Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
This!!! I loved No.5. If Moebius ever made a manga this would be it. It's so fucking bizarre and great.
What is it about western comics manga readers are turned off by? (& vice-versa)
- Thread starter PsychBat!
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This!!! I loved No.5. If Moebius ever made a manga this would be it. It's so fucking bizarre and great.
I love both even though I've been reading a lot of manga lately. But that's how I usually function, I'll go through a phase of reading a lot of manga, then switch to American stuff.
Seriously the only real difference is the color and the way you read it. It's still largely the same medium. There's tons of variety in both. There's obviously different influences the writers have on both ends, but regardless if you treat it as the same medium your eyes open to a lot of things in how comic stories can be told.
I think American comics are looked more down upon is because the mainstream stuff is harder to get into. Like you can pick up volume 1 of something like Naruto or One Piece and you immediately get the beginning of the story. Yet if you want to start reading Spiderman, there's no real starting point in a book store it's like different Spiderman stories by different writers and who knows which goes before the other. So the issue is largely continuity for the most part.
Seriously the only real difference is the color and the way you read it. It's still largely the same medium. There's tons of variety in both. There's obviously different influences the writers have on both ends, but regardless if you treat it as the same medium your eyes open to a lot of things in how comic stories can be told.
I think American comics are looked more down upon is because the mainstream stuff is harder to get into. Like you can pick up volume 1 of something like Naruto or One Piece and you immediately get the beginning of the story. Yet if you want to start reading Spiderman, there's no real starting point in a book store it's like different Spiderman stories by different writers and who knows which goes before the other. So the issue is largely continuity for the most part.
I think the idea of a secret identity when applied well can lend itself to great stories and scenarios, especially in cases like Superman. Also, a lot of modern heroes, especially from Marvel, don't even bother with secret identities.
Can you go into more detail about your problem with Costumes? I can understand that some can be an eyesore but I need more info on what you hate exactly about them. A lot of heroes use pretty simple stuff as their costume.
I guess from your last point about Justice that you don't want black and white hero stories? Because plenty of them can be pretty gray at times.
That's why Marvel started the Ultimate line and DC went with new 52.
curlyfriski
Banned
Marvel has never had a universe reboot. There's also non-Marvel/DC heroe books like Savage Dragon and Invincible.
Not picking on you, but I just noticed that even with all these comic fans in here, none of us bothered to point this out before and your post just kind of gave me an "in" to say something.
I worded that poorly. I meant that, even if the current Spiderman or Dr. Octopus dies or seems to die, at some point there's going to be another version of that character. It's sort of like episodic television, where even if Homer becomes an astronaut, you know that next week he'll still be working at the power plant. The universe doesn't officially reset, but somehow things keep on returning to a specific template. I'm talking about stuff I know very little about, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Yeah but how is the average joe going to know that's a franchise set in it's own universe? To them it's just another Spiderman story, or just another Superman story. That's the big issue here.
Plus most people discover manga from anime for the most part. They'll watch something like Berserk, and then get interested in the manga, cause the manga continues where the anime left off. This is a recurring theme cause anime is mainly built to advertise the manga unless the anime isn't a manga adaptation.
I see. So it's more the idea of a running status quo that bothers you? I can see that.
What I'll say is that it depends on the character and the event in question. The big characters like Superman or the X-Men, there's a little less wiggle room to make long lasting changes because their parent companies need those brands to be protected. That said, even those characters have events in their past and present that mark lasting changes to how the characters function. And the further down the character totem pole you go, the less rigid (for lack of a better term) you'll find things.
Now, question. Are bothered by the idea that if Peter Parker dies, there will eventually be another character called Spider-Man eventually, or that there will eventually be another Peter Parker (or even the same one returned from the grave)? If it's the latter, not much I can tell you lol. But if it's the former, I'll say that legacy characters can differ wildly from the characters they're based on. The example that immediately jumps to mind is the Blue Beetle. Originally conceived as a Batman style hero, the most recent is a teen hero more in line with a deep space Iron Man. Which, as I'm reading it, sounds like a drastic change and is, but it really does make sense in context. lol
And like I said, there's superhero style stories outside DC and Marvel that work more like the manga folks are talking about. You can pick up vol 1 of Invincible and then just keep going: all one story by one guy.
