very thick and also very cheap, and also printed not only on news print, but some of the less popular comics are printed on *pink* newsprint. Another reason for the lower price is that manga is of course in black and white, whereas ALL American comics are in color, and each 30 page comic sells for more than the price of a 200 page Jump comic.
I hate to admit it, because it gives those "all Japanese comics are porn" people fuel, but there is an incredible amount of Japanese pornography comics - and they are very popular. Add that to the fact that you can buy these things everywhere, including the large used comic stores (Mandrake, anyone?) and people are not in the least bit ashamed to be buying these things.
Another reason is that while there are comic-style manga, that are episodic and continue on for like 50 volumes, there are also manga that go on for 20 or so volumes and tell a complete story all the way through. Then, the manga is OVER. Done. None of this X-Men crap (which has turned me off to the comic) where they keep reinventing the plot, characters die and come back, etc. (and in the case of X-Men it was done simply because of the popularity of the movie) Talk to any Japanese manga writer, and they will be amazed that so many different people can write for Spiderman or Superman. The idea of another person taking over a writer's artistic view sounds completely absurd to them - and it should be. If the US followed the same economic model - lots of comics, serialized, artists thought in the same way instead of "it's my turn to write/draw for comic X", and Americans would start reading instead of "collecting" (the collection biz is NOT going to be as profitiable as back in the day folks...not when everyone is "collecting" baseball cards and comics), then perhaps American comics can have the same popularity.
Side note, some Japanese find manga a poor excuse for literacy. Ask some people about manga, and businessmen reading it, and they'll roll their eyes and say something like they should be reading books instead, that manga is too easy. However, many Japanese also really like manga, too, and many have their own guilty pleasures.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
In japan, many of the comics are sold in huge very very thick oversize magazine style books. Some of these are several inches thick and larger than our normal magazine footprint.
Whereas, in America (and elsewhere) you really don't see adults reading comics in public often, in Japan adults were reading comics everywhere.
Personally, I prefer to get my political insights from the sunday comics in my local newspaper - rather than the liars on FAUX and SEE'NN News who merely parrot what the fucked up Bushie administration pays them to.
Why do people still buy LP's when CD's are superior in every way?
Why do people insist on using Macs, despite being more expensive, less powerful, and having the last few versions of Windows erase any supposed "usability" advantages?
Why do people gleefully pay $100 / foot for speaker cable?
The same reason people immerse themselves in manga and anime - despite it's shallow plots, insipid characters and terrible artwork. The way it's marketed. The message is "People who read anime are smarter and hipper than everyone else". People who read this stuff (and use Macs, buy LPs, etc) want to see themselves as being part of an elite group. University students are terribly susceptible to this. Why else do you see them flocking to Starbucks when the same coffee is available, for less money, at the gas station across the street? Elitism. Status. To them, it's not just coffee, it's an attempt to become a member of the privileged few.
The key to marketing to university students, entertainment media types ( and any other industry when wisdom known as "common sense" has minimal penetration ) is to overtly claim many supposed technical merits of your product ( don't worry about facts here - they don't matter ), then subtly tell them that people who use your product are smarter, trendier, and darn it, just plain better than everyone else. Jack your prices up three to five times higher than normal, and you're a millionare. If you can throw in a dash of sex appeal, you're a billionare.
The image of comic books is largely still that of simplisticly written and drawn adventure stories. This hasn't been true for decades now, and some comics have writing that's superb. The X-Men movie sequel is largely based on a Graphic Novel called God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont (longtime X-Men writer). How's that for quality source?
Plus, I think comics are gaining MORE respect among the public. People in my age group (I'm 34) grew up with quality stories and art, so that explains the mounting acceptance and popularity of superheroes for film matierial. Some of the most popular movies of the past few years were inspired by comics. The first 2 Batman movies, SpiderMan, Men in Black. All great movies with widely diverse audiences. There were some stinkers, too (Tank Girl...Ugghhh), but as a whole, the medium is getting better and some of the public know it.
As for the continuing lack of respect for comic books as an art and profession....I lay that blame squarely on other writing and artistic professions. It's basically snobbery on their part. Writing comics isn't "real" writing to a novelist, or journalist. Drawing and inking comics isn't good work compared to, oh, I don't know, abstract art that no one outside the academy gives a shit about. I heard an interview with Stan Lee on NPR a while back, and he talked about how depressed he was in the 70's, because other media outlets (newspapers, time magazine, fiction writers) didn't respect what he was doing, and when he tried to branch out, doors were slammed in his face everywhere. Ironically, he made a bigger impact on our culture than anyone from NewsWeek or the New York Times ever did.
But the respect war is being won. Look at the new crop of comic-based flicks coming out. Daredevil has long been a fan and critical favorite. The Hulk is directed by oscar-winning Ang Lee. And the highly anticipated X-Men sequel is once again directed by Bryan Singer, who is highly respected in Hollywood.
The Japanese culture is simply different. They were never saddled with the "comics is kid stuff" rap. They have a little more of an open mind about such things.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
All the horrible sensorship that daily strips have to deal with in the states should be a clue to why there isn't more mainstream comics. There is either the toothless moronic-religious-compliant stuff (Free speech, good one) or the much more mature stuff (ooh boobies, etc).
How come Bone by Jeff Smith isn't owned by more people, great stuff, but sadly that is not the case.
So why won't the US have the same success as Manga has in Japan? Take a guess...
1) There is a much wider range of subject matter in manga. 80% or more of American comics are about superheroes, superpowers, and similar themes. In contrast, there is a manga reflecting almost every aspect of Japanese society.
2) Consistency. American monthly comics practice a certain bait-and-switch. A good team will come in on a title and establish a readership. They will stay with that comic for a length of time, and then move to a different title to help boost numbers. A new (usually inferior) team takes over, and the series will coast on the reputation of the first team. In manga, a comic series almost always stays in the hands of it's creator and his/her studio.
3) Maturity level. Manga are geared towards adult readers more often than American comics. That is not to say there are no American comics written for adults, but that it is more the norm in manga. And by adult, I don't mean only T&A. Manga is often times smartly written and executed.
