My Manga Education

Wow.

When I posted the two articles on manga they were largely for me. Knowing that most of my audience doesn’t actually read manga I figured there to be little interest in these posts, but I wanted to write them, so what the heck. Some 700 plus hits later I may have to revise that theory.

Here are some random thoughts after the last few days:

I can’t say I’m a manga “fan” as yet – since I still haven’t read a single book, but I can honestly say the I’m a huge fan of manga readers. The response to my posts - while perhaps a little exasperated at times, yeesh, another dope who’s never read a manga book is going to tell us how it’s done - has been uniformly polite, friendly and informative.

As to not having read any manga yet: on the advice of several people I’ve been actively trolling eBay for LONE WOLF AND CUB sets and will be dropping in to Borders this week to pick up some other recommended titles. Thanks to all who emailed or left recommendations in the comments section.

I owe a huge thanks to David Taylor over at Love Manga. His original link to my post help kick off this little tempest in a teapot and the comments section of that post may be the single most interesting comments section I’ve experienced since deciding to write about comics. (But I don’t get out much.) Once you get past the little back forth between myself, David, Rivkah and few others, keep reading for some absolutely fascinating history on TOKYOPOP, culminating in a link to this which is absolutely worth your time. David has now posted a follow up with some of the responses. 

I began writing my post with only a vague notion that DC was doing something with manga and now have a much greater understanding for what’s gone wrong and right for them. I found it interesting that as quickly as someone stomped all over them someone else stepped in to prop them up a bit. There is hope, I think, but there’s almost certainly a subset of readers out there that will never, ever read a manga book published by DC or Marvel. That’s okay, I feel the same way about Ben Affleck movies. (That comment should officially kick off the “Ben Affleck manga” hits from Google.)

In hindsight, I didn’t explain clearly enough that this was purely an academic exercise on my part. I’m in no way saying that Marvel or DC need to be a force in manga or will. I just think they could be and that it would be profitable for them to be taking the steps to get there. And I wasn’t discounting other companies efforts to grow in this direction either – I was just looking at it from the perspective of the big two. The manga landscape is large and growing; in five years I expect there will be a number of players that we know little or nothing about today.

I feel like my manga IQ has ballooned about 50 points in the last few days. Thanks to everyone for their patience, links and input.

Comments

[Vernieda]

Actually, I'm really curious to see what the manga landscape will look like in 5 years. A certain subset of manga readers -- and I'm one of them -- thinks that the manga bubble can only expand so far and it will burst.

Or perhaps "burst" is the wrong word; level out might be more accurate. We saw something similar with the domestic anime market, which saw a rapid increase in the late 90s and earlier in this decade, but it's since levelled out and we haven't really seen any new anime companies come onto the scene.

It'll be interesting to see how the landscape will change. Immediately, we have OEL manga coming onto the scene, but we'll soon have more boys love manga and the tangentially-related manga novels.

[Zilla]

Kurt - I've read the first 2 volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub and def enjoyed those... give the first volume of "Blade of the Immortal" a try and let me know what you think... do people consider that "real" manga? yes or no - it's worth a read esp consdering this recent pilgrimage/experiment...

[Matt]

Yes, 'Blade of the Immortal' can be considered 'real' manga. It is important to remember that manga is not defined by a particular art style or type of story because manga is technically just the Japanese word for comics.

If you really look at the manga industry in Japan you will see that it includes a broad range in art styles with stories with almost every type of subject matter imaginable. In America we really only get the cream of the crop, with stories that have already shown that they can sell.

As for Original English Language manga, it's been around for well over two decades, although this term is fairly modern and more cumbersome than older labels. Antarctic Press probably has the most history with this, having been publishing 'Amerimanga' for twenty years. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Fred Perry's 'Gold Digger' series and of Adam Warren's comic version of the 'Dirty Pair' anime.

One title I would recommend to action fans that want to check out manga is 'Gunsmith Cats'. It's about two female bounty hunters in Chicago and is one of the most interesting stories I've ever read in any format. It should be noted that the creative team behind this title actually went to Chicago to do research.