Blogger David Welsh takes umbrage at some things First Second’s Mark Seigel recently said about manga:
It seems to me that the marketing meme of positioning manga as an empty-calorie gateway for “real comics” is getting a little out of control. It’s like manga is nothing but mashed peas or strained apricots, perfectly fine until you have all of your teeth and can start enjoying solids, but nothing a person of discernment would ever favor, provided they knew what else was out there.
Agreed. Naruto may be fluff, but it hits an obvious sweet spot for young readers that more publishers would do well to aim for. Mark’s a really nice guy though, so perhaps he meant something else.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 am
Yeah, what I’m taking away from that is that Mark thinks people underestimate the appeal of Manga and hope that it will just lead manga fans towards the Western style comics. I don’t think Mark is dissing manga. I think he’s dissing people who doesn’t understand manga.
(I’m not really a big manga fan, FWIW)