4) Manga takes more influences from American cinema than from American comics. And the best American comic writers and artists are learning key lessons from manga. More thought goes into "camera angles", motion, background art, prop design, and many things that manga has long been very strong on. "The Ultimates" (Marvel's Avengers re-boot) is a good example of an American title using manga style.
As another replier has already mentioned, Literacy rates are higher in Japan. Read all the replies and you'll see why this is an example of another poster talking out of their ass. Did you even read the article?
Think about this. Notice how all these old Marvel superheros are getting a resurgence in popularity because Stan Lee is helping to bring them to the big screen in an medium that American's often dominate, the blockbuster movie.
Lazy americans who can't read well won't pick up something they have to spend time reading and thinking about, but if all they have to do is sit for two hours and watch a bunch of explosions and martial arts, they'll be very happy.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Check out the new EDGE and FORGE comics from Cross-Gen I think the format is much better, it contains multiple issues at a fair price, would love to see other publishers go to this format.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Agreed. This is BS. I don't know where these people get their facts, but Japan's literacy rate is bette than ours.
It is true that not everyone in Japan knows every kanji there is, but most everyone knows the most commonly used kanji, which pretty much enables them to read the majority of books out there.
And in cases where an antiquated kanji is used in a book, I'm pretty sure that the editor throws furigana into the text.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Virtually anything Warren Ellis has had a hand in; especially his own original works:
Transmetropolitan
Global Frequency
In addition, other favorites of mine that you can still find in the store if you look:
-100 Bullets(various)
-Athena(Dean Hsieh)
-Heavy Liquid(Paul Pope, who's actually worked in the manga industry)
-Hitman(various)
Frank Miller's "Sin City" series are also good, although they're more of an exploration into beautifully rendered noir, than a continuing story.
--
Because american superheroes wear their underwear on top of their pants, perhaps...?
I don't see how you can make such a blanket statement like that with a straight face. Do you like it when people hold prejudices about you for liking computers, or whatnot? You are incredibly closed minded.
slashdot!=valid HTML
They spent some time in this article comparing the japanese manga market with american comics, and lamenting about the piss-poor sales of comics here in america. so...
Just in case someone from Marvel or DC is reading this, let me fix this little problem for you:
It's all about PRICE, bitch! I go to my local comic shop and look for a comic, and the average one costs like $2.50 to $3! What the hell? I've been a long time comic book fan, and I have to say - the X-men from issues 100-220 were the BEST comics ever printed, and even they weren't worth $2.50 a piece!
Think about this a bit. Little Timmy Average High School Punk get his paycheck from Taco Bell. Timmy has a few hobbies. He likes movies, comics, video games, a collectible card game such as Magic: The gathering and surfing for pr0n on the web. Pr0n being free, it gets factored out. Now, he has to pay bills first, so he sets aside half his paycheck to cover things like car insurance, gas to get to work, and some lunch money. He's saving up for a PS2 because his parents couldn't afford one for christmas. Now - he's left with maybe forty dollars of disposable income that has to last two weeks. He knows his buddies will want to go to the movies each friday, so he sets aside twenty dollars. He also knows he wants to spend some money on stuff his mom won't get him - like cologne to impress the girlies, or maybe a pack of cigarettes, or maybe a six-pack of beer, or some other thing so he sets aside another ten dollars. That leaves him ten bucks to divide between his hobbies. He could either buy three comics, or some gaming paraphenalia.
Let's say timmy likes the X-Men. Oh...wait...he can't follow the X-men.... There are like fifteen X-books a month, all costing $2.50 or more. And you have to read them ALL to get the story!
So - looks like he'll sink his money into his game of choice, or maybe spend it on dinner at the mall food court.
Moral of the story: CUT THE DAMN PRICES OF THE BOOKS! go back to news print. use cheaper inking processes! Make the story carry the book instead of the expensive art! Damn you all! LISTEN TO ME! The suckage of the comics market is ALL YOUR FAULT! You priced them out of range for your audience!
Yeah the stories suck, but that's not a problem! People will buy it if it's cheap enough! Get those books back down to under a buck and a half! Then worry about quality story!
All four of them? Manga is a mass commuter passtime and 'Mericans are not a mass commuter people. End of story.
Sponge bob square pants
-- Leeeter than leet
No joke, the Japanese read more comics because of their lower rates of literacy.
No, this isn't because they're stupid or their education system is poor, it's because of the complexities of their written alphabets. The Japanese have 4 written alphabets in regular use: 2 phonetic ones, hiragana and katakana; the chinese alphabet, kanji; and the english alphabet, romanji.
The problem is that the more high-brow the text, the more likely it is to be written in kanji. Kanji is a one-symbol-is-one-word system. You have to have a bloody large vocabulary to make any sense of it.
These comics tend to be written in one of the phonetic kanas (hiragana or katakana), so they're easy to read and accessible to anybody with a gradeschool education. This makes them more popular.
Just imagine if all English books were written in Shakespearean english, or worse Old English. How popular would comic books be with adults then?
This is like saying McDonalds succeeds where pubs fail. Pubs serve better food, alcohol, and have hot waitresses. Mcdonalds servers bad food and have 'uneducated' clients.
Personally I used to read comic books but have switched over after discovering manga with the occasional Dark Horse novels (e.g. Lone Wolf and Cub). Overall, it was a matter of variety in the content and also a comic's monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, etc. schedules didn't help much to keep my interest.
However, most of my friends have lost complete interest in reading. I noticed that people here in the U.S. prefer other types of activities other than reading. Its all about what you can do socially and conveniently... which is why movie, television, and sports-related activities are the most prevalent (Work doesn't count.).
Reading is an activity that usually involves only the person in question... American culture doesn't seem to promote much of that... well, at least in my life its hard not to be without at least one friend every moment of the day or meeting new ones every week.
...are demons with seven cocks!
Where exactly are American comics failing? I've been collecting for over twenty years. I trained up as an artist. So I know what I'm talking about when I say that the comics have never been more creative, better written, professionally crafted.
Manga? I just don't get the obsession. The plotlines are derivative of bad pulp sci-fi, pre-Campbell. The artwork is adequate for the most part, just as "American" comics are. The best art is fantastic, the worst abysmal.
The plotlines in the majority of manga and anime are hackneyed, especially painful since they are run through a language and cultural translation.
