A writer for Comics2Film doesn’t buy into this whole “global manga” and “manga style” thing, and he doesn’t care who knows about. Begin screed:
I’m NOT saying they’re inherently bad themselves. All I am saying is to be informed and know what you’re buying. I don’t think they should ever be accepted as manga. They should be accepted as American work and stand on their own merits. Why do American artists have to ride on the coat tails of manga popularity? It’s almost like saying American creators are inferior and we need to emulate manga to be noticed. Bullcrap.
Yet there is a whole generation out there being swindled that they are ‘American mangaka’ and making Amerimanga, OEL manga, global manga or whatever new bullcrap work they’re using this week. A friend of mine even got a book by that name. I actually like some creators in it, but the marketing stench from the book turns me off. Most of these kids are under twenty, but I’m sure there are some my age and even older who buy this horse dung. Hell, I know Stu Levy at TokyoPop and people at Antarctic Press like Benn Dunn are to major offenders of spreading it good and thick. I won’t even get into how derivative Dunn is and how he lives up to his name. Then you have all the wapanese kids who read MegaTokyo and think it’s manga.
I don’t get it.. What the is wrong with calling an American product by an American name? To call an American created book by a Japanese name like ‘manga’ is just dumbfounding and wrong minded. Hell, the only reason to call actual Japanese manga by that name at all is out of respect for their creators. You’re already romanizing and spelling it in English, not its native Japanese. Who the hell are these American companies and creators to use a Japanese word? Then again, there are idiots who run around cons dropping badly pronounced Japanese words like ‘neko’ or ‘baka’ because they think using a couple of popular Japanese terms badly makes them cool.
For those playing at home, the writer uses “crap” or “bullcrap” 11 times (including the headline), “dung” once, and “idiot” or “idiots” three times. So, you know he means business.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:45 am
The decision to call it “global manga” must be a marketing decision. Manga is a style developed in Japan but it influences people all over. If there’s a better word for the style, nobody is using it.
Sergio Leone made movies about the American West and Eric Clapton plays a lot of American-style blues. Forms and genres often spread all over the place regardless of their origin or how uniquely suited to a particular culture they are.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
This article is brilliant. It’s a point that I’ve made myself for a while. If a book is drawn in a particular style, then it’s just a book in a style. Setting a story in Japan doesn’t make it Japanese. Drawing it in a traditionally Japanese style doesn’t make it Japanese.
The real point is that instead of figuring out WHY manga is so popular, people just copy it and hope for similar sales. Maybe if mainstream american books evolved past t/a, capes and guns, then maybe they could stand on their own.
The mentality of American comic book makers is exactly the same as the American auto makers:
- instead of innovation, let’s just repackage the same thing year after year and rely on customer loyalty and nationalism to sell our cars. Meanwhile the Japanese who didn’t have a tradition of car making, just worried about making better cars and letting the product sell itself.
Does anyone really think big eyes and angular hair is the reason why manga/anime is so popular?
AE.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I actually agree with his point, even if he’s expressed it horribly. Should I follow the logic of “OEL manga,” then if I were to write and draw a 48-page tits-in-space story with a strong subtext about my mistrust of the government and package this 48-page story in a $20 hardcover that’s fifteen inches tall and nine inches across, I suppose I might have made an “OEL bandes desinee,” right? Should the packaging and artistic influence have so much to do with the finished product that it deserves “separate but equal” status and a special name, or is it just a comic?
September 19th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Yes Manga has become a marketing term. But that’s because a whole lot of manga readers won’t even consider looking at anything that’s not “pure” Manga.
And there is a good possibility bookstores wouldn’t place it within the manga either, which is where they want their books.
I have to ask, who is it going to hurt if a manga fan is “duped” into buying a not-made-in-Japan book? Will the sky fall? Will the sun explode? Does somebody become harmed in some gruesome manner?
September 19th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
“Does anyone really think big eyes and angular hair is the reason why manga/anime is so popular?”