Junpei Heat
Junior Member
One real big shame about some indie/non superhero comics is the artwork. A lot of it is really fucking poor and amateur looking and since those books tend not to sell well, you don't have a lot of skilled people working on them. I know there are exceptions but the majority of the comics I read are from Marvel and DC simply because they have the best artists.
This cannot be emphasized enough. The generalizations are plentiful, and to completely dismiss one or the other based on the dislike of one genre is just wrong.
Perhaps the sheer variety is part of the problem. There is so much to chose from it's just easier to stick to what's comfortable. It's also a regional thing and impossible to stock everything.
But to just say "I don't like X" is a pretty narrow mindset when there's such a variety of product for both manga and western comics.
curlyfriski
Banned
More of the latter. Some of the more atypical stuff you're talking about does sound interesting, and I'm not totally opposed to episodic storytelling. It's just not what I normally gravitate towards.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Hey kids, Comics!
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=852991
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=852991
echoshifting
Banned
This really couldn't be further from the truth. Many of the artists you love at Marvel and DC came up from indie books. Many of them continue to publish indie books while working for the big two.
Junpei Heat
Junior Member
They may come from indie but they're not anymore. Coipel,Williams III,etc aren't doing indie books. Indie books are starting points, not end points for most artist in the industry.
Dragonborn
Member
I like both, but do prefer manga. With comic books, I'm not a big fan of Superhero titles, but I do love stuff like Fables, The Walking Dead, and Sandman. I do also enjoy some superhero titles, Watchmen and Invincible in particular.
The reason I prefer manga is because I like how it creates an ongoing story rather than various different and sometimes unrelated arcs like superhero comics seem to do.
The reason I prefer manga is because I like how it creates an ongoing story rather than various different and sometimes unrelated arcs like superhero comics seem to do.
It is if you put Martin and Rothfuss on the same level.
I have only read Left Hand of Darkness from Le Guin though and I am currently starting New Sun.
echoshifting
Banned
Okay but they...still made great indies at one point. You are basing your assumption - clearly, an assumption, not an opinion based on actual experience with modern indies - on the fact that some artists eventually move on to the big two exclusively, while ignoring the fact that there are always great new artists entering the scene, not to mention plenty who continue to produce indies. Saga is a gorgeous book. FBP is a gorgeous book. Deadly Class. Rachel Rising. Sex Criminals. Lazarus. Black Science. The many Brubaker/Phillips books. I could go on and on and on. These are all books on the shelf right now. Go look at some pages and tell me these books have poor, amateurish art.
It's already been mentioned that the comics code authority hobbling US creativity for decades was a big difference. But it should also be noted that modern manga essentially used the structure of American comics as a springboard.
Junpei Heat
Junior Member
I never said all, just a lot have poor amateurish art. Saga looks alright, but a lot of times her people are awkwardly/occasion poor perspective. Sex Criminals looks like shit,great premise but art fails to live up it's potential. Most of other you posted are good looking books, you also forgot East of West. I know there a lot of good looking ones which why I said "exceptions". But it's stuff like Rat Queens and to a lesser degree Fuse or Shutter that stand out to me and I think "this looks like shit, why would anyone read it?"
They're both very popular series here on GAF, that's what I mean. Not that they are in any way comparable to each other, GRRM is clearly the superior writer.
RoninChaos
Member
No, that's not why. American comics were attacked and the artist's and writer's creative freedom was taken away after Frederick Wortham's witch hunts. The result was the comics code authority and it ripped a large chunk of diversity from comics and sterilized the medium for 20+ years. It wasn't because there wasn't creativity or maturity or anything of that nature.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
In support:
Here's a sample of the quality of EC Comics, which the Code put out of business.
The subject matter is more advanced than other comics of the time, concerned a holocaust survivor a Nazi war criminal.
That's 1955. Imagine if this kind of work had been supported instead of squashed.
This. Horror, for example, disappeared almost entirely as a genre because of the code. Companies went out of business. Even DC and Marvel found themselves handcuffed in what they could do in some ways. Even fucking Archie had to make some changes. Archie!
Of course, the code also gave raise to underground comics, which, while not available through traditional channel, at least show that there were always creators working in genres outside superhero action books.
Having read a lot of both I'd have to say one of the biggest problems with comics in general vs Manga is the pacing.