I realize manga and anime (I have to lump them together) have become a religion amongst geeks and kids, but its not because of quality -- they're cool because they're cool. Literature, they are not. For the most part. Just like comics.
I can't understand why bunny girls or twenty years out of date cybercowboys ripped from Gibson are more interesting than the tortured old man in "The Dark Knight Returns", or the reinvented heroes in "The Watchmen". Love and Rockets. Dork Tower. Men in Black. Liberty Meadows. Silly and sublime, ten cent junk or graphic novels, American comics have grown up in spite of great resistance from the public at large.
One can argue that manga can be capable of interesting stories, but that doesn't make it more successful. Remember, there is a large amount of manga that doesn't make it in the mass market -- misogynistic, violent, xenophobic, and adored by Japanese of all ages, byt not suited for our culture. We only see the tip of the iceberg, sort of comparable to thinking Brit TV is all Masterpiece Theater, when it's mostly bad game shows.
IMO, altho I've seen incredible artwork done by Japanese artists when relieved of the more everyday restrictions of manga, the comics I see daily are dull, unimaginatively drawn, with bad, bad, and I mean BAD writing with insipid plots. Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is shit.
Manga... the characters all look the same. This is not a generalization -- they are intended to look alike. There's something weird about how the eyes are never drawn with epicanthic folds, considering that they are drawn for a Japanese audience. Running through the genre an obsession with young girls that would get you talked about, not to mention tracked by Ashcroft's goons, if you were drawing in the U.S.
I realize young fanboys and fangirls devour manga the way I used to chow down on Marvel, but that doesn't make American comics "bad". Young people like simpler stories. Manga returns to old comic roots by simplifying the artwork on one level yet showing sophistication in execution. American comics have evolved for an older audience now --there's no help for it.
I've listened patiently to plot breakdowns from rabid fans, and had my eyes glaze over. Let's see: a lone hero(ine) starts out from everyday origins to discover their hidden power that can defeat the demon which yadda yadda... essentially old Japanese folk stories rewritten, just as American comics repeat the Rugged Individualist meme from the old west. But cowboy stories have been done to death, and so has the Lone Ronin, whatever blue hair he wears.
American animation is amazing when compared with Manga.
I don't get it - the animation in The Simpsons is just so much better than any Manga animation.
"But it's the story, the elegance ?"
Bollocks.
It's lazy animation - very cool style of drawing, but lazy none-the-less.
American animation has been king since the beggining - heck, Americans perfected animation.
I'm not even American either, oh God.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I really hate having to post anonymously to avoid being modded to oblivion. But I have to say that, for the most part, I agree with this guy. Of course Anime/Manga/what-have-you isn't always used as a sexual device. I believe that in many cases it is.
A friend tried to get me into it awhile back by loaning me a copy of an Anime called "Love Hina". I watched it with an open mind, but didn't find it entertaining at all. In case you don't know the story, its about a looser boy who ends up the manager of an all-girls bath house.
I got the same feeling as the guy who posted above me. That this was a "device intended to help sexually insecure young men come to grips with their own underdeveloped sexual identity".
Now don't get me wrong, I am sure that there are some Anime/Manga out there that isn't used in this way. And yes, I think that some of the artwork drawn in that style is very impressive. But there is a definite majority of it that tries to appeal to the looser guy out and gives him something to dream about.
Please understand that I am not trying to troll here. If you don't agree with me, reply and prove me wrong. I'll try to be open minded.
AzNs want to be Americans, and Americans want to be AzN. Only difference is that the Asians actually have taste in what they watch/read.
so wheres the problem ?
others: sponge bob, jhonny bravo
I know I'm going to get karma roasted for this, but since it'll be mods from rabid fans I'm not too worried.
I don't like anime. More specifically, I don't like the effects that it brings upon people. There is a direct causative relationship between being interested in it and wanting to try and learn Japanese--which almost always fails miserably, insistence on being called names like 'Washu' and 'Minako-chan' and 'Ranma', and thinking that being a human xerox machine is 'art'.
And so far as art is concerned, this group generally believes that attempting to copy anime identically is 'art'. News flash, it's a simple drawing style to begin with. I don't think even fans can argue with that, and if you are, you need to get your head examined and try doing a portrait of a real person in charcoal or somesuch.
I'm not a fan of American comics, either, but I'm quite sick and tired of this bandwagon. I have MANY friends who are into it, and I bear it. I joke that 'anime turns you into a child molester', and they agree. Never a, 'Ha-ha, very funny' or 'Pfft, generalization', just agreement.
And, actually, anime fandom is classified as a fetish by the APA.
Think about it for a minute. Really, think about it.
I'm going to back this guy up. Last year I dropped by a little cyber-cafe cafe to enjoy a couple of cool ones while brushing up on Sendmail config. I had the (mis)fortune to share the place with our local anime fan club, who were viewing episodes of Tenchi. One of these episode had a female character who, under the guise of a medical examination, attempt to coerce the lead character into sexual activities. This was preceded by an in-depth introduction by the club president, accompanied by much sophomoric giggling, and followed by an extensive analysis. The whole thing reminded me of a junior-high schoolgirl sleepover, not a gathering of college-age males. Sad, really.
I'm just totally fscking sick of hearing about literature. Its so goddamn obvious what it is. At best, a hobby interest for losers. At worst, a sexual fetish worthy of medication and/or psychiatric treatment.
Anime is a medium, like books or television, not a genre, like sci-fi or comedy.
Also, I believe you mean "Kigurumi" instead of "Kirugumi", unless the result you were looking for spelled it wrong too? Something about costumes, correct?
advertising stuff that most of us have no clue about or even a chance to buy. While US 'anime' is so blatantly a tandem advertising scheme for really bad toys.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
My name is YorkshireOne and I have cancelled coporate meetings because of the DBZ Majin Buu saga. I am clean shaven and shower twice a day, I don't use Linux.
A real man like me feels secure enough to enjoy DBZ for what it is, without having to conform to your herd mentality.
BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP HAVE YOU ANY WOOL!!!!!!!!!
