I don’t think I fully realized how big a hole Tokyopop blew in the comic book horizon when they shuttered their original manga program until recently. Say what you will about Tokyopop as a company, it’s hard to argue that for a few years, they created a lot of opportunity for a lot of artists. Thanks to Tokyopop, thousands were exposed to the work of Felipe Smith, Rivkah and M. Alice LeGrow. Popular indie artists like Becky Cloonan, Ross Campbell and Brandon Graham got a boost to their careers, and dozens of unpublished creators received their first break through the Rising Stars of Manga contest.
But more than any of that, Tokyopop embraced a style of art that most other publishers wouldn’t touch—the manga-influenced one. An entire generation of young comic book artists had grown up reading the books that Tokyopop, Viz and Dark Horse had helped bring to the United States and wanted to draw in that sort of style, and for a few years, it actually seemed like they may be able to make a little money doing so.
Then Tokyopop ran into trouble, and the rest of the manga industry soon followed suit. Yen Press has scaled back their original manga plans, Del Rey Manga no longer exists and Viz, if they ever intended to publish original content created in the United States, seemed to have a change of heart. Of course, in so doing, the options for manga-influenced artists were gutted, leaving most to look to web-publishing and self-publishing for getting their comics out there.
Now, I’m not knocking self-publishing or webcomics. If done well, they can pay off handsomely for a talented creator. But they shouldn’t be the only options out there for talented artists. Yet the unfortunate truth is that the majority of western comic book publishers really have no interest in publishing manga-style comic art. And you know what? I really don’t blame the publishers. They aren’t interested in publishing that style of art because it doesn’t sell for them. Of course, the reason it doesn’t sell is entirely due to us, the fans.
Why are we so limited in what we’ll read? I’ve already written about our reluctance to sample anything not published by the Big Two, but we also need to really ask ourselves why we’re so biased against manga-influenced art. I understand why much of the Japanese manga that gets published out here may not be of interest to a reader who isn’t interested in interpreting another culture’s mores and sense of humor just so they can enjoy a comic book. But we’re not talking about Japanese manga here. We’re talking about American comics that just happen to be drawn in a style that’s influenced by Japanese sequential art.
Before I go any further, I should probably make it clear that I’m writing this as someone who was once ridiculously biased against manga. I started at Tokyopop with an inherent love for superheroes and a complete lack of interest in Japanese graphic novels. Had I not landed my job there, it’s unlikely I’d even know what a tankoubon was, let alone actually sat down and read them. It’s also worth mentioning that since leaving Tokyopop, the amount of manga that I’ve read has seriously decreased. There are titles that I enjoy, but when I compare the amount of manga I read each year with the number of western comics, western comics win by a mile.
But I still read Bizenghast. I still read Nightschool. I read Re:Play through to its conclusion (and not just because I was the editor of that series for a while). If I have any interest in the subject matter of a comic, I’ll read it, regardless of the style. So why is it that comics drawn by manga-influenced artists (other than Adam Warren) seem to always struggle to find an audience in the United States?
Unfortunately, I still think there’s a lot of misunderstanding among both readers and publishers. They hear manga and they instantly think of big eyes and flowery backgrounds. The problem is that far too many people still cling to the idea that manga is a style. Manga is not a style. It’s a format, and even within that format there’s a lot of diversity. To say someone is a manga artist is no different than to say they’re a comic book artist. And just like with comic book artists, manga artists can draw in vastly different styles.
Svetlana Chmakova’s manga art is very different from Nam Kim’s. Christy Lijewski’s art looks nothing like Rem’s. All of them are manga-influenced, and not one of them draws characters that look like Sailor Moon. Sure, it’s possible they could adapt their art, make it look more western. Being stylistically diverse isn’t a bad thing, especially if it can get them more paying work. But why should they have to do that if they don’t want to? Why should any talented artist have to?
