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Underground > Comic Books >

TPBs removed from shelves!

Mister Six, whom all the girls

14:01 / 10.12.03

So... I recall a strong sentiment that TPBs were a good thing for comics, yes? Well, LITG at CBR (that's lying in the gutters on the www.comicbookresources.com site) just had this to say...

"After last week's piece on the great removal of DC and Marvel trade paperbacks from bookstores across their country, and their great replacement by Viz and TokyoPop manga titles, Ron Stallcup writes;

"Here's what happened last Saturday. I haven't been to the local Books-a-Million for a few weeks. Interesting things have happened. The Marvel/DC/Crossgen Graphic Novels are GONE. Replaced by about 18 feet of Manga!!! I don't like Manga. Only a small selection for about twenty DC/Marvel. Lot of Tim Sale stuff, recent Superman, Batman, JSA trades. No Crossgen, what so ever.

"Books-a-Million used to have a great selection of Marvel/DC/Crossgen/others. I'm glad I bought the Marvel Visionaries: Gil Kane last time I was there.

"About thirty yards across the store, I found a Prince Valiant graphic novel in the Humor section. I guess it escaped the purge.

"Pensacola, Florida is always the last place for a trend to peak. So this means the Manga fad should be losing steam."

Rich Johnston (the article's writer) wishes…

"From what I could see this weekend, the French market seems to have been more successful with this Manga upstart. With a longer co-existence in the Anime market, French and Japanese cartooning have been culturally mixed far more than in the UK or US. And while Manga has its separate section within bookstores, it hasn't overwhelmed the European market.

"The UK market is also equally untouched. However, this is more down to companies like TokyoPop and Viz not having licences to sell to the UK. Expect Titan Books in the Uk to wrap up their own deals - then we could well see a repetition of US trends."

Discuss, yes?

14:39 / 10.12.03

This is a shame but I work at a Walden Books (holiday gig only!) here in Miami and I have to say that manga out sells trades by a long shot. For every Ultimate Spiderman we sell we get at least 10 -15 middle school girls buying Chobits, Love Hina, Boys Over Flowers, Cowboy Bebop, Oh My Goddess!. Boys on the other hand will buy Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z, Inu-Yasha and other shit I can't remember... and thats in one day with only one pathetic Spiderman trade sold. And lets not talk about the "How to Draw Manga" which outsells both trades AND manga. (Note: Girls, who supposedly are genetically against comics, make up the majority of our manga customers.)

So as a comics fan I would hate to see the trades go, but as a store manager I understand that they're just taking up manga space.

But I can only be certain in just is the one store that I work at... Although it's the same in all Walden Books across Florida cause we're always getting customer requests.

14:52 / 10.12.03

manga and manga style art - the new superheroes? Is it the new dominant genre of comics?

15:56 / 10.12.03

Is it really a bad thing that corporate owned superhero books are being replaced on the shelves by stuff that appeals to a wider audience?

Matthew Fluxington

16:07 / 10.12.03

What Gypsey Lantern said.

However, it would be nice if these chain stores tried to be more diverse in what they carry. I was recently in a Borders, and all they had were Marvel/DC stuff, some manga, and a copy of Blankets.

The book industry has been really rough lately, so I don't blame the stores for not taking chances and sticking to stuff that sells. The manga stuff is pretty huge right now, and that's probably not going to go away. I'd rather stores sell comics than not sell comics, even if I personally loathe most anime and manga.

Matthew Fluxington

16:11 / 10.12.03

Also: If Marvel and DC really wanted to make comics that appealed to actual kids, maybe they should

a) make them suck more, because the writing in the manga is usually awful and mindless

b) make them suck less, because stuff like the Tsunami line and Ultimate Spider-Man are pretty low-quality and dull compared to the considerably more vibrant Eastern competition

c) come up with new characters rather than continuing to push variations of very old ideas on the young audience.