Marvel has been one of the most proactive companies in revamping their comic lines so that the stories are accessible to the non-collector. They're writen by the best writers and they've used various artists. While the X-Men, Daredevil and Spider-Man movies are fairly okay, the storylines of the comics themselves have grown up and changed to fit the modern times. For example, the identity of Daredevil in the comic book has been outted in the newspapers. Because of this, we get stories that to look into the media and how it's manipulated, how people in the real world sees heroes and other topics. While there's still a lot of action, it's no longer just the hero fighting an enemy just for the sake of the story.
The same can be said for the revamped lines of Ultimate Spider-Man and the Ultimates. These are great jumping on points for the casual reader. They're available in a bound trade paperback format, so it's really accessible to the non-collector.
Some really good Marvel titles:
This is the best example of a modern revamp of a superhero theme. The writing and art is excellent.
This is a story of Peter Parker and it's great how the writer always pushes the character into situations he'd hate to be in. The story is amazing, and the characters aren't two dimensional. It makes for an excellent read.
It's X-Men, but it looks far beyond the old tired stories of a minority group fighting for the people that hate them. It has a sci-fi edge to it.
There's actually a bunch of free comic books and previews available in Flash format at Marvel's dotcomics website.
That's just Marvel. DC actually owns several imprints including WildStorm, ABC and Vertigo, which released some of the comics listed in the parent post, like Top 10, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lucifer.
A couple of DC great titles I've been reading are :
It deals with the consequences of the world-wide death of every man on Earth
It's about cybernetics used by youths in the future as a social statement, much like scarification and piercing today.
The world leaders, who should be the best and brightest, aren't... so the best and the brightest have rallied on to take matters into their own hands.
Seriously, what a biased question- have you stopped beating your wife yet? American comics can be commercially as big, obviously, and there are plenty of good comics if you were to actually read them rather than just assume stereotypes about them (e.g. American comics are still only for kids, they don't deal with mature issues, blah blah blah). Especially read anything by Alan Moore - someone already mentioned League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (soon to be a motion picture, maybe); he also wrote From Hell (now a major motion picture), Swamp Thing, Top Ten (pretty funny stuff), and, if you want the best of the best, the Watchmen. I mean, it won a _Hugo_ for chrissakes.
;) ), just because everyone tells you American comics are for kids doesn't mean they are. I thought this would be obvious to someone who reads manga and (presumably) watches anime, but I guess it's easier to complain about other people's stereotypes then reflect on your own.
Anyway, to summarize that rambling (and blatant plugging, I suppose
I like Japanese Manga and Anime, and I like european comics, but most American comics leave me completely cold and uninterested. The reason for this is very simple. Too many goddamn super heroes, and too many talking animals! I'm 32, not 13, for christ's sake. Costumes? Men in tights and capes?? Sword wielding aardvarks??? It's ridiculous! I'm into science fiction, cyberpunk, stuff like that, stuff which at least TRIES to be believeable, and obey a few laws of physics (remember those?). Don't talk to ME about "suspension of disbelief". A guy who gets blinded and suddenly develops RADAR is just silly. These things just Do Not Happen (tm).
Japanese comics are different. They're broken out by genre, so if you're a kid, you can go for the more youth-oriented stuff, if you're a techie you can lean towards their science-fiction/robots-and-tech genre, if you're serious minded, there are very serious manga about relationships and such, I mean it goes on and on. There's literally something for everyone. It's deep and multidimensional. It takes very little effort to plan your choices so you never encounter so much as a single superhero in tights.
Something similar is going on in European comics. I've seen a lot of interesing french stuff, like Jean-Paul Giraud's, for instance. Heavy Metal magazine offers ads for companies that sell collections, and I've seen a lot of interesting ones. Many seem to lean towards the sexy side, which is kind of cool. They're definitely made for adults.
And, here's another thing, one gigantic overriding fact that elevates European and Japanese comics above just about everything else. It seems to me that the Europeans and the Japanese (particularly the Japanese) are the last remaining people on Earth who seem to take their science-fiction seriously. Here in the U.S. you get an occasional science-fiction movie, and frequently, you have to settle for trash. The Japanese are so lucky -- their anime industry is CONSTANTLY making good science fiction. And, it really is good. I swear, if it wasn't for Anime, I'd have dried up and died of spiritual malnourishment from lack of sci-fi. What do I get here in the U.S? What, one or two movies a year?
So, there's my opinion. If the U.S. comics industry could just grow out of the stupid "men in tights" superhero thing, and knock it off with the sentient-animals thing (like the weird sword and sorcery aardvark -- what the hell was THAT about???) maybe they'd produce something I'd be interested in.
Having said that, there ARE some interesting independents out there. Just not nearly enough.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Hey, I'm a US citizen and I'm completely illiterate!
My Mom used to buy me comics as a kid, and I've read some of the modern Neil Gaiman comics, but they never caught my interest.
Why? Because I'm a reader.
Comics NEVER take more then 10 minutes to read, and then you're done. That's 10 minutes of entertainment. Two packs of M&M's would keep a literate person entertained for longer.
The article says that American comics aren't popular because they're too difficult to read. BS. American comics assume an amount of illiteracy. Why else would they make a story that's over in 20 pages? This is also part of the reason that people think that American comics are for kids. If a story is longer and takes more effort to read (like the Harry Potter books) then suddenly they're not for kids anymore, and its transitioned into an adult genre.
If comic publishers made black and white comics that were significantly longer and more involved people would respect them more.
By contrast, the comics "industry" in the US is mainly a commercial enterprise primarily targetted at teenagers. The whole thing revolves around a few "brand" heros that are assigned to nameless artists. The stories and themes are the application of simple recipes. This kind of thing insults the intelligence of anyone above 16.
Americans pretty much invented the modern form of comics, but since the mid sixties, the really interesting stuff is all produced in France, Belgium, and Italy with rare exceptions.
Have a look at the FNAC wweb site if you don't believe me.
I have really taken to the Greek comic artist Arkas and his work. Very funny. Most of his jokes are dirty and are clearly not meant for children.
Is he popular in Greece? Is there a stigma for adults to read his comics? (I would not know I live in New Jersey, I just know to read Greek from my Greek family and I buy his work off the internet.)
