Dave's Fanboy Sermon

1987:
"Eclipse has announced that it has scheduled the release of the first books with material licensed from Japan. Three titles will be released in May. The material will be from books originally published by Shogakukan, a major Japanese publisher."

That rather unassuming press release first appeared in the February 1987 issue of Internal Correspondence. It is hard to believe that it has actually been 15 years, but then, a lot has changed in those 15 years. It is ironic now to think about it. Internal Correspondence was Capital City Comics Distributors in house news magazine. Capital City is gone now. Eclipse Comics published such books as Alan Moore's Miracle Man and Sergio Aragones' Groo. They're gone now, too. But Manga not only remains, it flourishes. It has become a pop culture force in America that has made a significant impact on the culture that inhabits comic shops.

One of the first three titles that Eclipse release was Mai, The Psychic Girl. I don't remember the other two, but Area 88, Xenon and Crying Freeman were some of the first tiles to be serialized here. Only a couple of months later, May of 1987 to be exact, First Comics release the first American issue of Lone Wolf And Cub. Lone Wolf And Cub is considered by many to be the finest example of Japanese Manga and the reverence with which it is treated by comic fans and professionals in virtually unmatched. First Comics, coincidentally, is gone now also. Then, in September of 1988, Marvel Comics released the first issue of Akira. The Manga invasion of American soils was now underway. (Before you ask, Marvel Comics is still around, although not in the same form that they were in 1987)

The American release of Akira was blemished by long production delays, mostly in the coloring process. Lone Wolf And Cub remained unfinished when First Comics folded in 1991. Despite these setbacks for the two premier Manga works, Manga still grew steadily as an alternative to the familiar stories offered by DC and Marvel. This growth was fueled by the release of Anime movies and videos. This anime invasion started with a trickle, which turned steady with the release of the film version of Akira, the first Anime to achieve classic status in America. The point here is that Anime and Manga didn't attain popularity in America overnight. It's been around, slowly building an audience for the past 15 years. Slowly. One step at a time.

Comics in Japan are a much more accepted artform then here in America. In fact, comic books are so pervasive in that country that you can find most any kind of fiction and even non fiction in comic book form. Thick anthology books serialize stories that are aimed at young girls, young boys, men, women, educated workers, most every class of people has some form of manga that is aimed at their interest. There are some basic differences between Japanese Manga and American comic books. The first and most obvious is that Manga is most often in black and white. Produced quickly and cheaply, Japanese Manga is characterized by simpler line work and an emphasis on faster story telling. Rather than single 22 page increments of a lavishly produced color story, they are published in massive anthology books that in many cases appear weekly. Ironically, much of the Manga that is printed over here is in the same 32 page monthly format as other American comics. Some notable exceptions are Viz Comics Animerica Extra, Dark Horse's Super Manga Blast and the excellent Lone Wolf And Cub, which clocks in at a whopping 300 pages for $9.95. The general attitude among American publishers is that the readers here would not accept their comics in that fassion. We Americans love color and consider anything without it second rate. We also tend to steer away from anthologies. So why, then, are Manga books finding success in America when our own comics have suffered a dwindling audience for that last few decades?

The very nature of Manga and the way that it is produced places an emphasis on storytelling. With the simpler art and lack of color, the art of telling a story gains the most importance. This doesn't necessarily equate success here in the states as we more often reward flash over substance (been to the movies lately?). Still, comic fans who grew tired of pretty pictures that just weren't going anywhere found Manga to be the perfect alternative. Second, American comics are pretty much aimed at adolescent boys. Sure, many of those adolescent boys are in their 30's and have families (like myself), but the content remains the same. While the Vertigo line of books is ideal for selling to many of the mature women that come into my store, there is nothing in American books that appeals to the younger girls who might have outgrown Archie. Manga, however, has many books that are becoming increasingly popular with that undeserved group. Cardcaptor Sakura, Clover, Ceres, Inu Yasha and many others are finding an audience that previously had no reason to venture into a comic shop.

A third explanation for the growth of Manga in America is tied directly to such phenomenon as Pokemon and Dragonball Z. These Anime started playing here in America on the Cartoon Network and other stations and became huge successes with the children here. American comics have largely given up on capturing any of the children's market. Parents used to come into my store and ask why there were no comic books of the Power Rangers or Animorphs. Comic companies scratched their collective heads and said "Kids just don't want to buy comic books". So of course, they couldn't go to the trouble (or expense) to offer comic books based on properties that the kids were actually interested in. Now that Gundam, DBZ, Sailor Moon have captured the imaginations of children, they can make that leap to reading more adventures in comic book form. Those books happen to be Manga and they just might be the thing that saves comics for future generations.

There is a certain cache to Japanese Manga and Anime right now. Those products represent a cutting edge, hip form of entertainment. As anyone in this industry knows, the one thing that will kill a cutting edge genre is for it to become popular. Whether Manga retains its' status here remains to be seen. Either way, there are some lessons to be learned from its' success that so far seem to be lost on the large American comic publishers. They are still trying to figure out why their readers aren't shelling out a premium for little 22 page stories about characters that their parents read when they were kids. Hopefully the comic publishers here will catch up to what comic readers are looking for. If not, then a large group of my customers will continue to look overseas.