This topic is about the differences of the American Comic Industry and Japan's.
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First of all, I'd like to state that I am a fan of both.
This is mostly opinion. My opinion.
So if you cannot accept that, then please do not bother.
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Let me start by saying, I have been reading American Comic books all my life, and just started reading Manga for the past year, and I must say, I do truely enjoy both, but I have realized something.

Both have a lot of similar plots, or points. Whatever you'd like to call it.

Manga: Usually has some type of hero, with weird hair, a big weapon, and saves innocents.
American: Usually involves a Super-hero, getting their powers by some supernatural cause, or just buying them or something.

But, there are instances where this is different.

Such as with Manga, One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, and Air Gear to name a few, are quite different from others. Although, I cannot prove this, since I haven't read THAT many different Manga.

And with American Comics, Scud the Disposable Assassin, Very different, and very good, and Archie, which has been around for a while.


Manga has it's own unique style, as does American comic books.
But it seems, as if nowadays, the Manga industry is rising, while the American industry is dying.

I could be wrong. But that is how I see it. And it's quite depressing. I know this has not much to do with it, but I remember a few 1990 Video games that have died because nobody really played them, they were too interested in other things. Battletoads, and Earthworm Jim. Sure EJ came back, but he sucked, and he was stopped.

Is this what is going to happen to American comic books? I sure hope not.
The sad thing is, I just started reading the Scud: The Disposable Assassin comic, and I fell in love, with just one issue. It's already pretty much at it's end. And that is quite disappointing, it's one of the best comics I have ever read.

So I ask you, will American Comic books die, because of too many Manga artists and so very few of the American style?

*And by American Comic books, I mean like Superman, Spiderman, stuff from Marvel, DC, Image, and etc.*

Why would Marvel/DC let it die? They can just do spin-offs or redo the story with another artist for the tenth time.

But manga is on the rise and for a good reason:
1.There's a HUGE variety, to say it's mostly 'hair-hero savin ppl lol' is a lie. It opens up doors to some very realistic storytelling about normal life, awesome comedys, and finnally deviates away from the muscled jerk in spandex hero.

2.You pay about $10 for a book of around 200 pages on average with manga, rather than $4 on a small 12-20 pages. the thin paper is likely to be damaged and doesn't give much immediate satisfaction with plot.

3.Manga artists pick up american style just like weeaboos here (like me) The art style in manga isn't that same kawaii desu eyes and constant sweatdrop, you can find comics with gorgeous inking, use of contrast, anatomy, and not all have hair that doesn't move like it's made of asbestos :P


Well obviously I'm biased towards manga- oh and for those of you who just read the shounen jump and watch adult swim you are seriously missing out on the whole experience. Those aren't that good compared to lesser known ones you can find. :) So go read them!

Short answer: No American comics won't die sheesh, but manga is on the rise in popularity for good reasons.

American comics won't die, they'll just have to adapt. I personally really like indie comics for their unique style and storytelling. Sadly mainstream American comics seem somewhat stagnant, focusing more on nostalgia than anything. It's like some creators forgot what made comic fun in the first place.

No worries, American comics especially DC and Marvel aren't going anywhere.

well, I think that mainstream american comics are on the decline just because they keep rehashing the same characters. I mean, how many different x-men remakes have there been?

Underground indy comics(like scud) are where it's at right now for american books. With the indy books you can get american books with a manga influence and vice versa.

American comics are nowhere near the sales they had in the early 90s. Actually, those great sales is what butchered the whole thing (or rather one of the reasons anyway). Good comics were cancelled cause they sold less than few hundred thousand copies, while crappy stories drawn by popular artists were selling in millions. Not because people were reading them but for their "collectability". People were buying 10-15 copies of #1's thinking that in 20 years they'll be able to sell them easily for large profits. Wrong, old comics sold so well only because they were rare. So now you have people stuck with boxes of Youngblood #1 or some other crappy title, heh.

Anyway, as the collectors market started to collapse, Marvel did some silly moves to take over one distributor and go exclusively with them. This spawned a whole war, where publishers would sign exclusive deals with distributors. Any distributor without a big publisher supporting them went down, but soon others followed leaving only Diamond comics, which basically has the monopoly for the Direct Market (comic stores).