American comics "fail" because American comic book publishers are hopelessly wedded to the superhero genre and are generally unwilling to take risks that will alienate their core "fanboy" market, a market that is predominantly male and ranges from teenagers to young adults. This is the conclusion I've come to after reading comics for nineteen years, reading trade publications for fourteen years, and actually running a comic book store for two and a half years.
.45 pistol and a tattered bullet-ridden American flag on the front, published in a normal novel-sized trade paperback form instead of the oversized comic-book TPB form, and got it into traditional bookstores under "Military Fiction" where people interested in military fiction might actually go to look for it.
They are stuck on the 22- to 32-page format that currently runs for about $3 each. $3 a pop for 32 pages? Even with the price of novels rising, a 200- to 300-page novel is still only about double that price. Granted, the paper quality is better in a comic book, but even though I can finish a 300-page novel in three to four hours of uninterrupted reading, it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to read the typical comic book -- less if half of the pages are full-page "splash" panels.
The state of the industry for writers and artists at the big publishers isn't much better than the state of the industry for the music artists that Slashdot seems to rally behind whenever the RIAA opens its collective mouth. Writers and artists are seen as interchangeable cogs, to be hired and dismissed at the editor's discretion. In the 90's, creator-owned projects were starting to gain widespread acceptance in the comic book market; before then, creator-owned projects were thought of the purview of people who didn't have the talent to do "real" comic book work ("If he's such a great artist, why hasn't he ever drawn X-Men?") but now the trend is starting to backslide. There are small publishers that are willing to do primarily non-superhero, creator-owned books. Also note that I refer to these as "small" publishers.
Comic book publishers are unwilling to do any serious marketing or distribution outside of the circle of comic book retailers. In an essay, one comic book writer wondered how many copies of Fury (a recent revival of James Bond-esque Marvel Comics superspy Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Marvel Comics could sell if they stripped all of the comic-book art off of the cover of the book, put "FURY" in big bold letters on the cover with a
Where are the Harry Potter-style comics for younger readers? What about comics for girls, like the Nancy Drew books my wife used to read incessantly when she was a child? There was a great comic back in the 90's called The Second Life of Doctor Mirage which had such a strong female readership that it actually had a soap opera actor as a guest character in the book. It died shortly after the publisher Valiant Comics decided it had to revamp its line to appeal to the fanboy market; now Valiant is owned by Acclaim which just uses the characters for videogames like X-O Manowar, the Turok series and Shadowman.
The only reason I still read and love comics is because there are stories there I can't find anywhere else. And I'm not talking about the superhero stuff, either.
Jay
Wait, Heavy Metal started out as the American edition of the French magazine Metal Hurlant.
Well, ok, does reading the articles posted on
Seriously, I am nowhere near illiterate, I speak 2 languages fluently (and can write adequatly in both of them) and bits and pieces of a few more languages, I read LOTS of books, and I read fast. But I don't read the paper daily. I just don't care about sports, so a good 1/3 of the newspaper's content is of no interest to me.
And the paper is a hassle: You have to dispove of it (recycling), it gets your hands dirty, its a cumbersome format, and frankly, some papers are no better than
So when I read that literacy should be measured by the number of newspapers you read in the last week, I say f0r63+ u u l4m3 gr4m4r n4z1!
You can't take the sky from me...
(This is shaping up to be one of the culture wars of the next decade, in my opinion. Over in this corner, we have: "Cities GOOD! Trains GOOD! Suburbs BAD! Cars BAD! Television BAD!" And over in the other corner we have "Oh don't listen to those negative, unamerican environmental whackos. Do they really think you fine people would have wasted your lives on bland, boring and pointless pursuits? Ha! Go back to sleep.")
Well... american comics have had soft pr0n for decades, buxom babes/buff dudes, all in skit-tight uniforms.
US comics have a non-trivial amount of pornographic titles, too. Some of it is high-quality storytelling, as well (i.e. Foglio's XXXenophile).
Perhaps this doesn't get much exposure because, in the US, comics are still (mistakenly) thought of as strictly pre- and early-adolescent entertainment. Thus material with adult content can get a comic store slammed as a corruptor of youth. So stores keep the seamy stuff in a back corner. Thus it gets little exposure, while even adult-level NON-pornographic stories get lumped with the stuff you'd expect to see on a restroom wall.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Asian/oriental art is usually 2 dimensional while
western European/USA art is usually 3 dimensional.
That's why 2d comic characters appeal to Asians.
Related: Fortunately, USA cartoons have progressed in overall entertainment value greatly in the last 10 years (Simpsons, King of the Hill, Justice League, Superman TAS, Batman Beyond, etc.,).
But now we have webcomics, which many people read daily/weekly/ or the popular M/W/F. I think with mobile computing and mobile internet access rising, it will make more sense to just read a dozen webcomic in the train, instead of going out and buying a book. And this is much friendlier to nature, no paper being thrown away by the tons. And many of these comics are free, many artists, if they have a large enough readership, bring out print books that you can order online.
Also, the Japanese have always used "comic books" for serious (sometimes mundane) stuff.
In US (and here in UK) comics are regarded as "kids Stuff" irrespective of their content
Nail on the head.
But a graphic novel bears the same relation to a written novel as a stage play to storytelling around the campfire, or as TV to radio. There's no reason it has to be children's entertainment.
And in fact it isn't just for kids - and hasn't been even since its inception. There's lots of find material out there, with a broad subject matter. I won't even begin to try to list it.
And even the "kid stuff" can be very deep. For instance: Barks' Donald Duck / Duckville / Uncle Scrooge / Gladstone Gander / Gyro Gearloose stories are a textbook education on economics (especially capitalism and why/how it works), including its relation to morality, social well-being, crime, cults, decision-making, etc. (I knew one entrepreneur who was quite a fan of it - having gotten much of his early education in economics from it - who called himself a "Barksist". B-) )
I think the problem in the US is that the general public's exposure to comics has been childrens' superhero-fantasy adventure material. So it is viewed as kid stuff and/or lowbrow - a view the media industry encourages, to prevent the loss of eyeball time.
