Yeah, completely resetting the whole story continuity every few years isn’t helpful, especially for casual readers.
3 Likes
From what I understand there’s kinda two things going on on that front.
First is that in terms of monthly sales and traditional issues, anything else is a drop in the bucket. Since Marvel and DC are like 70% of that.
The other is that looking at comics industry numbers specifically, or monthlies as “the comics industry” maybe doesn’t cover things particularly well. Largely down to how monthly comics and issues from traditional publishers are handled.
Comics still largely run on a direct distribution to specialty shops, and subscription model.
Where as Manga is largely distributed through the normal book publishing industry, and a little bit print/magazines.
Thing is the same is true of all those graphic novels, and even most of Marvel and DC’s Trade Paperback sales.
The overall American Comic industry including all of that is still growing, and sales are much higher than manga on it’s own. Apparently around billion dollars, but “book format” sales are around $800m of that.
And I’m pretty sure those are the numbers including Manga. In terms of traditional issues. It’s like $280m, and Manga in isolation hit an all time high of around $250m recently. Manga is growing while those issue sales have been falling.
Bookstore sales, including online sales, are almost 2/3 of the market.
So the Manga is outselling American comics thing, which I’ve been hearing since around 2004 is based largely around sales growth vs direct distributed monthly issues sales.
And I think most of the problem here is that despite growth literally everywhere else. The major American comic publishers continue to focus on those monthly sales.
Apparently Marvel and DC are together a little over a 1/3rd of the total market, even as they’re 70% of the direct market with no other company even rating 10%. And I think those smaller companies are shrinking too.
They’re such a large proportion of the traditional industry that we tend to look at them as a stand in for the industry as a whole. And with Manga growing fast, it’s starting to cut close to their total share of the market. 20% vs 36% seems less like a shrug.
2 Likes
I think the biggest hurdle for American comics is to get over the old IPs like Superman, Batman, Spider-man, and so forth. Yeah, they’re easily recognizable but that also makes them easier to judge and dismiss. So maybe there might be a good story arc for say the Hulk (Immortal Hulk was pretty good) but that story being stuck within the superhero genre means it’ll not have lasting impact on the character. Whereas something like even One Piece there’s been changes to the character roster despite being focused on young teens and the like. Also, when the writer does finally put down their last words for the series, that’ll be it, no more One Piece at least in manga form. Whereas Hulk or Batman or whatever keeps going and going because C-suite nerds don’t grasp how to market NEW things when it comes to comics and refuse to get off that treadmill.
3 Likes
I’m not sure what about the superhero genre has anything to do with that. And these stories do frequently have lasting impact on the characters.
Problems on that front seem to be down to the month to month serialization, and very large number of titles. At any given time there is not one Hulk book, telling the Hulk story.
There’s something like 20 different X-Men titles going right now.
It makes following an individual writer or story arch hinky. Even following one book, for years doesn’t get you that.
Most comic fans I’m familiar with are mostly doing that.
I do Marvel unlimited for the most part for my big superheroes kick these days. And it solves a bunch of the problems by just giving you access to whatever the fuck title. And in terms of the writing, everything these days is broken up into distinct archs, with frequent jumping on points and a creative focus.
That makes it easy to say “Hey I’m gonna go read all the Jason Aaron Thor”. But between the app being kinda rough, and overall publication approach. Doing so often takes looking up a reading list separately to know where you’re going.
It’s just not terribly accessible. So when there are, quite frequently, new things. That do get a push. There’s still that system in the way, and they tend not to catch up to the established characters.
Meanwhile. Manga has 12 clearly labeled sequential volumes by 1 guy. Even regards weekly and monthly anthologies. Shonen Jump style. It’s all very simple.
Even American trade paperbacks. It’s a clear numbered series, that includes all the stuff of a given run or storyline. In the correct order. There’s not much to figure out.
The whole distribution system with American monthly comics is antiquated. Still rooted in the structure and consolidation from the speculator bubble years. The approach that caused, and resulted from an industry collapse.
They keep taking the wrong lesson from this manga thing. That they need to make their products more “Asian” or produce actual manga. Or get into digest size book publications. When what they need to do is have one title per property, and less focus on monthly issues and a dying distribution model.