16:14 / 10.12.03

It isn't so much the fact that corporate owned superheroes are being taken off the shelves that's the problem, its that everything else from Ghost world to Maus appears to be being taken of the shelves too. Only books like Persepolis and Jimmy Corrigan (two titles that have reached the wider expanses of the ordinary fiction and history sections respectivelty) look set to survive such a move.

16:18 / 10.12.03

in addition to matthew's suggestion Marvel should prolly also reformat the trade versions of the tsunami titles to the same dimensions as most imported manga...

and would it be heretical to suggest they consider reversing the pages ala manga also?

Matthew Fluxington

16:30 / 10.12.03

I bring this up pretty much every time we have one of these threads, but I can't imagine why DC and Marvel haven't bothered focus grouping the comics aimed at kids. Are they just being stubborn? Are they delusional?

They really should put some effort into finding out what the youth audience wants, and then do their best to make material for them.

Murray Hamhandler

16:44 / 10.12.03

Manga outweighs Western TPB's in my local Borders, but not by much. The manager in charge of orders is a big comics fan, so I don't see the non-manga going anywhere anytime soon. He's also a big indie snob, so there's a pretty good indie selection, as well. I realize, however, that this probably is not the norm...

Matthew Fluxington

17:04 / 10.12.03

I should also mention that the Borders where I was about a week or so ago (in Poughkeepsie, NY) also had a big rotating rack of single-issue comics up in the front of the store near the magazine, and when I was there I saw a bunch of little kids reading Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman comics. That made me so happy! I didn't even care that it was Ultimate X-Men and Chuck Austen X-Men comics, it was just so cool to see kids with comics at all.

17:21 / 10.12.03

Part of the problem is that most TPBs are stocked by media rather than subject, which instantly ghettoizes the form and ensures that the vast majority of non-genre works will never be seen by their intended audience. What adult is going to browse the Pikachu section next to the role playing games in the hope of finding Louis Riel?

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:44 / 10.12.03

The reason Marvel and DC don't get into the Manga-style "many genre" style of graphic novel and keeps pumping out the same old endless soap opera stuff is because the main editors, creators, publishers, distributors and retailers for them are still producing their version of the comics they loved to read.

If Marvel and DC got an influx of outside creators, they would sell better because they wouldn't seem so much like fanboy fetish objects.

18:12 / 10.12.03

Here's Marvel's upcoming attempt to crack the manga market:

Manga: Marvel Tales Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
Manga: Spider-Girl
Manga: X-Men Evolution

Um, Marvel management? Shrinking superhero comics to manga size and printing "manga" on the cover isn't going to fool anyone. At a guess, I'd say putting "manga" on the cover will if anything lessen the chances of kids picking them up, as it will tend to signal "impostor/wannabe" rather than the intended "cool"--after all, when was the last time you saw an actual manga title that needed to label itself "manga"?

20:21 / 10.12.03

Manga's also cheaper in bulk than the quality super-hero stuff.

All Acting Regiment

20:34 / 10.12.03

Ages ago, there used to be almost no manga, right? And people in the us/uk/europe who wanted manga were shat on. Now it seems manga is taking over, and people who want the other stuff are being more than slightly shat on.

This is mostly meaningless for me, as I buy my comics from a crazy second hand shop in manchester called empire exchange. As you can imagine it's a little behind the times, so I'm like halfway through the sandman now. I dunno. it's a little doorway into the golden past.

21:15 / 10.12.03

While it's probably a good think that kids are reading sequential fiction again, as a traditional Western comics fans, it's clearly not good that quality books are being pushed off the shelves. When I first started buying trades in book stores, it was mostly Vertigo stuff, like Sandman, Preacher, Transmet, some DC superhero, and a couple of Marvel trades, as well as a lot of indie books. After New Marvel began, Marvel trades started to take over, at the expense of Vertigo, and manga also made a presence as well. So, for me at least, this is not good. I'd rather see the graphic novel section expand as a whole, rather than get monopolized by manga.

21:22 / 10.12.03

well on the plus side certain comics have actually managed to break out of the graphic novel section entirely...

