Through Love Manga, here’s another 2 articles about Manga written from a Direct Market perspective (read: Superheroes/Western Comics), called The Growing Manga Threat, and The Growing Manga Opportunity. I always like reading these articles (and writing them), as I find them fun and informative, but I had alot of thoughts on the perspective the writer had on the success of manga in the US. You’ll have to read the article to see where my reply comes into it, but BOY do I have alot to say.

To be honest, the ignorance of the Western comics market when it comes to “What Makes Manga Sells” can really baffle me. There’s no doubt these people are well-meaning, and generally wishing to emulate manga’s success, but sometimes they seem to miss the mark completely. When speaking about the differences between manga and comics, it’s easy enough to point out the story-telling, and the emphasis on cinematic emotion (most articles do that), but personally I believe in terms of MARKETS, the differences run even deeper than that. I’m not the first one to suggest there is something FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG with the Western comics market (dominated by the spandex brigade), but perhaps I can outline why the US superhero market and the US manga market don’t even exist in the same universe. In fact, these two universes aren’t even structured in the same way.

 

Here’s what I wrote in reply to the articles:

 

Nice article. But to be honest, a bit incomplete when you look at the attraction of manga to the average teen.

First of all, alot of the current manga fandom came through to manga by way of other mediums – namely the anime and the gaming communities. The real trouble with people in DC and Marvel besides their cluelessness about what makes manga sell, is that they assume that most manga fans came to manga out of the blue. No, they didn’t. Many of them were submerged in other aspects of Japanese popular culture before they came onto manga (and stayed there). The whole “manga” phenomenon is not a standalone thing – it’s in actually an entire popular culture juggernaut that comprises anime, gaming, J-Pop, fan-arts and doujinshi, fashion culture, and so on. It’s so large that you can’t even call it a “sub-culture”, because it’s multi-faceted, and is basically importing the entire popular culture of another country.

You can see why alot of these manga fans have zero interest in stuff like Batman and X-men; especially the casual readers. Generally speaking, the US comics industry doesn’t come with half of the accessories and diversified fan communities that manga does. You like a particular manga? You can go check out the anime and games for starters, and these two communities are large enough and separate enough from the hard-core manga readers to be counted as completely different communities. An then you have the doujinshi market, and the cosplayers, who are also large enough to count as separate communities. What manga-fandom really is, is a part of a much larger group of interlinked communities with cross-over interests.

It certainly beats the Direct Market scene, where it’s mostly the same names, the same people and the same product being tossed around. Deja vu abounds when you keep seeing the same people over and over again – the community itself becomes closed as it only has ONE inlet for people to get into it. Whereas the Japan pop culture community has dozens.

I sometimes wonder whether US Comics will go the same route as the Hong Kong market – who 20 years ago was flooded by cheaper Japanese manga. They survived, but now thrives in a small niche, so it’s not as if manga killed Hong Kong comics off. However, HK comics sells nowhere near what manga sells, and looking at it, it probably never will. 

 

I enjoy reading indy comics, but you know what? I NEVER read superhero comics. It’s not for lack of trying. Perhaps here’s a good chance to explain why some rabid manga fans (aka me), will never touch superheroes with a 10-foot pole. No matter how bishounen Batman looks, or how manga-ish the story-telling of the X-men gets, I WILL NOT read superhero comics.

Before I sound like a snob, there is a very simple reason why I don’t read superhero comics. I DON’T LIKE the superhero genre. Just like I DON’T LIKE the manga sports genres. You can’t pay me to read a sports manga, in the same way you can’t pay me to read superheroes. There are exceptions ofcourse, such as “Slam Dunk” in the sports genre, and “Watchmen” in the superhero genre, but I read both not because of their genres, but because they manage to TRANSCEND their genres and be more about their characters than about what that genre dictates them to be doing. Other than that, there aren’t many exceptions. I hate the whole Japanese “sports philosophy” thing that underlies sports manga, and I hate the whole “vigilantes in spandex” thing that underlies superhero comics. Quite frankly, no matter how you package these two pet peeves, I still won’t like it because it’s the UNDERLYING STRUCTURE of the genre that annoys me, not even any of the content.

Perhaps that pretty much points out the deficiencies of the dominant superhero genre in Western comics. The indies are doing fine, but let’s face it, superheroes is a SINGLE GENRE, and one that alot of people find too idiotic to spend more than 2 hours at the movies on. No matter how you re-package Superman, there are always going to be people who think that masked vigilantes with superpowers is the most stupid concept they’ve ever heard of. It’s harsh, but superheroes thrived in a world that was more simpler, and more naive – NOT the world we live in today. Perhaps it’s time for expansions into completely different GENRE. I don’t know what strategy DC and Marvel have in mind, but I do hope they succeed, for the sake of the Comics World.