But with the lowering of the standards of television and theater entertainment over the last few years, and the Manga phenomenon coming in from Japan, perhaps there's an opportunity to break that mental barrier on the general public's part. (There's LOTS of graphic material that's higher-brow and more thought-provoking than anything on the tube these days. B-) )
Meanwhile, if you have a friend who may be susceptable to some eye-opening (especially if he's an academic literature type), get him a copy of Scott McCloud's _Understanding Comics_, which is a very readable textbook on the structure, conventions, and operation of comics as a separate literature form.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Carlsen Comics", a german publisher, is bringin out more manga, translated to german, to all the german speaking countries in the area (Switzerland, Austria, etc.) As you can see from their frontpage, they're importing all the big hits in Japan to europe. I don't know if they also sell them in France, since there's deffinate interest in comics there. Carlsen also brought out a magazine, BANZAI! which is like the famous Shojen-Jump, a weekly magazine in Japan which contains many comics from different artists, and news from the scene. They have correspondents in Japan, which sign deals for new comics, and, like their Japanese counterpart, bring news about Japanese pop-culture. After the rampant success of BANZAI! they're introducing a new magazine DaiSuki for girls, which contains comics more aimed at girls. (There's a sister magazine to Shojen-Jump, which does the same, but I can't remember the name).
That's it.
Fun to read, and delves into the "alternate history" arena a bit as well [for instance, Marilyn Monroe is still alive in the mid 80's...]
Along the lines of "if everyone is a super hero, what are the cops?" I've often wondered about a potential problem that was never addressed in these books: sports figures. Without giving too much away, the premise behind the people in these series is similar to the "rising stars" bit you mentioned -- instead of a meteor, it is a blimp that gets shot down, somewhat accidentally, that releases a gas cloud. The gas affects "some" of the people, mostly negatively, and fewer still "positively". [this is all revealed in the first story, so this isn't a spoiler] What may be a bit of a spoiler is that later in the series, it was pointed out that the gas cloud was intended to increase the telekinetic capabilities of humans [among other things], and most of the people affected DO have some teke abilities. I've always thought that this would kill sports as we know it -- fans in the stadium would be able to influence the flight of a football, for instance. The only thing is, if the "fans" with abilities are divided, what would happen is that the QB would throw the ball, it would get to some point in the pass, and then explode because everone was "willing" the ball to go in a different direction...
actually it depends... here in the philippines in the late 90's comics were superior.. starting 1998 anime/manga advertisement were out in the public fast and growing.. plus there were a lot of anime shows than cartoon and stocks of manga are bigger than comics.. some people are biased too.. like for example i like ranma 1/2 then a friend of mine saw my mangas of ranma.. after a day he liked it too and bought some mangas.. w/out knowing whats the story all about...
::blinks::
<accent type="european">Surelyy yuu ar joking? Comics not aveleble aruund evvry cornerr stour? I find the verry idea laughhabul!</accent>
(And not kidding either. Got to be one of those strange cultural differences.)
I completely agree. I lived in Japan for a long time and could read well enough to read manga.
It's just a mindless escape from tedium, like watching endless hours of TV in the US. It's just that the Japanese aren't home to watch TV, for various reasons, so they do the portable equivalent by reading manga.
And it's like TV: the more you watch, the more you're hooked. There's just enough story, suspense, comedy, or whatever to keep you coming back for more. It feels a lot better than staring at the wall (if you turn the TV off in the US) or at the back of the next train commuter's head (if you don't have your manga in Japan.) (Or, dare I say, than doing your work, you regular Slashdot readers...;-) Ouch.)
But there's little real substance there. Not none, but not much. Of course there are a few good TV shows and a few good manga stories, but not enough to fill the bottomless demand for mental anesthesia, so the rest is just forumlaic filler....
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
That is a misconception. The expensive, coloured, thin ones were published before the manga explosion (triggered by publishing Dragon Ball under the Japanese formula, like it was discovered in France before - thick, black and white, low quality paper, cheap!). These are unsold artefacts.
The cheap thick ones were published after the manga explosion. And many series was relaunched (Akira, Alita, 3x3 eyes) under the Japanese formula, instead of the US/Euro formula and became hits.
There are 3 pulp style magazines around now in Germany, with serialized series:
Regards,
Marc
In the usa we have this problem. we overmilk franchises till they are very very dry. star wars, simpsons, x-men, spiderman, the land before time XXIV. im not sure why its like that for us.
Won't you be my my neighbor?
The comic book struggled in its infancy here with a bad rap, just as video games are these days. People thought that reading comic books made their children go do crazy things, like jump off cliffs with towels for capes and such.
I convinced a history teacher to let me write a paper on the history of comics in high school. Back in the 40's and 50's there was a huge backlash against comic books like Superman that depicted characters that people thought were sinful because they had a God like character dressing up in tights and saving humanity. This mostly was an issue in small cities/towns where everyone knew each other and in some places merchants kept them behind the counter like you would a porno mag today, although everything started to die down in the 60's with the "Silver Age". By then there was no real proof they affected kids adversely since people kept reading them and society kept on chugging.
Personally I think a major problem with comic books these days is that I go to the comic store now and just browse the issues to find they're mostly the same only crap I read over the 12 years I bought comics.
It's like a Star Trek episode where in the final hour the hero saves the day with some conjured up on the fly solution. So many times it's that he just suddenly comes back from the dead after being missing for days.
The reason for I think is this, the writers of todays comic books for the most part grew up reading comic books. They didn't study literature and get into comics. They studied Thor and write stories that remind them of their childhood when they read Thor and it was cool (if that's possible w/ Thor.)
What's worse is they pay these people way too much. It's minimal compared to an actor, but I hear tales of artists getting 10's of thousands per issue.
I know people that were in the industry for years working @ the 2 big guns and they have some tales to tell. The industry is full of back stabbing and snobbish behavior. Understandable though, these people didn't sit at home as kids and read comics b/c of their great social skills.
On top of all this it's now 2.25-2.50 and issue! They're only 22 pages. I read through them in ten minutes. I can't justify spending that.
No sig for you!!
Americans may start recognizing manga and anime once they start competing for the same awards that "real" books and movies do. This year Spirited Away is likely to be nominated for Best Animated Picture, and might even win it. Other Japanese producers have said that they're now shooting for the Oscars as well. Even if they don't get big budget releases in the summer, getting a moderate November/December release and then monopolizing the "Best Animated Picture" box cover for home video will get some respect.