21:27 / 10.12.03

I'd like to note that this general discussion has unconsciously lumped a batch of books into the subject of manga. Not an illogical assumption but it shouldn't be forgotten that many of these manga books deal with sub-genre that have been untouched or barely scratched by the big 2: comedy, boy/girl soap opera, sci-fi, and even politics.

Are consumers attracted to manga because of the Japanese aesthetic? The art? A hunger for new genres in comic? What are your opinions?

I think people are primarily attracted to the fresh (relatively) style and aesthetic of the work and the different genres are just a bonus. POV

Matthew Fluxington

21:42 / 10.12.03

My very negative theory is that the worst manga stuff is popular mostly because it is poorly illustrated, and it's easy for kids/teens to imitate the artwork, which is an inclusive thing. I think the same thing applies to guys like Rob Liefeld and a lot of the second generation Image-type artists. A lot of the kids look at the art, and can make their own, and that's part of the fun. It's operating on a similar principle as garage/punk/DIY, but it's um, awful. At least I think so.

Haus of Mystery

21:55 / 10.12.03

Perhaps Manga just appeals to kids more as it is more familiar. Most cartoons and computer games have a distinctly manga-esque quality, and kids are responding to what they already know and like. As long as the industry stays alive I don't mind. Most Manga isn't to my taste (exceptions = Black and White, Akira etc) but in truth I haven't sampled a great deal.

Matthew Fluxington

22:10 / 10.12.03

I definitely agree with that too. There's a whole generation of kids who were raised on cartoons, card games, and video games that come from Japan, so it shouldn't be shocking that the kids go for that stuff in comics.

Maybe the thing here is that as Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Brits, we're just not used to art from non-Western/non-English speaking cultures becoming dominant in our own cultures.

22:13 / 10.12.03

Matthew - Your conclusion that manga is poorly illustrated seems an aesthetic judgement that is in the minority if the reports on the sales figures are to be believed.

Dlotemp - I would like to think that the increased array of genre within manga was the main draw factor but I suspect, like ima a celebrity that a generation raised on manga-style cartoons are simply more accustomed and receptive to manga. But either way, the vurtual monopoly of the superhero genre that once held sway the North American comic scene seems to be coming to an end.

Matthew Fluxington

22:51 / 10.12.03

I'm not trying to say that it's all badly illustrated, just a large chunk of it. A significant, popular chunk.

00:51 / 11.12.03

When I was in Tokyo I spent hours upon hours in every manga shop I could find, flipping through as many books as I could, and my assessment was that the percentage of ugly books is FAR lower than the percentage of shit pumped out by the North American market, so I think you're way way off-base, Matthew, to say that "most Manga is poorly drawn." The standard of quality among Japanese artists is far higher.

I would hazard a guess and say that the reason Manga is popular is that it's interesting, exciting, well-drawn, and actually featuring content that appeals to kids. Most North American comics are none of these things, and haven't been for many years.

01:41 / 11.12.03

Earlier this year I was looking into starting a comic shop with some friends and investigated this. Mainstream bookstores stock a lot of cheap manga because graphic novels usually get beat to hell. Nobody wants to buy a tattered copy of whatever Batman tpb's are being shucked, let alone Jar of Fools or something, because they've been read a million times and crammed back on the shelves. Most people go to Borders to read the stuff they're curious about but don't necessarily want to buy--it kills an hour or two, and if you want to buy it you can get a fresh copy at the comic shop. Manga's advantage is that it's cheaper because of the way the Japanese market works, the distributors often have better buy-back/retailer credit programs, and the books are longer and denser--most of it, you can't really sit there and read in a free hour. It's more like regular fiction that way. This is also why there's almost always Marvel Essentials and those big coffee-table editions in stock.

