Bad analogy. We’re not talking about the failure of individual comics. We’re talking about the failure of virtually the entire output of the industry.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with them. The TV series Firefly failed in the marketplace. Does that mean there was something wrong with it?

The history of entertainment is littered with examples of material that is good — absolutely nothing wrong with it — yet fails to gain traction.

“a country really ought to have its own healthy pop culture. If your local output can’t even compete with imports designed for a different cultural context altogether, then you’re doing something horribly wrong.”

Well, that’s the whole point of a specialist economy. Countries do what they are good at. Apparently, the Japanese comics industry, and American movie/TV industry, are doing good, and resultantly, they are the exporters in the world’s specialist entertainment economy.

I’m not sure I think a specialist economy is a bad thing. I don’t see why, say, Abkhazia or Liberia or Ecuador needs to be a comics exporter rather than reading Japanese comics or watching American movies.

For depth, content, and narrative, the best of Western comics interest me more these days. There, I said it aloud. I would rather read Watchmen than Nana. Or I prefer to read anything by Warren Ellis and Los Bros. Hernandez, for that matter. I still love Tezuka, I still love Ikeda, but I want more meat these days. And some narrative density. Maybe I have just outgrown most of the imported manga. I am now reading only two. I used to read dozens. And at ten bucks a pop, to stick with a series to conclusion costs hundreds of bucks just to read ONE STORY! Sorry, I have to pay my health insurance. I do not need every volume of Maison Ikkoku. I pay $20, and I get a far better tale in one shot with Watchmen.

Kenny will rage about xenophobia in 5-4-3-2…Even when manga doesn’t sell the best, it still RULEZ because Alan Moore doesn’t work at DC anymore!!! ROCK ON!

The analysis of the sales of comics versus manga rarely takes the direct market into consideration. Do those sales not count? Isn’t it a fact that a monthly X-Men comic moving 100,000 copies per month is pretty much outselling almost every GN on Bookscan? And since most manga are not printed in comic pamphlet form because they don’t sell well in pamphlet form, is this not notable? Do only trade bookstore numbers matter? I realize the post is about Bookscan, but there is a lot those Bookscan numbers do not tell about sales.

And yet with the advent of the internet and webcasting, the local scene is now “on stage” to the rest of the world to enjoy as well.

So maybe what we’re talking about with many of the comics that we import from Japan is that they speak more in universally accessible terms to the human condition than do many American comics. Super heroes certainly render comics inaccessible (in a sense) to many Americans—though I’m not sure that boy ninjas or girls that stay with totemic families are much more accessible). Still, it may be that a larger population might relate to Naruto (despite his being a ninja with essentially super-heroic powers) than with Peter Parker who dresses in colourful long underwear. I don’t know; maybe that’s not the case at all.

I do think we’re at a kind of a crossroads, where we have the opportunity to either broaden the boundaries of “our” society or entrench into familiar national/sub-national patterns. For all the talk of global society and internationalism, we very much have the opportunity to stem that and to promote locality over universality. I suppose it’s just a matter of which direction we wish to move. I personally prefer universality to locality, but I have friends who deeply mourn the loss of the local scene, believing the loss of that kind of culture detrimental to society broadly.

However, comics(western and Manga) are all just one part of American arts, entertainment and culture. Movies, Television and Novels in the US are dominated by American products. And I would imagine that American Movies make up a substantial percentage of many foreign movie markets.

Of course your point still stands where comics are concerned.

If the only criteria was “is it any good”, then yes. But there is plenty of very good material from around the world that is, quite understandably, of little or no interest to Americans because it deals with local concerns of the place of origin. (Observational comedy, for example, travels particularly badly.) And equally, there is plenty of not-so-good material from America which is understandably interesting to Americans because it deals with issues they care about it.

The arts don’t (or shouldn’t) exist solely, or even primarily, as a means for people to show off their skill levels. They are part of the way in which a society talks to itself.

I’m not sure how much cultural pride has to do with geography. Back in the days before the shrinking of the globe (via the printing press and then radio and then recorded music and then film and then television and then internet), cultures were more defined by locale, by nationality. But isn’t that becoming less and less the case.

As per our discussion here, my cultural attachment would be comics and I garner cultural pride when I encounter Good Comics. Domesticity has nothing to do with that. I don’t feel any more necessary connection to a work if a creator hails from Orange County (where I live) than if he calls Tibet his home—so long as the work from Tibet is good and translated. And I think the Bookscan numbers demonstrate that this is the case with a growing number of readers. The top five are all foreign creations.

And it’s not even necessarily a question of marketing—though marketing obviously affects which works will be most readily viewable—but more that people who want Good Comics are able to find them. Still, as we aren’t living in a perfect world, there are those who do create artificial boundaries for themselves, applying filters beyond simply asking for quality. There are those who only purchase “manga.” Or only Big Two. Or only Euro. Or only indie. Or only indie plus non-superhero Big Two. That’s fine in the sense that they certainly have the liberty to construct those barriers for themselves, but how freer would their lives be were they able to remove artificial barriers like genre and nationality and domesticity.

This, essentially, is why I call manga comics. Because the only thing that manga actually defines is country of origin. And that’s just not a worthwhile distinction in this age. Or it shouldn’t be.

It’s not that manga published and created by foreigners is bad, but that having the comics market dominated by foreign producers indicates that reading comic books is an acquired taste.

SRS

It matters because a country really ought to have its own healthy pop culture. If your local output can’t even compete with imports designed for a different cultural context altogether, then you’re doing something horribly wrong. American comics ought to have a massive advantage of greater cultural resonance with the audience. Their failure to compete effectively with manga has reflected very badly on them.

What I love is Good Comics. I don’t care whether they are black and white or colour, whether they are indie or mainstream or underground, whether they are print or web, whether they are American or Japanese or French. Those are all categories that seem to be in place to prevent me from finding and enjoying Good Comics. Comics are comics are comics. And if comics are Good Comics, then why should I care about something as trivial as from which side of an arbitrary geographical boundary a comic arrives?

Well, it is.

As for terminology, I believe that “non-manga” is a popular way of referring to non-manga comics.

SRS

And I think it’s wonderful DC’s 2 top selling books are 20 year old books written by a guy who personally hates Levitz & company. Meanwhile, Masashi Kishimoto still works with Shueisha, so epic fail there, guys!

Manga is still kicking American ass!

Japan. It was published by Square Enix, and directed by Tetsuya Nomura, who also did the character designs.

Now, as for who had the original idea, Square or Disney… that’s a very good question.

Are WATCHMEN and THE KILLING JOKE American PRODUCED?

Or American FINANCED?

Kingdom Hearts is a Japanese comic from Kodansha reprinted (in translation) by TokyoPop here in the U.S. (I’m not sure where the video game itself was born, however).

#1? Well, DC still says that “The Death of Superman” is still their top seller (although Watchmen is gaining). Is there historical data available to check? How long has PW been tracking GN BS?

And, given the various permutations of Batman in mainstream media, most readers of All-Star Batman will think nothing of it. I didn’t have any trouble selling Superman: Red Son to non-comicbook readers. (Actually, it was quite easy… “What if Superman’s rocket ship landed in Soviet Russia instead of Kansas?”)