The additional Japanese alphabets do not make Japanese more complicated. In fact, the kana systems (hiragana and katakana) were originally introduced to allow lower classes and women (at the time considered academically incapable of using Chinese characters) to read and write.
Reading and writing of hiragana and katakana in modern Japanese is much easier than English. Although there are slightly more (about double) the number of characters than in the roman alphabet, each character represents a single syllable, and only that syllable, with very, very few exceptions.
Thus knowing the pronunciation of the word means knowing how to write it in kana. Knowing how to read the characters means automatically knowing the pronunciation. Compare that to English where the same group of characters can have many different pronunciations. (Example: through, bough, trough, rough, cough)
Manga are not written at any level lower than other books targetted at the same audience. Of course, manga targetted at small children will omit or provide the pronunciation for difficult kanji. But so do storybooks and school textbooks.
And although manga tends to have less words than a novel, many manga series span thousands of pages and involve highly complicated story lines and character relationships. Although they can be considered "lighter" reading material page-for-page, it would generally be impossible for an illiterate person to enjoy manga above the kiddie/toilet humour or pornographic levels. Trust me, I've tried.
Firstly, Chinese characters (hanzi) do not represent words, they represent morphemes. For example, no single character can represent tense, inflection, or plurality. Secondly, Japanese kanji are not the Chinese alphabet, as the writer above suggests. Although originally introduced by the Chinese, modern kanji has far fewer characters than the Chinese alphabet. There are also many "kokuji", kanji characters made in Japan which do not exist in Chinese writing.
Except for ancient Japanese works and Chinese poems, no Japanese text is ever written entirely in kanji. (The only exception would be very short phrases like "no tresspassing" on a sign.) In fact, it is impossible to write a verb or adjective in modern Japanese without using one of the kana systems.
Using obscure kanji certainly makes a work more literary and "high-brow", much in the same way that using obscure vocabulary makes an English passage more academic. However, these characters are out of place in literature aimed at a general level.
According to the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) codes of 1978 (rev. 1983), the current number of kanji in current use in Japanese is 6,353. This, of course, includes many thousands of characters which are very rarely used. The approximately 1,000 characters learned in elementary school cover approximately 90% of characters used in newspapers, general literature, and of course, manga written at a general level.
References:
data adapted from Miyajima T et al 1982. Zusetsu Nihongo. (Kodokawa Shoujiten 9). Kadokawa.
Nagamura, Hirofumi 2000. "Chinese Characters, Literacy, and the Japanese Model". http://www.kh.rim.or.jp/~nagamura/literacy.html
You can often detect used books by opening the very last page and looking at the dust cover. This is where furuhon-ya affix the price tags. Sometimes you can see the outline of the tag or residual glue. Or, in the case of a really stupid comic shop owner, the original tag itself. I once went to a shop that had a rack of manga at the "bargain" price of $8 ... every one of them had a Book Off sticker still stuck to the inside of the dust jacket.
NOT THAT IT REALLY FREAKING MATTERS! Just goes to show my American collector mentality. The content is the same, right? If some guy can find a way to provide it to you at a lower overhead, he gets the profits.
Regarding rentals, I meant that video game rentals are prohibited in Japan (I have no idea why.) Music and video rentals are about the same as western standards. Furuhon-ya sell used books, manga, videos, music, and video games, but the only industry which seems to have attempted to shut them down is the video game industry.
We don't need to know anything about Japanese culture to have an opinion on why comics are not popularly accepted in the US. After reading some of the posts about Europe, I would say that this is not a question of "Why is Japan different from the US?" it's a question of "Why is the US different from everyone else?"
I think it has to do with people's expectations of still images. People expect them to serve as descriptions or scene-setters. Some magazines have as much picture space per word as a comic book, but the pictures simply show the person or the place. At most they show a slice-of-life. The words tell you what the person did.
To an American, the idea of explaining a person's actions through images is needlessly cumbersome. If it can't be captured in a single image, show me a video or tell me in words. Drawing a series of pictures to show complex behavior is (in US culture) like miming--a waste of time unless you don't speak the same language.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
Manga is like Music. Music is for everyone, and there is nothing to grow out of. There are also 3 big reasons why this is so:
1) IDENTITY: The creator gains all the respect. Once the creator gains a following, fans will happily purchase and collect past and future works from that creator. So just like Music is for everyone, Manga is also popular in the same sense. There is something for everyone, and the readers choose their favorite authors, not their favorite superhero.
2) CONCLUSION: Manga ends. When the author gets tired of a series, they end it. When the inspiration is gone, it isn't re-brewed at long meetings, nor is the torch passed on to someone else. US Comics are like boy bands. Their audience is fixed, and the product is "engineered".
3) LEGACY: Cultural differences are often noted, but the industry in Japan was not built overnight or automatically. The success of past artists and their immortal work has helped build what Manga has become today. Sure, trains and Manga make a good match, but that doesn't say much about their influence on society, or their success:
How many engineers were inspired by Gundam? How many basketball players were inspired by Slam Dunk? How many students were inpired by Sangokushi? How many salary men were inspired by Salary Man Kintaro? How many kids burned their Cosmo (Saint Seiya), fired their Kamehameha(Dragonball), tried imitating one of Kenshiro's lines or moves (Hokuto no Ken), or wished they had a Docodemo Door (Doraemon)? Manga has helped DEFINE the culture.
Like music, manga has a huge influence, has something for everyone, and is constantly evolving leaving gems at every stage. And just like music, it is being able to relate to the content that binds you to it.
I have to agree completely. When I was a kid you could buy all sorts of comics (Goldkey, DC, Marvel, Harvey) for 25 cents. Then comics became "collector's items", the price shot through the roof, they disappeared from the local corner-store and became the exclusive domain of "serious" collectors. In North America, comics are for kids, but they are too expensive for kids! I can buy a novel for the price of some comics. Same thing happened to hockey cards.
Anarchists never rule
Japanese Manga is not just the actual manga that makes it popular, but the fact that it's from Japan gives it instant 'cool' status, and means it's better than some american/english nerd knocking it out, but it's a Japanese nerd.
The stories I have read are alright, and due to the complete head on approach that Japan takes when it deals with things, issues such as rape, child porn and violence are all in the more risque manga. Actually, when it comes to violent crimes like these, Japan is at the bottom of the pile for these crimes.