I'll generalize here because my sample consists of about 5 bookstores in Manhattan, but most of the manga in the Graphic Novels ghetto is not the good stuff. It's not particularly interesting or well-drawn... maybe it's "exciting" in a frenetic, jittery way that makes it look more like Final Fantasy screenshots and doesn't really reflect the broad range of material you can get in a comic shop. It's easy for an adult reader to take a dim view if their exposure comes from Barnes & Noble or Virgin Megastores. At least 80% of the manga they stock is crap, but because the superhero books they tend to stock are the bulky collections, probably only 60%--the endless Wolverine/Batman crossovers, etc--of it is crap. The stuff that appeals to kids is the very simplest, game-like stuff, not necessarily what an adult reader is looking for. Within these limits, I think Matthew's comments are fairly apt. There is lots of manga written and drawn for adults to appreciate, but it's not usually in mainstream bookstores.

03:18 / 11.12.03

I haven't seen Western comics sections getting smaller, it just seems that way because the manga sections are five times bigger. I don't see why that's neccessarily a bad thing at all. Although I will start trying to notice if that's true.

It would be a good thing if America started imitating Japan's comic industry. There is more integrity for one thing in that they are mostly writer/artists doing there own visions as opposed to the factory assembly line system of working on other peoples creations. Much of that goes for Vertigo/MAX as well as super-hero comics.

Maybe the majority of manga is crap, but that goes equally for American comics 100%. It isn't that hard to dig around until you find some good mangas. I read a lot of super-hero comics, but I also read a lot of manga comics. I understand that super-hero comics are too much for insiders that know all of the nerdy details of the Marvel Universe or DC Universe. It is not a sustainable system for that to be the majority of the comics industry. In Japan comics have so much diversity and there is corporate crap for kids but there is also tons of excellent works.

04:26 / 11.12.03

Your conclusion that Youngblood is poorly illustrated seems an aesthetic judgement that is in the minority if the reports on the sales figures are to be believed. Heh.

The problem with american superhero comics isn't that they're corporate crap for kids, its that the majority of them are corporate crap for adults pretending to be for kids. American publishers are way out of touch. I doubt anyone at Marvel even knows what a Beyblade is.

04:34 / 11.12.03

Hell, even their website is more exciting than Marvel's.

08:13 / 11.12.03

Bio k9 - well I was thinking of adding a sentence about the demonstrable lack of perspective etc in Liefild's work versus manga that might feature strangely proportioned people, but at least they are strangely proportioned people in perspective...

08:22 / 11.12.03

*anxiously waits to be proven wrong after issuing such a sweeping statement...*

09:00 / 11.12.03

Sleaze, I wouldn’t hold your breath…

I completely agree with the earlier references to ‘corporate owned’ superhero books – it’s obviously the fact that the superhero characters are owned by corporations that is leading to people preferring manga. I know I’ve always operated a policy of never buying any comic depending on what it says in the indicia – any sign of business machinations and I’ll put it back on the shelf, whether it be a copyright notice for Marvel Characters, Time Warner or Howard Chaykin Inc.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

13:40 / 11.12.03

Kids avoiding corporate products??? What is that based on, the Kids Kommunist Party??

The few kids I've actually talked to about comics said they liked the X-Men Evolution series (they were a little bummed when I told them it had gotten canceled, but shrugged it off saying there's other comics out there) and some book series about time travelling kids I'd never heard about. The only connecting thread I could see is that neither is about some over 30's dude running around fighting anyone.

Manga seems to commonly deal with young characters and juvenile stories which are sometimes unpredictable and creative. This would, to me, appeal to a core young audience.

I doubt seriously that any kid would care who produced what product they're reading or enjoying. I just think they could give two shits about some guys in suits that are their dad's age.

But again, that's me.

When I was a kid, I loved X-Men and Byrne's Fantastic Four because they yelled a lot and fought crazy-ass shit. That appealed to me. Kids today with their bey-blades and their collectible magic cards... feh... I don't get em.

Matthew Fluxington

14:25 / 11.12.03

Kids today are STUPID!

Kids suck!

14:27 / 11.12.03

Six, I agree completely. I was being sarcastic... oh, hang on, maybe you were too.