Shitty stories, countless crossovers, distributor turmoil, art going down (you had to hire whoever could draw to do the 15-20 xmen/batman titles) all of these decimated the comic book market and scared away most of the readers. Now a title that does 100k on its first issue is a very good start.


The main problem is... comic stores sell mostly superheroes from the big two publishers cause that's what the readers go for. People who MIGHT read comics won't read them cause all they find is superhero titles. It's like people refusing to read manga cause they think every title is a sailormoon/dragonball clone.
Thus interesting books get cancelled due to low sales (or nearly nonexistant sales) and the american comic book market chokes itself under the overblown superhero genre.

Now, people who would perhaps reach for comics, end up reaching for mangas instead, since first: that's what they see on tv (lots of anime), second: the price is lower (well duh, we're talking here of 200-300 pages in smaller format on cheap pulp paper) third: larger variety of stories (seemingly at least, you can find very different comics too if you look deep enough) and finally fourth reason: the availability of mangas in bookstores, while a comic book has to first survive through the single issue publication.



Now, it would be possible to drop the single issues, right? Well, technically yeah. But imagine working on a 100 page book doing a page daily... that means the entire team has to spend over three months working for free before they have the book completed. And then it has to be published and before there are any profits it takes couple months more. And the profits aren't guaranteed either, the book might flop.

Printing b&w comics costs cheaper (and you don't need to hire a colorist/color it yourself) but also the sale is much lower, so whatever you have saved on production is gone due to lesser profits anyway.

What is needed: a way to promote the NONsuperhero comics to larger audience that normally wouldn't visit comic stores (unless they go buy actionfigures there). But that requires money that publishers don't really have.




Personally I hope that the nonsuperhero books manage to shift to the graphic novel format and find a way to promote themselves outside of the "spandex-fetishist ghetto".

While some superhero stories are great, (for example Watchmen, Invincible and first two volumes of The Ultimates, to quote quite different titles) most of that stuff is stuck in the "crossover hell" with a million of titles tying to each other, forcing you to buy 20 books to know just what is going on in your fav title.

I would generally have to agree with you, Aurora. I stopped buying American comics in the 1990s for most of the reasons you mentioned. I was a HUGE X-Men fan since the late 1970s as well as all the classic Marvel and DC. I used to have a gigantic collection! Anyone remember the Shogun Warriors comic -- closest thing Marvel had to a "giant robot" story? lol! It was cool at first, until they ruined it with killing the wrong characters and soap opera angst, of course.

I'm gonna show my age here but that's okay...I had every X-Men title (you know, back when there were only about three of them, including the New Mutants, I cherished the original Frank Miller Wolverine limited series, I had lots of Spiderman, most every Superman (especially during The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen), Aquaman, I loved Green Lantern back in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow days, Captain America (back when it had a plot and real characters -- and The Falcon), Thor (the Walt Simonson era was particularly awesome!), the 1980s version of the Teen Titans (George Perez era) and quite a few others. I spent all my allowance and later part-time work money on comics. Later I got into independents like Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise, Love and Rockets and a few others.

Why?

Because they were not the cookie-cutter formulaic garbage that started getting hashed out as we approached the mid-1990s and beyond. There were many different good writers trying all kinds of different things, politics weren't blatantly rampant in the comics (or if they were, it was simple and subtle), artists and colorists and even letterists were distinct (even if they weren't the best). There were hundreds of styles and every "main" comic didn't have 1500 spinoffs of the same thing.

In a nutshell, American print comics are BORING for the most part and they're pretty ugly to look at. But my brain hurts more than my eyes when I read modern print comics. There's no soul, no heart in most print comics now. The opposite is true in webcomics, though. While there's varying levels of talent in webcomics, a powerful plot and character-driven story will trump an artistically "perfect" comic that's lacking any emotional resonance -- every time. At least, that's how I feel.

