Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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".
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.
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.
--
my 5 cents and your 5 cents are ten.
We are all individualists!
People forget these things because they get bored with them.
Now thats a point against American superheroes - mangas do end! No matter how good you are, you just cant continue a story forever. Wheres the end of Spiderman? Whats The Punisher grand finale? When will Superman get old?
Japanese are more smart - the comics eventually finish, sales go high, and if they see potential, theyll make more comics with the same style.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
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.
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.
This is true, but European comics are much different from their American and Japanese counterparts. Usually a comic will be an a4-size book of 60-80 pages, in full color, with fairly normal (realistic) people (ie. no super heroes) in fairly realistic settings. The stories tend to unwind somewhat slowly compared to American comics (I don't know manga enough to comment on that), and sometimes manage surprising depth.
My own small collection contains such books as the Yoko Tsuno series (ironically about the adventures of a Japanese woman living in Europe), the Gaston series (which are not stories but collections of often hilarious jokes, somewhat like Dilbert but with a different theme), a few Storm albums (about an astronaut who accidentally ends up in the far future), and most of the Luc Orient books (who is a scientific James Bond-type figure).
The Storm books in particular are extremely well drawn. I don't know how many hours the artist spends on each page but it must be considerable - each and every panel is like an oil painting.
I also used to read a lot of X-men and Spiderman, but I find that these comics do not age nearly as well as the European versions. In fact the only American comics I still read on a regular basis are Dilbert, Fox Trot, and the Far Side books.
And honorable mention should go to Agent 327 - it is a totally brilliant James Bond parody. Unfortunately it will be 100% incomprehensible for non-Dutch readers due to the many political jokes and local references.
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.
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
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.
Ok, this is a common theme with people who don't understand the Japanese, so I'll field it.
You take a generation of children. You make them all dress the same. You emphasize gender differences in clothing, to make sure nobody accidently becomes attracted to members of the same sex. You do this throughout the entire period a person develops genitals, develops sexual feelings, hits puberty, falls in love, enters the most intense period of sexual excitation in their lives, peaks, then slowly eases off that peak. Only then do you let the opposite sex wear whatever they want. I can guarentee you just made a double-digit percentage of that group a fetishist of whatever clothing that opposite sex group wore. Women are lucky (sort of) in this situation because they don't peak until significantly after such a time when their opposite sex group can change clothing, and therefore generally don't develop this fetish.
And, of course now the only people wearing thoes fetishized clothes are age 6-19 year old girls. But it isn't really about the children, it's about the clothes. My mother (japanese) looked like she was 12 until the day she turned 50. If you're attracted to 14 year old japanese girls, chances are you would be every bit as attracted to a 35 year old japanese woman in a schoolgirl outfit. Without falling onto all look same stereotypes, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the two apart.
Schoolgirls in manga isn't about child pornography, it's a deeply rooted schoolgirl uniform fetish. It's one of the more powerful fetishes I've come across (though I don't have it, thankfully), and it is one that we are going to pass onto our children if we persist with these rediculous school uniform rules we have popping up around the country.
The ______ Agenda
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)
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
Don't all but the most common Kanji have a Hiragana translation placed above them, in tiny letters?
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