There’s also many, many more serial stories told in manga which is how all the hugest properties work in manga. The US comics market tends to lean on short bursts of story within an universe with many hands working on these characters and world, but One Piece has been producing the same story season after season for 25 years with a huge readership of fans that care about those characters and that are into the adventure told by a single writer. And One Piece is not alone, all of the hugest properties are long-form stories of pop adventures for kids/teens that have hundreds of chapters if not getting into the thousands.
1 Like
I don’t think those are mutually exclusive, though. And I think that there are plenty of American comics that aren’t nearly as visually driven. I’d still argue it’s a very modern shift, too, influenced by the comics like those on Vertigo in the 1980s. Last, I do think there are plenty of manga that is more visually driven, even with their grueling schedule…
It’s B&W, sure with more of the classic boxes, but it has more going on than just the boxes format.
And then manga has had some measurable influence on American comics… such as Akira…
There might be lots of squares, but you can also see ow some artists can pull off some serious depth of artistic details. Oh, and let’s not forget that mangas tend to be done by a single artist, while American comics have teams with a very distinct division of labor…
which is mind boggling if you think about it…
10 Likes
It’s a subconscious art.
The magic of comics happens between the panels, not within them. However, I respect your opinion.
Comics are a wide enough world for everyone to have their corner of the sky.
1 Like
I mean you point to Jojo which has been the same series of stories in that world for nearly 40 years at this point. Sure there’s a generation with each seasonal arc, but there’s a lot of crossover in characters since Joseph and Jotaro show up constantly in so many seasons.
3 Likes
Since you do recognize that majority of manga is not art, I don’t think we are in much of disagreement here. As @anon61221983 mentioned, influence goes both ways, and I think a lot of impression about manga is shaped by a specific genre that is popular outside Japan.
I believe (in general) manga is a great medium for storytelling, and it’s excellent at what it does, a lot more so than American comics.
1 Like
Well, I’m not talking about the detail of the art.
I’m talking about page layout.
Dave Gibbons creates the illusion of movement on a still page by using the Pharaoh’s head as a focal point for the entire page. The “camera” moves in 360 degrees…while being a perfectly symmetrical page…in the issue called fearful symmetry…about Rorschach.
There are ZERO mangas this creative in terms of paneling. They are beautifully drawn but visually uninspired when it comes to page layouts.
3 Likes
My point is that narrative storytelling and visual storytelling are different things.
Manga rarely fuses the two into a cohesive whole. American comics do.
You may like the stories better, which is fine, but the way they’re told on the page is worse.
Again, I say this while having a subscription to Shonen Jump’s app. I love manga… it’s just not better at visual storytelling, in my opinion.
1 Like
I don’t know if I agree with that statement… again Junji Ito’s work seems very visually driven to me, as does Jojo… I suspect that it’s the difference between the mainstream stuff and the more off the beaten path stuff. If American comics are more visual driven now a days, I think that’s due to the influence of people Gibbons who visual influence has been decisive in mainstream comics today (as is the storytelling influence of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Frank Miller).
But I think the whole point of a comic OR manga is the marriage of those two things… both aspects benefit from the other.
5 Likes
That’s a beautiful spread.
3 Likes
Yeah… Dave Gibbons is an amazing artist, for sure. I don’t think ANYONE here disagrees with that.
6 Likes
Other persistent problems with Marvel in particular (and most DC):
Crossovers, designed to force readers of one comic to also read all the other connected comics, tend instead to convince people that it’s really not worth their time and effort to keep track of the whole thing.
Creators have no control. Marvel own all the characters and all the storylines. Which means that if you like what person A is doing with character X… well tough, because pretty soon person B will be running the show and they’ll be taking X in an exciting new direction. Until they, too, get shuffled off.
7 Likes
by not being 100% about bodybuilders in tights upholding the views of some guys in the 1950s, i guess
3 Likes
I honestly don’t know what manga is available in translation in the West these days, but there are plenty of manga (especially sports manga, which is a whole huge genre on its own) that do visual storytelling well in Japan. I do know that GTO and Initial D were translated, and they do visual storytelling quite well.
4 Likes
Is the author considering graphic novels to be a separate entity from comics? I tend to lump the two together since a lot of manga were originally produced in shorter comic book length sections in massive publications like JUMP.
DC and Marvel may not be doing well with comic sales, but there’s a huge boom in American graphic novels. I’m kind of surprised that’s not mentioned at all. But then, I was never really into the “traditional” superhero genre to begin with. I’ve always dragged the oddball indie or navel gazing art comics home from the comic shop. As a parent and an educator I’m so happy that there are so many fantastic kid friendly graphic novels being published these days. Sure there’s a lot of interest in Japanese titles. I grew up with a bit of an obsession myself. But I don’t get the feeling that that’s the only type of comic that people are interested in.
2 Likes
Is this even true?
I don’t see it claimed in the video, and Google says manga sales in the U.S. are barely 20% of the total comic market
That’s a lot, but it’s hardly dominating or dethroning anything
4 Likes
It’s already been mentioned, but why? Volume and variety - And publishers willing to take a chance. The USA is dominated by DC & Marvel. There are a few independents, but we scarcely see them in the UK. In the UK, comics were DC Thompson - think, “The Beano, the Dandy, the Topper, the Beezer”. The Eagle was wonderful, but where is it now? The Lion, the Tiger - all long gone. 2000AD is the main survivor. DC Thompson has gone downhill to the extent that their comics are drawn in felt-tip. Yuk! Graphic hell! You only have to look at the number and variety of manga on the shelves to understand.
1 Like
To Western audiences. To Japanese audiences, they typically look Japanese:
6 Likes
I don’t disagree that American style comics (as opposed to just American artists, since comics artists today are not just American) have a stronger focus on design and aspire to advance storytelling techniques of the visual medium as ell as having overall higher production values, I don’t think it’s fair to say that manga artists struggle to grasp the concept though, especially when American comics “fail” to use so many techniques that great manga artists have developed over the years.
For example: Comics generally lack the visual language of the super deformed character, the high level of technical drawing and strict adherence to tight schedules to tell a story.
4 Likes
It’s the eyes. Those big, big eyes you can lose yourself in.
3 Likes