Manga is a whole other ball of wax, but at least that genre has a lot of creativity going into it for the most part. That enthusiasm and willingness to experiment and try something new keeps it fresh, for the most part. And there's so many different styles of manga that one can choose from. It's hard to get bored with that.

Okay, this is turning into a speech. I'll stop now...

I liked Love and Rockets a lot too. There are good print comics still being produced in the US. I recommend ACME Novelty Library, Jimmy Corrigan, Blankets, Papercutter, and Optic Nerve. I know that these are a pretty far cry from mainstream comics but they're creative, fun and at times moving. So far it seems like most of us seem to think that it's not the popularity of Japanese comics but rather the lack of new ideas coming into mainstream US comics that's hurting the American comic industry.

For printed american comics my suggestions would be:
1. Image... either the so called "Image Central" (meaning NOT the Todd Macfarlane Productions or Top Cow titles) or Shadowline. Both focus on creator owned comics in a variety of genres and basically the difference is that Shadowline does only miniseries (usually 3-4 issues) and offers editorial help, while at image central you do everything yourself.

Since Image doesn't care about the profits (other than the flat fee they take from every issue and a small percentage on graphic novels as these take longer to turn any profit), it doesn't matter to them how many copies the book is selling, as long as it sells enough not to be dropped from distribution by Diamond and enough to cover all the costs. As such, they're open to various genres and styles and it's the comics that creators want to make and basically the only criterium is the quality of the book, both in art and writing.

Which means: creators put as much of themselves as possible into their creations, rather than just working for the paycheck from the big two.

2. Archaia Studios Press... Now, I don't know much about this publisher, other than it seems to be focusing on unusual projects. Every book appears different, there is no single art style being promoted across them (same as Image, but it seems they're more likely to pick-up completely oddball books). The couple titles I saw so far were all very fresh and original (despite occasional flaws in art/storytelling, usually from new creators).

3. Oni Press... Focusing mostly on b&w books and also without any genre limitations, they seem to steer clear off superheroes (although not entirely, they just don't do typical "spandex fetishist explosio-fest" comics). Most of their titles are suggested for mature readers, but it's not because of the amount of blood in them but rather because of more mature storytelling and topics that wouldn't interest a 12 year old... although they do have all ages titles too.


aaand there's also a bunch of other publishers. If you look past the Star Wars books you'll find good titles at Dark Horse for example. Terry Moore, Jeff Smith and Dave Sim have just launched (or are launching) their new self-published titles. Avatar seems to evolve from a gore/tits publisher to a company where more known creators can stretch their wings without worrying about some executive editor pulling the plug for whatever reason (and if it goes like that, Warren Ellis most likely will end up exclusively at Avatar, heh). And so on :)

All you have to do is skip the Marvel/DC titles (unless we're talking about Vertigo/Icon titles, these are often good) and just dig deeper, look through other stuff. There are TONS of good american comics out there, they're just drowned out by the mass of spinoffs of the latest big crossover event flooding the shelves :P

(damn, I can't shut up... ok, I'll shut up now :) )

I do not know much about American comic industry. But I do know that in Hong Kong, manhua is also in direct competition with manga. However, the sales of manhua hasn't been affected by the influx of Japanese manga that enters Hong Kong. The manhua in Hong Kong have very similar format with American superhero comics. The pages are lesser, full colored and similar size with American superhero comics, except that the reading format is in right to left direction. Sample images here: http://www.kingcomics.com

The secret behind the success of Hong Kong manhua is simple:
1. The company hires at least 15 people to work on a title due to the effort needed to produce each issues. And hence you get to see the new issues published at least once a week to this keep the sales going consistently.

2. The artists actually sit around the table with the writers to brainstorm for fresh ideas. Most of the time, the artists are the writers.

3. Manhua has less stricter content control compare to American comics. Except for political and pornograpy, there are not much restriction imposed on manhua that have contents with violence and gore.

4. Engaging and well written storylines. This is possibly one of the most important factor that keeps the manhua industry strong and unaffected by Japanese manga. Moreover, the characters are well designed and appeal to the readers. They have an interesting personality that the readers can associate with.

