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Manga Explains NASA Mission

Posted by Zonk on from the connecting-up-the-disciplines dept.

YetAnotherName writes "Anime fans working with NASA? Yes. Tokyopop has the scoop on planetary scientists who made manga to explain a NASA mission, complete with spandex-clad, big-eyed lead character and robotic dogs. You can also download the manga in color or black/white PDF files. (Disclaimer: my spouse is one of the authors.)" If you sit through the talk about dogs, it's actually pretty interesting.

7 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. mirror of the color comic by thegoogler · · Score: 4, Informative

    here

    should withstand a decent slashdotting..

  2. Re:huh? by aussie_a · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's called a Manga because typically manga (as in, comics from japan) have had a very different art style to western comics. The art style has become popular in America, but to differentiate it from "Superman XXX after death in the second earth, retconned 50x", they call it a manga. So far there has been no word for comics drawn in the japanese art style outside of japan that has gained wide-usage to replace the misuse of manga. People drawing in the style of manga want to ensure that they aren't confused with the super hero rubbish that permetes America.

    Whether you accept it or not, the word comic has become synonymous with superhero comic among the masses (and to a lesser degree, bad superhero comics ;)). Do you blame people for attempting to distance themselves from that stigma?

  3. PlanetEs by SynapseLapse · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you don't find this manga to your liking, you might take a look at PlanetEs.
    A more serious and utterly fantastic manga about life in outerspace in the pre-warp universe.
    One of the best mangas, and best sci-fi for that matter, that I've read in a very long time.

    It's what Enterprise *should* have been.

    1. Re:PlanetEs by Soul-Burn666 · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's also an anime based on it, and it seems quite popular.

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      ^_^
  4. I like space-girls... by David+Rolfe · · Score: 3, Informative

    I like space girls as much as the next guy, but to call this manga is really a stretch. Where's the zoom-in action lines? Where's the SD vignettes? Where are the nose-bubbles and sigh-puffs and tear-drops, etc.?

    The character design is hardly different from any Dark Horse comic containing teen-chicks, so that can't be what makes this manga. (Granted that Dark Horse employs some artists with some Japanese inspirations, but skinny chicks with big-eyes hardly defines a manga.)

    Seems alsmost like buzzword compliance...

    --
    Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
  5. "What this Comic Strip needs more of is SCIENCE!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    There used to be a -great- science newspaper comic during the 1960s and 1970s called "Frontiers of Science", authored by two Australian Scientists, that did a much better job at introducing and explaining all Science-related topics (...without any patronising or dumbed-down gimmicks like this 'manga' has). There's a few scans about the web (see http://www.meteoritearticles.com/pdfdownloadscomic s.html). The republished collections of the comics were among my favourite books when I was a kid...

  6. Re:That's right, it's a comic. by echocharlie · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, the Japanese have a word for American Comics: AmeComi. I'm not sure what their word for comics in America drawn in the manga style would be but I would suspect it would also be AmeComi instead of Manga.

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    AnimeNEXT anime convention