3 Likes
I do agree on the digest model of publication but I don’t see how any of the story arcs of the last thirty years of American comics have had any lasting impact. Even with Superman dying, the result of that just added Doomsday as an occasional bad guy that’s pulled out from time to time but the over all effect has been nil on Supes (no major depowering, no significant tonal shifts, etc). Same with what happened with Venom wrt Space Knight, in fact much of that mythos got diminished and became part of the whole Knull Blackest Night saga. Over all, there’s no real impact from these stories as in no one stays dead forever, no one stops being good/bad/whatever forever, and they never grow old and die or be replaced permanently by a new roster. American superhero comics are basically Groundhog’s Day but without the humor or self-awareness.
1 Like
You need to read Vegabond. There are a few manga that reach the levels of the best art and structure of graphic novels, usually released in small bursts by true artists, and Vegabond barely even has words and communicates almost exclusively by the structure of the panels and incredible artwork.
EDIT
And to be clear, there are amazing mangaka artists that have terrible panel structures to their manga such as Tsutomu Nihei and Kentaro Miura who let their incredible artwork just sort of appear in sequential square blocks for the most part. And many “lowbrow” shonen series have taken notes from the best of American comics paneling like Kōhei Horikoshi and Hirohiko Araki being some of the most notable.
10 Likes
I’m actually a BIG fan of Vagabond.
However, I think it’s sadly an outlier when it should be the norm. Vagabond is a fantastic comic. I wish more mangas followed its example.
2 Likes
See, and this is where I think it’s important to distinguish between form and content.
The content of manga might be more conducive to building and sustaining an audience. Hell, it might be better in every way.
But I think the FORM of American comics is infinitely superior. For example, One Piece is my favorite story ever because the CONTENT is so enjoyable, but the form of One Piece as a comic is inferior to All-Star Superman or Southern Bastards.
What the story is about and how it’s told are two different things. In my opinion, American books have a better ratio of being solid in both form and content, whereas manga usually only caters to the latter.
If the content is the only thing you’re looking for in comics, why not read a book? If the drawings are just seen as superfluous, why are they there? I argue that the drawing and arrangement of panels and pages are as important as the content of the narrative they showcase.
2 Likes
I guess my argument would be that it’s outside the norm period, but since manga’s hottest IPs are not intense seinen series with slow releases that can’t be adapted to anime or sold as merchandise we don’t see much of it. I mean, Blade of the Immortal is virtually unheard of in the US.
2 Likes
the brilliant YouTube channel Storied takes a deep dive into the reasons American comics lost ground to their Japanese counterparts.
Too bad the video never actually addresses this question…
3 Likes
Blade of the immortal is fantastic too.
You have excellent tastes in comics.
3 Likes
So for one that’s not strictly speaking true.
Just with Death of Superman. He didn’t stay dead, and neither did the relaunched electric mullet version of the character stick around long.
But a lot of elements did. The fact that he was dead for a bit is still part continuity last I checked. But either way Doomsday has remained a major villain. The associated introduction of a new Superboy stuck, and from what I gather he’s been more popular that Superman himself though mostly through team books. Probably more influential on Superman himself the Cadmus/genetic flippin about evil science thing has become a core part of whatever’s doing with Superman.
Likewise the follow-up I’m sorry Marriage of Superman thing has remained the status quo, ever since. Even progressing to the point where Superman currently has kids. The character shifted a lot of time towards a mentor/family man role.
They do have a bad habit of starting over, and supposed earth shaking events tend to not be. And it can be difficult to say that Death of Superman itself had lasting impact, since so much of the overall “Superman Dies” concept went down in a thousand other books, and for years after it had. Even once it’d been undone.
That’s all rooted in the publication model, and addiction to big cross overs and resets as promotional marketing.
For another Marvel and DC’s main continuity output. Is not synonymous with Superheroes as a genre. Nothing about Superheroes in general demands any of this.
You look a non-Big Conglomerate superhero series, like say Invincible. There’s very little “nothing ever changes” to that series. To the point where it’s exhausting how often they upend things.
Or Hellboy. Maybe less clearly a superhero, but definitely following similar beats and deliberately working the tropes there. It’s been going for damn near 30 years, multiple books. Many characters and different storylines (even different mediums). But none of that resetting and wheel spinning. Practically everything progresses or fleshes out something, and all of it stays.
Digest is not the publication model per se. It’s the physical format. That lil’ square book.