I should mention that there ARE publishers out there who seem more than happy to hire gifted, unique artists regardless of their style and influence. Thank goodness for Oni Press, First Second and traditional publishers like Penguin. We need more of them. But for that to happen, we first need to be willing to prove to publishers that comics drawn by manga-influenced artists can sell, and that means recognizing that manga isn’t this evil, threatening entity that we must destroy before it absorbs all the shelves at our local comic book shops, but part of the family. Don’t roll your eyes when you hear someone call themselves a manga artist—look at their art. Really look at it. It won’t hurt you, and if you keep an open mind, I can guarantee that there are quite a few manga-influenced artists that you’re going to love.
At New York Comic-Con last month, I was introduced to a ridiculously talented manga-influenced artist. She showed me her latest comic (which she had self-published), and after seeing how skilled she is, I thought about a few of the projects I’m working on that are in need of artists. I asked her if she only drew in a manga style, and she said yes. It was the only way of drawing that she really felt passionate about. I remember looking down at some of the comics in front of me, shaking my head, and telling her that unfortunately, I didn’t have any opportunities for her right now. None of the publishers I’m working with are interested in publishing comics drawn in a manga-influenced style. She smiled and said she understood, and that it’s something she’s heard before.
It’s a conversation I hope to never have again.
Hi Tim! Interesting observations, and a rather sad closing note.
I’m sure you have a much better sense of the market & audience than I do, but I wonder if part of the problem might be that even self-identified “manga fans” in the West are indifferent to OEL works, since if they don’t come from Japan they aren’t considered real manga. I never got the impression that OEL titles were terribly successful relative to “real” Japanese ones, but I don’t know if that was because they cost more to produce, or if the absolute sale figures were simply lower.
Of course, that just compounds the problem. You end up with a generation of manga-loving fans who aspire to create their own work in that style, but can’t find an audience among either Western comics companies, Japanese manga publishers (Felipe Smith being the rare exception), or even Western manga fans. As a manga lover who wants to make that evolutionary leap from consumer to producer, where’s your upgrade path? Ultimately, I think that makes it an easier habit to outgrow.
To me, the obvious solution is to adapt your style a bit and find your own artistic voice, combining the manga influence with your own local comics tradition to create something a bit more hybrid. I understand your concern about artistic integrity, but frankly, the manga-influenced artists I’ve seen coming through my art school often tend to be dogmatic and inflexible, uninterested in developing their drawing skills and with a fairly superficial understanding of manga aesthetics. Obviously this doesn’t apply to the artists you’ve cited, but I think they may be blessed exceptions.
You’re absolutely right about the response (or lack thereof) from manga fans when it comes to western artists who draw in a manga style. With one or two exceptions, Tokyopop’s original manga titles never sold as well as even the more mid-level licensed titles. There are likely several reasons for this, but I think you can’t deny that the fanbase Tokyopop developed through publishing titles like Chobits, Love Hina and Fruits Basket didn’t follow them on to MBQ, Shutterbox and East Coast Rising.
However, I didn’t choose to address this because quite frankly, most of those readers aren’t reading western comics, and short of self-publishing, if you’re hoping to make a living drawing comics of any style in the United States, you now have to look at more traditional western publishers. Whereas, once a manga-influenced artist could show and pitch their work to Tokyopop, Viz, Del Rey and Yen Press, now they’re limited to publishers like Oni Press, Image, IDW, Dark Horse, BOOM!, Top Cow and of course the Big Two. And most of them don’t seem to have a lot of interest in publishing comics drawn in that style.
You make a fair point about the talent to be found in many of them, but after reviewing portfolios for Tokyopop for over three years, I can say that there are plenty of talented manga-styled artists out there, and many of them are now hurting for work. Sometimes even a slight or perceived manga influence is enough to get a publisher to say “thanks, but no thanks.”
See, this is where the fact that you actually know something about the industry gives you an unfair debating advantage! 🙂
So yeah, I see your point. Now that the OEL publishers have packed up shop – or, as with Viz, never gotten around to opening shop in the first place – it doesn’t really matter what Western manga fans think of OEL manga, since nobody’s even trying to market it anymore. That’s only of interest to Captain Hindsight at this point.