So yeah, I don't know how much of it is due to the automatic karma that being Japanese gives anything, or how much of it is due to the head on approach it takes. It hasn't made me read it to be honest, and I'm out here in this land, but it seems to be a winning formula!
-- [Mofette]
http://www.mofette.co.uk
Congrads, YorkshireOne, you set an example to slashdot readers everywhere. You probably don't realise it, but most slashdot readers *are* dirty. It seems natural to you and me to keep outselves clean, but geeks just don't 'get it'. Bathing is alien to them.
To the dirty linux hippies, here is a great man. Emulate him.
American animation is usually a string of self containned storys with the same characters in similare situations over and over. The story never progresses.
Comics that do progress are usually addaptions.
Menga storys have gradual progression to an ending.
Pokemon and Yugi asside.
To continue Dragon Ball a new plot is made. Dragon Ball ends and DBZ begins.
Lain ends.
Macros ends.
Bugs Bunny and Micky Mouse never end.
Yogi Bear evolved a bit but the main story is prepetual with no possable end.
Some Amerian comics have addopted progression but it's usually short.
Anime stops at the end of the season. No TV exec saying "keep it going".
Yugi and Pokemn give you the sense of progression and while we know they won't ever end it's more compelling that the main plot is never stalled.
In Stargate Infinity the backstory dosen't progress much if ever.
I don't actually exist.
Well, all I know is I picked up several books (Evangelion vol. 1, an Escaflowne, Nadesico, etc) that have a cover price of twice as much for the same exact thing in stores here (I've looked). Not in color, just the collection style ones mentioned in the article. I also picked up a pulp style one for 5 Euro, and there's one planned for U.S. release like that (though I don't know the cover price). You can compare by say, searching for manga on Amazon.com vs. Amazon.de. My results showed Evangelion volume 1 to be $11.17 (down from $15.95 list) on Amazon.com vs. 6,00 euro on Amazon.de. That's the stuff I was talking about. Manga is definitely more widespread though. I remeber my shock the first time I got manga in Germany...at an airport shop. Here large bookstore chains *might* have a small section...and here some airport store had a whole spinning rack thing. It's just not right. Not to mention that GiTS2 was already out in Germany whereas the first volume was supposed to be out last month here (ignoring that Shiro is adding a ton of stuff and fully coloring the American version, at least according to Wizard ^_^ ).
My results showed Evangelion volume 1 to be $11.17 (down from $15.95 list) on Amazon.com vs. 6,00 euro on Amazon.de. That's the stuff I was talking about.
Oh, I thought you hit on one of the old Akira, 3x3 Eyes or Alita editions, which were rereleased later.
Yes know the Evangelion pricing. I bought the first US volume via Amazon.de for about 16 Euro. Of course I bought all 7 available volumes again from the German publisher for 6 Euro each, when they were issued (a bit later than in the US).
I had the same pleasure with about 13 US Ranma editions, now all 36 or so volumes are available in Germany for around 6 Euro each.
And with Inu Yasha, where I bought the first 5 volumes from Viz, now it is coming out here..
And of course I got one of the few GITS2 hard copies (cant remember the price - 30 Euros?) which (expect for the usual censorship) maps to Japanese luxury version, it also contained a mouse pad and a small booklet with pages that are different in the non luxury japanese edition.
BTW I read GITS2 two times now, and still have no clue about the ending. I suspect that it was not possible to translate Shirows abstract Japanese into proper abstract German.
And of course I don't grok the references to Buddhism/Shintoism which seem to show up here as much as in his earlier Orion.
Regards,
Marc
Here are some interesting statistics for you that should have been included in the article.
In 1946, 9 out of 10 children between 8-15 read comic books regularly. Famous Funnies (the first newstand comic book) circulated 6,000,000 copies every month.
In 1950, a study was conducted in Dayton, Ohio and revealed the following:
50,000,000 comic books were published each month in 1950. They weren't all "funny animal" or super hero, there was a large representation of westerns, science-fiction, horror, adventure, romance and movie/tv adaptations which appealed to all age groups and backgrounds.
In 1954, the hammer dropped. Dr. Frederic Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent and went before a Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States. They told the industry to either clean up their act of be regulated, so they created the Comics Code Authority. It took until the 1980s to finally ignore the CCA and start publishing with grit, but by that time comic books were a niche following, heavily skewed towards males.
1954 was the absolute heyday of comic books, there were 150,000,000 issues printed every month and the industry made $90,000,000 annually from a product that sold for $0.10 each. I wish the article had figures on how many copies of Manga are printed each month because I would love to compare.
All of these figures are taken from The Comic Book In America by Mike Benton, by the way.
I agree that the story is the main driving force behind manga, but a lot of it actually does have beautifully detailed artwork (Lone Wolf and Cub, and Vagabond, for instance), and, of course, big breasts. I think that the artwork is usually superior to the somewhat repetitve American comics (I'm not putting them down), and that there seems to be more artistic acceptance in Japan (judging by the content) as opposed to American comics.
I agree with you about the fact that comic book publishers refuse to make more money by broading the market. Just 10 years ago or so, my kids loved the Disney comics. Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck,etc. I remembered the lines from my childhood, and read them also. Soon the only way to get these was to order them. So, my older kids switched to X-men, spider-man, etc. Then the grocery stopped carring them. Now, an extra treck to the comic store. They Laughed at me. As if they would carry such drivel....Thanks to the fanboys and the weakknees of the publishers, comic are a sub culture all of there own, just how they like it. I do not know why there are no comic stories aimed at children. I am a librarian, no my name is not Marion, and I am always looking for something to grab the elder tweens to read, comics would certainly hit the spot. But, violence would not hit the spot with the parents. Girls are a left out group in the comic world. Boys are a left out group in the tween reading groups. All the good literature is aimed at the girls. With nothing to read, their interest level drops to zero. The only thing that can hold them is if they like non-fiction.
Funny, being an anime fan has gotten me laid repeatedly.
Do you have another explaination why so many girls like anime?
(Because all the boys look feminine and non-threatening, no doubt...)
It could be considered flamebait and either way it got modded down, so who cares what reason they picked of the box. Metamoderated as fair.
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