The publication model is books. It all runs through regular book distributors, very occasionally magazine distributors. Into where ever any kind of book is sold. The publishing industry rolls manga, industry trade paper backs/omnibuses whatever, and any kind of direct to book format comic into “graphic novels”. And they’re all distributed that same way.
The mistake Marvel, DC, and to an extent smaller traditional comics companies like Dark Horse and Image make. Is they look at Manga’s sales growth and say “we need more digest format comics”.
Instead of looking at their own TPB publications. Which are growing at a similar rate to Manga, out sell Manga by a hell of a lot. And apparently account for most of their profits.
They’re looking at superficial things like the page size, or that it’s Japanese. Rather than assessing the distribution model. So when they do do digest. They fucking fail. Except for Archie.
3 Likes
6 Likes
Only after it was clear people weren’t that much interested in the New 52’s rebooted continuity reshuffle. In fact, the situation with respect to Batman is funny because everything before New 52 is 100% considered canon whereas many other arcs or stories were recontextualized for other characters such as Blue Beatle (Jaime and Ted respectively). Hell, Wonder Woman’s lore mostly got a big reshuffle from the reboot that I’ve seen folks go from love to absolute rage over some of the changes. My point is that because they continue to reboot and reshuffle the feeling that events that did happen in print don’t feel all that relevant unless a current writer or editor says so which makes those events trivial. That may be me being a bit mean to comic book writers, but sometimes a story has to end but for DC’s owners, Warner Brothers, they don’t want that to end because it would be a potential risk to their revenue stream. Same with Marvel in this context. It still surprises me that beyond the Cancerverse arc, that Marvel hasn’t tried to bring back Mar Vell yet officially. It just seems again that these stories are constantly being retold and most times it falls flat for me. If I want to read any more Superman I got All-Star Superman on my shelf. And I don’t see young kids identifying strongly with the tropes of comics as much as other generations at least with respect to American comics. It seems the stronger sales is in manga for a reason and that is it’s oddly timely and thus attracts young folks from their point of view. DC for example is far too cautious and kind to its ‘core’ (my age and much older) audience which throws a fit even when a side character like Jon Kent comes out as bi. And I’m sure the editorial staff is planning to retcon that later in the next reboot just because of the little tiff over that issue.
2 Likes
Right there’s so much stunting and poorly conceived major shifts being undone that it often feels as if nothing is changing. And they legitimately do spend too much time trying to go backwards to whatever the current readership remembers fondly
That’s especially true if you are trying to follow month to month long term. Which is their goal.
This is why I pretty much gave on following things by issue.
But that is Marvel and DC. That is not the genre of “Superheroes”.
Their problem here is most of their readers would rather grab the good stuff, and the stuff sticks after the fact. And most of their fans would rather just follow the much simpler film and TV output.
But they remain stuck on keeping hundreds of series, spinning hundreds of plates, at any given time.
Like at any given time there are at least 2 “main” Batman books, and 2 “main” Superman books. I still don’t see how that does anything but split reader ship and confuse things.
2 Likes
Nice discussion here.
My take: US comics are 90% dead from the neck up, 'cause they keep going with characters so stale, they are by now mummified. Superman is as old as my mom, Spiderman is one year my senior, just kill them off already. A pity, because the scene is brimming with talent, continually mortified. Vertigo and Helix tried, but there are not enough customers, even if there’s enough to keep smaller concerns like Fantagraphics and the like more or less afloat.
Manga production is on the other hand so abundant (and ruthless) that you are bound to find something you love, sooner or later.
(above: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, by Hitoshi Ashinano).
But the world’s best in comics is to be found in the Franco-Belgian scene, IMHO. Topnotch art and stories in great abundance, with almost untrammeled creative freedom and reasonably enterprising publishers. Allez-y donc!
(from bouletcorp.com, year 2007)
8 Likes
I don’t want to disagree, not really, different people get different things out of the things they like. All I want to say is
5 Likes
Given that there are two explicit categories for manga for young/adult women - Shojo and Josei - I think you might be right 
2 Likes
This is kind of an aside, but one thing that I have noticed about superhero manga is that the characters are always shown training day and night and going through immense trials to earn their powers, while American superheroes often are either born with their powers or gain them through some kind of freak accident.
7 Likes
Something, something, manifest destiny.
2 Likes