You know, I’m really starting to think that’s a big factor in manga’s appeal. The most-copied aspects of the style- the big eyes, small noses, gender ambuiguity- are simplistic and stylized enough so almost anyone can project into it, and copy it. And many manga readers find it attractive to the point of having ‘crushes’ on these paper characters. It’s an aesthetic that’s found in the contemporary Asian ideals of beauty too, with eye-enlargening, nose- thinning and chin-scultping surgery being all the rage over here.
So yes, there’s something to be said for mimicking such ’superficial’ manga stylings.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
And to lead back to my current Transformers obsession, this manga-prettiness is one reason I can’t get into the Simon Furman Transaformers UK books. The stories may be excellent, but the robot faces sometimes resemble fleshy pudding. They’re too human, drawn with human features, wrinkles and fleshy ridges and all. This isn’t an issue with the Japanese-drawn TV show- everything’s so stylized and simple, with no effort at humanizing the robot faces by giving them wrinkles or whatever. Totally different aesthetic.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
All global manga is not alike. Right now, I’m looking at a stack that includes Gyakushu, 12 Days, Afterlife, and Aoi House. The creators of each of these global manga took the visual style, the storytelling style, and the format of Japanese manga and ran with it in a different direction.
Most of the global manga I have seen has been creative, not derivative. They do seem to be qualitatively different from the other graphic novels I have read (admittedly, not a large sampling) in that they are less meditative, more story-driven. They are also cheaper, and I like the format. You can call it a marketing gimmick, but I think it’s just packaging something new in a familar way.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Thanks Brigid, for sharing your feeling with us. You failed to address the point though, which, in short, is that manga means “Japanese comic”, nothing more, nothing less, and the diversity in style and content within Japanese comics supports that usage while at the same time standing in contradiction to the notion of “manga” as a style.
One can bridge that somewhat with the notion of manga as the Japanese tradition, thereby avoiding the contradictions inherent in labelling a nations output a “style” while at the same time acknowledging that all manga has some common roots in terms f style, storytelling, aesthetic, wahtever which does reflect the underlying culture somewhat while being much broader and much more diverse than a style. And in that usage, it makes sense to speak of global comic works which are heavily influenced by the Japanese tradition (or parts thereof) an for that influence one might call them “manga”, but it’s still wrong in the literal sense of the word.
Which ought not to bother PR people, but it’s troubling when it’s coming from people who should know what they’re talking about.
September 21st, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Since I am writing three books with Seven Seas for a 2008 release, I am somewhat biased on the issue. That just as full disclosure. I am seeing “manga” in writing terms more of a structural thing, not so much an art style or a cultural thing (although I do understand both takes on it). In that sense I do think that “global manga” is a decent description of what it is that we’re doing.
In my case for example, “It takes a Wizard”’s co-creator and artist Sean Bam is in Singapore, “10 Beautiful Assassin”’s co-creator Elmer Damaso and “Witch Hammer”’s co-creator Jennyson Rosero are both in the Philippines… and me? Well, I’m a German/Scottish/Russian from Düsseldorf, Germany.
It’s globalisation at work
That is one of the things that – I believe – is part of what global manga means. We’re pulling away from stories that were primarily told for one regional market (and expanded into the rest of the globe, yes) and inject an attitude into a structural form, hopefully for the better.
The one thing I do not quite agree with is the notion that somehow we need to copy the Japanese books. If we ape them, we put ourselves immediately in a position of subservience to an already existing product. Why should an audience buy our books, if we simply produce carbon copies of their stuff? We have to be better to impress people out there.
And we will be.
Count on it.
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Ah. Cut down the angry nerd rage. Note taken. I guess I’ve been listening a bit too much to the insane rants of Bill Hicks, Lewis Black, and even the Angry Video Game Nerd.
I guess if I want the blog to be taken a bit more seriously, I should make it sound more civil. Plus the written word just doesn’t get sarcasm across well like a stand up comic or YouTube video.
As for the appeal of big eyes and the crushes developed on said characters.. that get into the ‘moe’ female character movement in Japan. Well, for male geeks at least. I’m not going to even touch that issue. -shudder-
January 6th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
can anyone teach me to become a comic artist?