5. Hong Kong manhua have vast genre of storyline much like manga. And the company do not restrict themselves producing only certain popular classics characters like some American comic publishers restricting themselves only on the popular classic superheroes. A company that focuses in producing superhero manhua can also produce strips, graphic novels, novels, art books, children's books, advertisements, broadcasting, etc.

Perhaps, the American comic industry could learn a thing or two from the Hong Kong comic industry.

Eunice P
I do not know much about American comic industry. But I do know that in Hong Kong, manhua is also in direct competition with manga. However, the sales of manhua hasn't been affected by the influx of Japanese manga that enters Hong Kong. The manhua in Hong Kong have very similar format with American superhero comics. The pages are lesser, full colored and similar size with American superhero comics, except that the reading format is in right to left direction. Sample images here: http://www.kingcomics.com

While I can't say I know much about manhua, other than the fact that it exists, I'd still like to adress your points.

Eunice P
The secret behind the success of Hong Kong manhua is simple:
1. The company hires at least 15 people to work on a title due to the effort needed to produce each issues. And hence you get to see the new issues published at least once a week to this keep the sales going consistently.

I don't think this is such a good idea to do in american comics. Why? Well, it's like giving a larger budget to the director. The larger the budget, the bigger the pressure from the producers (and the more of the executive/co-executive (co-)producers involved) to make a "product" that's safe. Safe in the sense that it'll sell as well as something similar sold before. Also, more weekly books means people would have to spend more money on their fav titles, resulting in dropping the less fav titles, and thus killing some less fortunate books even faster than now. As it is, a title that doesn't have a large following (like spider-man/batman etc do) is very likely to be cancelled after 4th issue due to sales dropping. Obviously not everyone who picks up the first issue will be there for the second one.

Recently Vertigo slashed half of their monthlies titles due to low sales, meaning there wasn't enough cash to pay five people (and turn in some profit), not to mention 15.

Eunice P
2. The artists actually sit around the table with the writers to brainstorm for fresh ideas. Most of the time, the artists are the writers.

About the same, except the table is the internet/phone in this case :D
Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso collaborate on comics since years when in reality they have never met each other personally. Brian lives in states, Eduardo lives somewhere in south america. A friend of mine who currently lives in singapore is drawing a book for an american writer.

Eunice P
3. Manhua has less stricter content control compare to American comics. Except for political and pornograpy, there are not much restriction imposed on manhua that have contents with violence and gore.

There really isn't that much restrictions in american comics either. Other than the fact that some of retailers might refuse to carry your book if they think they might get in trouble for it.

Eunice P
4. Engaging and well written storylines. This is possibly one of the most important factor that keeps the manhua industry strong and unaffected by Japanese manga. Moreover, the characters are well designed and appeal to the readers. They have an interesting personality that the readers can associate with.

Reasons why american comics are slumping in sales were mentioned by me already. As for bringing out the more creative comics, I think what's needed is LARGE money to promote them + a push towards graphic novel format.

Eunice P
5. Hong Kong manhua have vast genre of storyline much like manga. And the company do not restrict themselves producing only certain popular classics characters like some American comic publishers restricting themselves only on the popular classic superheroes. A company that focuses in producing superhero manhua can also produce strips, graphic novels, novels, art books, children's books, advertisements, broadcasting, etc.

Well, you're thinking marvel/dc... think OTHER publishers, those without characters established 40-70 years ago.

I'm going to use Image comics as an example again.
If you'll at the schedule for this week, you'll see a horror comedy, a prequel to an upcoming computer game, a fantasy comic book, another one about conspiracies (reptilemen, freemasons and ufo), then a sci-fi title and finally a postapocalyptic/zombie/survival title.
If you look at previous weeks, you'll see more sci-fi, fantasy, some superheroes (ranging from very serious to parodic approach), there's also at least one espionage title, one book happening in Japan... hell, there was even a "how to make webcomics" book recently :)

Format wise you have monthlies, bi-monthlies, graphic novels, oneshots, ongoing and limited series.

Eunice P
Perhaps, the American comic industry could learn a thing or two from the Hong Kong comic industry.