When most comics only come out once a month they really need to make those pages count, but these days it's so decompressed that stuff that used to be done in one or two issues back in the day takes five or six now.
Combine that with frequent interruptions in the story for gimmicks and events or simply delays and one storyline can take over half a year to play out. That's barely tolerable for the good stories let alone the boring ones where you just want them to wrap it up already and move onto the next thing.
Most manga doesn't have that problem since it's weekly. Because of the faster release rate that means in general that if a chapter misses the mark and is boring at least it'll move onto the next one quickly.
Another big problem with Western comics is that it has too many events too quickly that their isn't even time for a new status quo to set in before it moves onto the next one. I mean shit one event won't even be over yet and they'll already be hyping the crap out of the next one. It'd be nice to have a bit more breathing room before they shake things up.
That and Western comics repeat themselves too darn much. Look at Captain amercia for example. He's lost his powers again for about the third or forth time and being replaced. Gee he was just replaced a couple of years ago did that really need to do that again so soon. At least they didn't kill him off this time not that it'd matter since that never lasts long.
Speaking of death that's another major problem. They kill people off expecting you to care but they've done it too much for it to matter anymore since it almost never sticks. When the Human torch died in Fantastic Four 587 I knew he'd be back by issue 600 and low and behold he was.
It's even worse in the case of them being beholden to the movies forcing them to reset back to status quo every time a new one comes out no matter how good the change they have going is.
Got Dick Grayson as Batman? It's never going to last since they need Bruce back by the time the new movie hits theaters. Same thing happened in Spider-man recently. Doc ock as Spider-man was the best thing they'd done in years and it had to be thrown away simply because of Amazing Spider-man 2 coming out.
And don't even get me started out how bad they are about continuity. That means almost nothing these days. You'll have Supergirl as a red lantern in one comic and normal in another where the time-line of her appearances in both makes dittle sense.
Or how they throw away years or even decades worth of character development at a whim. Human torch grows up only to act like a kid again, Hawkeye goes from being a competent Super hero who saved the world multiple times to a super incompetent shlup who the other Avengers joke about
Not that manga is immune to some of these issues. Just look at Bleach for example, it can go for weeks and weeks with barely anything of note happening, and has some major power level issues and way way to many characters who sever no purpose other then to waste space.
When most comics only come out once a month they really need to make those pages count, but these days it's so decompressed that stuff that used to be done in one or two issues back in the day takes five or six now.
Combine that with frequent interruptions in the story for gimmicks and events or simply delays and one storyline can take over half a year to play out. That's barely tolerable for the good stories let alone the boring ones where you just want them to wrap it up already and move onto the next thing.
Most manga doesn't have that problem since it's weekly. Because of the faster release rate that means in general that if a chapter misses the mark and is boring at least it'll move onto the next one quickly.
Another big problem with Western comics is that it has too many events too quickly that their isn't even time for a new status quo to set in before it moves onto the next one. I mean shit one event won't even be over yet and they'll already be hyping the crap out of the next one. It'd be nice to have a bit more breathing room before they shake things up.
That and Western comics repeat themselves too darn much. Look at Captain amercia for example. He's lost his powers again for about the third or forth time and being replaced. Gee he was just replaced a couple of years ago did that really need to do that again so soon. At least they didn't kill him off this time not that it'd matter since that never lasts long.
Speaking of death that's another major problem. They kill people off expecting you to care but they've done it too much for it to matter anymore since it almost never sticks. When the Human torch died in Fantastic Four 587 I knew he'd be back by issue 600 and low and behold he was.
It's even worse in the case of them being beholden to the movies forcing them to reset back to status quo every time a new one comes out no matter how good the change they have going is.
Got Dick Grayson as Batman? It's never going to last since they need Bruce back by the time the new movie hits theaters. Same thing happened in Spider-man recently. Doc ock as Spider-man was the best thing they'd done in years and it had to be thrown away simply because of Amazing Spider-man 2 coming out.
And don't even get me started out how bad they are about continuity. That means almost nothing these days. You'll have Supergirl as a red lantern in one comic and normal in another where the time-line of her appearances in both makes dittle sense.
