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Underground > Comic Books >

Manga

18:05 / 03.09.02

So next month will see the start of Raijin Comics. Apparently north america's first weekly manga anthology. There's an interview with the editors here.

What are people's thought on this? Will it last, or will it fade away into the dust? I've picked up a month subscription to see what it's like, since I've been on a huge manga kick for awhile now.

And what are people's thoughts on manga over all? Can it truely save US comics as has been foretold since the dawn of time (or the mid 80's at least) What are your favorite manga books? I'm opening this up as a counter part to the Anime thread over in Film.

18:59 / 03.09.02

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As with all things, there's good and bad in it.
Pity the bad is often what gets the most coverage.

<< Can it truely save US comics as has been foretold since the dawn of time (or the mid 80's at least) >>

Can't see how it could - Yanks imitating manga normally spells bad stuff coming (the apocriphal "Dirty Pair" series, or "Ninja High School").
And what's different in manga is a product of Japanese culture and history anyway, so I can't see how American artists could acquire it in any constructive way.
American comic artists should go back to Will Eisner - buy the whole "Spirit" back-catalog and learn from it.

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Sampei Shirato's "Ninja Bugeicho" is art with baloon dialogue.
It will never see printing in the West (are you kidding? A comic book about the hopeless uprising of the downtrodden, by an openly marxist artist?), but you can get a sample of the artwork in the old "Kamui" collections Viz Comics published.
And there's a Seiji Ozawa movie, which simply has actors reading the baloons while the camera roams the printed pages of the manga. Incredible!

I also used to like Akira Toriyama's work before he slid into no-brain-land with the unending "Dragonball" stuff.
"Dr Slump" and the earlier stuff was really good clean fun.

For a more recent and more easily accessible series (it's being printed in Europe - Italy and France at least), I completely fell for Naoki Urasawa's "20th Century Boys" - indeed the greatest kick I got froma comic book since I found "The Invisibles" - of which 20thCB is a close relative.
I really hope it will see printing in the US of A, too, as it's yet another great evidence in support of the "comics as art" and "comics as literature" debates; and yes, from that point of view, it _might_ help American comics.

19:15 / 03.09.02

What are your favorite manga books?

I really like the manga pacing of Transmetropolitan.

19:57 / 03.09.02

First, the manga saving comics thing was a joke.

Second, now that I've said it was a joke, lets take it seriously for a minute.

"Can't see how it could - Yanks imitating manga normally spells bad stuff coming (the apocriphal "Dirty Pair" series, or "Ninja High School").
And what's different in manga is a product of Japanese culture and history anyway, so I can't see how American artists could acquire it in any constructive way.
American comic artists should go back to Will Eisner - buy the whole "Spirit" back-catalog and learn from it."

Agreed, having people in the US market tring to ape the manga style won't work. But, I've been thinking about the manga buisness model. I wonder if there is something in there that could be used. Two things seperate manga from comics, from a buisness prospective. One, manga is ussually (always?) first released in anthology form. Populiar series may be collected later on, but the initial run is in large anthologies full of a bunch of stories. Two, manga is designed as disposable entertainment. Read it and trash it. I can't help but wonder if these two ideas can be adopted in the US market place.

As far as reccomendations. Nausicaa is a great series from the guy who would later do Princess Monoke. If you like PM, you'll dig this. It's got a bit more of a sci-fi flare to it, but it shares the same themes and style. And, with only four books, it's a short collection.

Of course, might as well throw out Akira now and get it over with. A truely cinematic book. You can almost see the art move. Brilliant piece that should be read by anyone into comics or manga.

Ghost In The Shell is another obvious choice that might as well get thrown out now. Warning though, it can be a dense read. No idea when Dark Horse is going to release the second graphic novel. Another dense read by the same creator is Appleseed. I've read sections of this. It's a really dense story, but good.

Hmm... What else... To be honest most of the stuff I'm reading now is kind of disposable, but fun. So I'll hold off on those.

05:44 / 04.09.02

How can learning from other cultures be a bad thing? While I agree that flat-out immitating the manga style would be fairly pointless, so would flat-out copying Eisner. Paul Pope is a great example of an artist that has learned from manga without imitating it.

I recently read Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix: a Tale of the Future and thought it was great. Other than that I haven't read much godo manga. Lone Wolf and Cub usually comes up in conversations about good manga though.

08:03 / 04.09.02

Learning from another culture is not a bad thing.
Trying to use elements, tools, that belong in another culture instead of developing your version (possibly based on what you learned) is a bad thing, in the sense that it's sterile.
Aping instead of creating.

But yes, in terms of industry structure, allowing more space for the Japanese or European model in American comic industry might be good.
Both Japanese and European comic artists have greater freedom in their creative process - they are often the sole responsible of the whole development, from script to finished inked tables, and do not have to conform to any in-house rule set by a market-savvy but artistically challenged publisher.
Allowing American artists more of the freedom that a few big names already have can only benefit the art.

Finally - good call on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
Exactly the sort of one-man-show comic book that does not care for editorial biases.

And in my last post I forgot to mention Masamune Shirow's "Appleseed".
If the man will ever do us the favour of finishing the damned thing, one of the best science fiction/action series out there.

09:03 / 04.09.02

BLAME ! is actually a very good manga books. The story in itself is very difficult to understand but the art (inspired by HR Giger) and the dark atmosphere are incomparable.

15:58 / 04.09.02

My favorite manga is BLACK AND WHITE by Taiyo Matsumoto, which is collected into three volumes by the folks at Viz.

You can find out more info on the series here.

He also did NO. 5, which was released about half a year ago.

Fantastic stuff, all of it.

23:47 / 29.11.02

Rajin is finally shipping. Got the first issue on Wed. and was surprised to see the second issue today. May be their making up for a late start (I've got a subscription, so the second may not be in the stores yet)

My thoughts on the first issue are here I'll probably post something on the second issue by the end of the weekend.

One thing that I like after flipping through the second issue though, they seem to be trying to show the full range of manga in the stories. You've got things like Bomber Girl (silly lite story, that's kind of an excuse for fan service) next to things like The First President Of Japan, which was written by a Japanese political analyst. All stories do not run in all issues, but there's still a good mix. All and all, I'm impressed enough that I'm now trying to figure out when I can afford the year subscription.

Anyone else get this?

14:20 / 30.11.02

Kind of new to the whole deal .. but I like it.

I've read the first volume of Naussica and the first volume of Akira, and both are of course exceptional in their goodness.

(Although I can't help finding the smallness of the standard manga page size a little disconcerting - I've really got to strain my eyes to see the detail.. I realize they're drawn that size, but still, I can't help wishing they were all in the bigger Western size of the Akira collections..)

I also bought a second hand copy of Ghost in the Shell and am afraid I found it, well, pretty shitty actually.. (can't be bothered to go into why).

I would have read a lot more, except the collections are so. damn. expensive.

uncle retrospective

17:19 / 30.11.02

Well as you all know Akira is great, if a little overkill on destroying Tokyo. I never thought I'd be saying that.
I'll also advise Lone Wolf and Cub. It's huge at 27 books so far and it does get bogged down in sword fight after sword fight after...
but it's still amazing the background detail in the writing is breathtaking (the research must have been a pain) and the art is top notch.
Yea! all round then.