In an ideal world, you could buy every comic everywhere and it would be very easy to find what you want... yeah, I'm dreaming here :D

We could also bring the european market into the discussion. Or markets rather, seeing the multitude of countries and languages. The biggest one would be the french language market (consisting obviouslt out of France and part of Belgium) where you have a push in a totally different direction. There, stories usually come out once, perhaps twice a year, in single 48-64 page hardcover volumes (in the rather large A4 format) and are nearly always created by a team of two creators (or one).
This means even greater variety, as none of the team has to adapt their style to the rest, thus everyone can explore their own fav techniques and go for something more personal, resulting in easily recognizable styles. Now, I don't have any sale numbers, but I do recall reading that 29th volume of Thorgal was the top 5th selling title in either 2006 or 2007 (not sure which year it came out) with about 250 thousand copies sold. That's entirely from memory but it was somewhere in the 200-300k range.

Polish comics market seems to live from translations of foreign books, mostly presented in a graphic novel/trade paperback formats (the last publisher to do monthlies folded recently), often in rather limited editions (due to which I'm missing a lot of good titles, ghrrr). The variety is quite large, although superheroes don't seem to sell too well ...other than perhaps Batman which seems to have a volume or two each year.
I'm guessing X-Men would do well in here, but the large overblown continuity involved in these books effectively blocks out any new readers. It's easier to find books like Blankets or Will Eisner's Contract with God (this one released with the other two Dropsie Avenue books in one THICK hardcover book, I'm guessing around 600 pages?).
There're also several french/belgian titles printed here (the aforementioned Thorgal which seems popular causethe artist on it is Polish, haha) and of course a large amount of manga, and I've seen even couple of Korean titles. There were also single titles from other countries, but it seems to be mostly american/french/japanese and a dose of local artists (assuming they broke in already before the collapse of comics magazines) doing things the "european" way, meaning one volume every so often.

(and I could go on and on and on :) )

I stopped reading Japanese comics...started reading more Vertigo, Image, and Oni books...

The problem people are being pants on head retarded and not reading any of the good books.

Preacher, Y, Queen and Country, DMZ, The Nightly News, Criminal, Mouse Guard, Northwest Passage, Fell, Walking Dead, We3 all great comics. Some were quick miniseries others are continuing. Don't tell me there's not a bunch of original non-superhero comics that are published by American publishers. People are just not buying most of them.

Eunice P
I do not know much about American comic industry.

Remember that documentary you posted a while back about US comics? It's actually pretty acurate as far as history goes. It didn't go very far into the underground comics movement and the small press scene, all the same it outlined the American comics mentality fairly well.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this but Top Shelf also publishes some good American indie comics. I think one thing that really hurts the indie company like most of Image is the fact of the scheduling. Some of these books would be much better in just one big trade graphic novel. If for nothing else than the fact their are way too many long delays between the issues, and their is also the fact that most stores won't sell them in issues. But with the increase popularity of using terms like "Graphic Novel" ie 300, 30 Days of Nights...even though they weren't actual graphic novels but miniseries. With the trade format you can get your books sold in legitimate bookstores. Imagine now I can buy my trade of the Walking Dead anywhere. What's even more bizarre for me I actually started reading the series DMZ by picking it up at a Barnes and Nobles. Really I think trades are getting more important and especially for an indie publisher like Image I really would just not bother making individual issues for a series. The cost and profit would not make it worth it due to the stupid way we have a direct market.

One thing about the US and super-hero comics is that comic books are the perfect medium for super-heroes. The genre is very silly and improbable to begin with. I mean animation it works most of the time when left in the right hands. In a live action movie it's hard to have someone in spandex running around. I'm sorry but even for superman I had a hard time looking at him. I don't know if I could really read a Batman story in the form of a novel. In a super-hero comic there are some really large fantastic story sets, and having a drawings and words really help this type of action genre. To me the first two Ultimates series would only have worked as a comic book. Some of the scenes were too big for movies and animation and some of the story elements are not proper for novels.

Also I'm realizing how geeky I've become. For the Bone omnibus I actually complained about the paper quality of the book. I was re-reading my collection of Invincible comics and started appreciating the layout of the books.