A few other folks have thrown their hats in the ring re: the recent debate on Seinen or young men’s manga. First up is Simon Jones:
The manga publishing industry as a whole should recognize weaknesses in the market, so those weaknesses can be met head-on, or at least managed sensibly. The promise of manga is the elevation of comics beyond any niche - not through the dumbing-down of everything to the mass market-palatable kiddystuff of so many PG movies - but by separately addressing the needs of all kinds of readers with an equally varied assortment of material. If we fail to do that, “manga” would eventually replace “spandex” as a derogatory term for the kind of narrow genre isolation (or simply the mere perception of it) that plagues the medium. We do not want to find ourselves on the top of TCJ’s list of what’s killing the industry 10 years from now, do we?
Then Chris Butcher, as he so often does, offers a commentary that pretty much settles the whole matter entirely:
So, yeah, things are not as easy for manga for grown-ups as for the teen-oriented manga, but who gives a shit? COMICS FOR ADULTS HAVEN’T TRADITIONALLY HAD A GOOD TIME OF IT EITHER. Why don’t you talk to Eric Reynolds about Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service not doing as well as we’d all have hoped when that poor dude is trying to put together an anthology of work by people who can’t afford to do comics, because the sales aren’t there, and they make more money doing spot illos for various magazines. I’m sure he has an appropriately tiny fiddle he can play for you.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:43 am
if you knew Chris Butcher, his comments wouldn’t be so golden - there’s a large group of us in Toronto who find him full of hot air, but know better than to say anything, as his tiraids are legendary.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Even so, does it invalidate what he said there?
A broken clock is still right twice a day.
July 10th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
true enough… just having a blow steam morning
July 10th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
He raises a fair point, because as much as I want to see more stories that are more well-told, this belief on behalf of comics critics that well-told stories are the magic solution to gaining a broader audience shows that they obviously haven’t been paying attention to any medium outside of comics. If anything, well-told stories are a handicap in attracting audiences in most media.