Or how they throw away years or even decades worth of character development at a whim. Human torch grows up only to act like a kid again, Hawkeye goes from being a competent Super hero who saved the world multiple times to a super incompetent shlup who the other Avengers joke about
Not that manga is immune to some of these issues. Just look at Bleach for example, it can go for weeks and weeks with barely anything of note happening, and has some major power level issues and way way to many characters who sever no purpose other then to waste space.
nintendork666
Member
I actually like superhero melodrama, especially when it involves Spider-man.
Milking. Reboots. Characters for kids in the 1960's. Soap opera. No intention to conclude. No creative control. Superheroes. Tryhard edgy. Hipster indie. Takes itself too seriously. Cheap. Lacking effort. Universe continuity. Subject matter. Fun.
Here's April sales;
April, 1 week of sales in Japan.
The most prominent difference is immediately apparent, what's even more betraying is that some really great manga never gets translated. The problem is mostly stemmed from production in my opinion and how Marvel/DC have pretty much strangled the USA comics industry into obscurity by themselves.
Here's April sales;
April, 1 week of sales in Japan.
The most prominent difference is immediately apparent, what's even more betraying is that some really great manga never gets translated. The problem is mostly stemmed from production in my opinion and how Marvel/DC have pretty much strangled the USA comics industry into obscurity by themselves.
We have an editor here that specialize in localizing short stories : Ki-oon.
Nothing they do usually go over 10 volumes.
http://www.ki-oon.com/
e
k maybe not anymore...I know I just never saw the kind of artsy stuffs that look like shapes drawn on a wall trying to tell a story
I want to see that kind of stuffs.
I'm pretty sure that's only in america, everyone else seemed to be getting it in the right order.
Of course not but I feel someone wandering into the western comics section by accident will notice the DC/Marvel stuff first, not only because there's more of it but also because the titels are well known, people have heard of Batman and Spider-Man even if they've never experienced them in any format, they stand out so I concentrated on those.
Well, I said in my original post that it's confusing and overwhelming without knowledge or guidance, by doing a google search you're actively seeking guidance and aquire knowledge, that's fine and it certainly helps. It just shouldn't be necessary in my opinion, it's not a big hurdle to jump but it is one and stands between newbies and the comics.
I did read Spider-Man and X-Men almost religiously during the 90s, it's not impossible to get into, to be honest it wasn't even that hard. What made me drop them eventually was the realization that death just meant "gone for a few months" and that nothing had lasting consequences. New creative teams ditching their predecessors work and starting over was something that annoyed me to no end.
My first manga was actually Dragonball, death eventually meant "gone for a few months" there too, the important difference was that the characters became aware of it and death was no longer treated as such a big deal, eventually it became an inconvinience with the dead characters discussing what order of revival made the most sense.
The fact that Dragonball was a continous story by one writer and artist and that time actually passed and characters grew up and changed was so satisfying. Son Goku, the main character is a twelve year old kid when Dragonball starts, he eventually gets married and ends the series in his fifites with a granddaughter. That it actually ended was a big deal too, I had never experienced something like that in comics before.
I know there are western comics that do that too but not the degree that manga do, they all end, a few seem to run forever but even if Kochikame has been running for almost 40 years now, it will end eventually.
As a reader of western comic books and then manga, and then both:
Turn off points in comic books when I was reading exclusively Japanese stuff:
- lack of violence
- lack of any shape or form of eroticism
- LACK OF ANY ENDING
Turn off in manga, after reading them for years:
- LOST-like milking of good stories, characters, locations. Major culprit: Dragonball Z and its animation.
- lack of real depth in female characters (this was in the '90s; I can't even begin to express the amount of wrong in todays' manga) except, of course, in shojos (which then became the only type of manga I read)
- lack of any true political/social commentary. Even exceptions like Golden Boy and Masamune Shiroo works are SO condescending they are a complete drag to go through.
To make it simple on a bigger level:
Westerners will never be able to produce anything remotely close to Evangelion's tv show.
Japanese will never be able to produce anything like the Simpsons, or Preacher. Or Thank you for smoking.
Turn off points in comic books when I was reading exclusively Japanese stuff:
- lack of violence
- lack of any shape or form of eroticism
- LACK OF ANY ENDING
Turn off in manga, after reading them for years:
- LOST-like milking of good stories, characters, locations. Major culprit: Dragonball Z and its animation.
