The Bendis Board investigates the link between manga and western indie comics:
Most manga I read thru have tremendous amounts of dialogue, page after page of characters just hanging out and talking. They are packed with angst, lots of shy characters finding the courage to confess thier love only to be humiliated in the most emotionally painful ways. If you love uncomfortable emotional exploration manga really delivers. Even the most popular and mainstream titles have strong emotional elements that are suprising, people who enjoy stories that are heavily emotional would find alot of manga they would like I think.
The only real difference I notice between most indy comics and popular manga is the conclusion of the stories. In Manga main character, starting out as a loser, works to improve thier lives and often, after 20 or 30 volumes of pain, succeeds and has a happy ending. With many Indy comics the loser often fails uttery as the story goes down dark paths and often even dies. Other than that I think alot of manga would appeal to indy comic fans, definately worth checking out if you havn’t.
It takes one post for someone to disagree:
“based on what you wrote here, i think you have a pretty ill-informed view of indy comics. but i’d say the reason a lot of indie fans don’t go for manga has more to do with a distaste for the artistic and storytelling conventions of manga. it’s the reason for me at least.”
“indy and manga are my favorite genres!”
“I tend not to read magna books beacuse they dont interest me as much as other comics. That said there have been magnas that I really liked, Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha for example (I’ve only read the first two volumes though) and what I’ve read of Akira.”
August 28th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Indy and manga are genres? Who knew?
August 28th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I prefer magma comics. They’re made of molten rock!
August 28th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
As much as I’ve loved a lot of indy comics, so many of them have adopted so many similar conventions lately that they’re not far off from qualifying as a “genre.”
Play your own Indy Comics Drinking Game:
1. Take one drink if the protagonist is a 20-something slacker who works at a dead-end entry-level job.
2. Take two drinks if he works at a music store.
3. Chug the bottle of the store only carries vinyl albums.
1. Take one drink if there’s an unrequited love affair between two aimless suburban postadolescents.
2. Take two drinks if one of them is a multiply pierced goth.
3. Chug the bottle if they’re both the same sex.
I don’t think I need to go on …
August 28th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
“With many Indy comics the loser often fails uttery as the story goes down dark paths and often even dies. ”
Ignoring the cow teat jokes I ask, how is this any different from pretty much every superhero comic out there right now?