- lack of real depth in female characters (this was in the '90s; I can't even begin to express the amount of wrong in todays' manga) except, of course, in shojos (which then became the only type of manga I read)
- lack of any true political/social commentary. Even exceptions like Golden Boy and Masamune Shiroo works are SO condescending they are a complete drag to go through.
To make it simple on a bigger level:
Westerners will never be able to produce anything remotely close to Evangelion's tv show.
Japanese will never be able to produce anything like the Simpsons, or Preacher. Or Thank you for smoking.
Wow the Japanese best-sellers are SO much more varied in terms of genre and audience than the superhero (and walking dead) dominated US chart...
striferser
Huge Nickleback Fan
I don't read mainstream superhero for western comic, i'd prefer Tintin, Asterix, and self contained stories like The Walking dead, The Boy, Kickass, V for Vendetta, and Watchman.
I'd more often read manga though, since in my country, manga is published regularly, while for comic books, the most prominent one are european one like i mentioned above.
Good comics are good comics, that's all that matters to me.
I'd more often read manga though, since in my country, manga is published regularly, while for comic books, the most prominent one are european one like i mentioned above.
Good comics are good comics, that's all that matters to me.
smh @ bolded
American superhero comics are the lowest form of pop culture. I can't stand any of it. It has the subtlety of a brick wall and the grace of dead statues. The characters have the physical range of an athlete in mid flex and most of the stories spring from jesus syndrome where everyone is crucified endlessly. The art is still a slave to some fucking "how to draw the marvel way" books.
But that's not all american comics, just a dead genre.
But that's not all american comics, just a dead genre.
The "lacking effort" part is particularly insulting. All the creative writers, artists, inkers, colorists, and letterers in the industry who bust their asses month after month would certainly take issue. Also gotta love how indie titles are dismissed as "hipster."
I think it's worth noting that there's more variety among sales of trades.
Still a lot of superheroes, but there's more there. With creator owned stuff, a lot of people tend to trade wait where superhero buyers like to show up day one to stay current.
No one said it's still influencing the medium. Just that it had effects on the growth and variety of the industry at a crucial time in comics history.
We all horror is still alive and well today. When the code was around, however, it pretty much vanished outside of the underground scene.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
It just set them back 30 years or so.
what is this? Ignorance at full blast?
Just generalisation.
See You Next Wednesday
Banned
I remember reading that Alan Moore almost single handily took down that code with his Swamp Thing run.
He went against all the rules, but did it without it being exploitative & make sure everything made sense in a story context.
This question reminded me of a manga I read a few years ago called Peepo Choo. It's unique because it was written in Japanese and illustrated by an American, and got published in Japan by Kodansha. When it was licensed for North America, the artist wrote the English script himself. It also delve into the differences between Japanese and American comics.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Pls tell me where this is from.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Welp nevermind.
When I began to read western comics, the biggest challenge for me was the change in pacing. Scott Mcloud talks about the technical differences in more detail in his Understanding Comics, which everyone who enjoys the medium should read, and this gave me the realization that there actually was a substantial difference in style. Manga takes less time to read because of how the panels are formatted, and ironically the first western comic I fell in love with followed a really rigid 3x3 format. Basically, I've gotta take my time and slow down.
I just dislike superhero comics, I think I'd be fine with pretty much any other type of graphic novel. I'm also not a huge fan of comic strips. I also don't really like the narration with panels style of storytelling that I've occasionally seen, it just feels disjointed and the pictures should already be showing the action enough that the additional narration just seems unnecessary.
That's probably why I don't wander over to the graphic novel sections of bookstores, because those plus manga I don't particularly like (especially in the past, tokyopop seemed to localize anything it could get its hands on) seem to populate that section.
That's probably why I don't wander over to the graphic novel sections of bookstores, because those plus manga I don't particularly like (especially in the past, tokyopop seemed to localize anything it could get its hands on) seem to populate that section.
FlowersisBritish
fleurs n'est pas britannique
Two things; I know more websites where I can read manga for free, so they are way more practical for me to care about.
Second, I like the japaneses way of storytelling better, even all the goofy tropes people roll their eyes at. Also I find their fights way better. I've rarely read a comic where I got super excited by the fight.
Second, I like the japaneses way of storytelling better, even all the goofy tropes people roll their eyes at. Also I find their fights way better. I've rarely read a comic where I got super excited by the fight.
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