And it’s certainly heartbreaking to see all these manga-style artists – many of whom, I’ll willingly grant, are actually very talented – left with no prospects for paying work. I do feel that this is a fundamental problem with Western manga fandom; if you love a medium that much, it’s natural to want to make your own, but between the xenophobia of the mainstream comics market and the Orientalist snobbery of manga fandom, there’s simply no audience for it.
It’s amazing how many kids I meet who only respond to manga or art influenced by it! But I guess there is a disconnect between what kids in libraries want vs. comic shops.
Great post, Tim. I wonder how much of what you are describing isn’t so much a matter of audience acceptance as it is one of publisher expectations. Tokyopop has always been about cool brands and lifestyle, so the company’s motto, for better or for worse, is that “it’s all cool, it’s all manga, it’s all Tokyopop!” when in reality, the stable of talent was much more diverse than the company’s ability to market and sell. Titles that bombed for Tokyopop could have been nurtured at a boutique publisher and possibly found more “success” with lower margins and different expectations. Does a “manga style” hurt a book’s chances to find an audience? In terms of the sales channels, probably, as Tokyopop and others made “OEL” synonymous with under-performing manga, but as far as readers go, I really don’t think it’s a handicap. The real challenge is in selling unestablished brands to the tween->20s audience. Manga-fied Odd Thomas, Maximum Ride, Warriors, & Twilight do just fine. Selling a new story from new talent is tough in any medium, even without the manga badge.
Also, I “apologize” for using 12,000 quotes.
Jake: See, this is why we need an OEL dojinshi scene, so that up-and-coming wanna-be manga artists can build a following using already popular characters. (I’d certainly rather see fans spending their energy on dojinshi than straight-up bootlegging.) If only people weren’t so uptight about trademarks over here…
Jake, all good points, but I still believe the manga style has a stigma attached to it that other highly-stylized forms of comic art don’t seem to carry. I’ve been told more than once over the past year that certain artists I suggested for projects had too much of a manga-influence in their art. I’ve been able to sneak a few of them on Fraggle Rock, but I’ve had to encourage them to tone those influences down. And that’s unfortunate in my mind. I’d absolutely love to see someone like Rem or Emma Vieceli draw a mangafied Fraggle story. I mean, if there isn’t room for them in an anthology title, where is there room for them?
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Tim, when I looked at the credits on that Fraggle Rock anthology, I actually thought “Someday, Tokyopop will get credit for being the incubator for a whole generation of comics artists.” That’s a great lineup you have there, and I would like to see all those artists get more work. Already a lot of the alumni have gone on to their own series.
And actually, I think you are being a bit inconsistent here: If “manga” isn’t a style, what is it about these artists that is putting people off? What is it they are supposed to tone down?
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I was recently having this conversation with another cartoonist.
Tokyopop’s death was, in retrospect, not surprising, given their publishing tactics, but a lot sooner than the rest of the manga sector was prepared for. Viz was just gearing up to pursue an OEL program, Yen Press was just getting theirs into swing, Del Ray was sort of walking in the door…and all of a sudden, Tokyopop which had been the cultural lynchpin, cornerstone and de facto leader in English-speaking-Manga-world had collapsed. My argument is that the rest of the manga market didn’t have the time to “cover” for Tokyopop by providing vigorous competition that would have carried the weight when TPop eventually folded.
The power vacuum was devastating and while one would believe that the void would be filled due to the frenzied demand for manga content, some other things happened:
1) Everybody else paused. Froze in their tracks. The most visible symbol of manga here in the North American-centric market had fallen and this reflected very poorly on “manga” in general. The other publishers seemed to be reluctant to act as aggressively as they had been poised to act just priorly.
2) The fans grew up and grew out. Maybe the fatal flaw with Tokyopop is that it was aimed at the single most fickle audience in the world–teenagers. Some always maintained a love of manga and comics, but as with teens, manga was a phase and a craze for many others.
3) Over enthusiastic response to Tokyopop’s downsizing created a domino effect of bad will, causing an atmosphere of gloating at the manga sector’s misfortune as well as validating a suspicion which had been pervasive the entire time: that manga was nothing but a fad. It was ugly and it hurt everybody in the end.
4) (continued from item 1) “pause” turned to “halt.” Perception is reality. I was watching enthusiastically during the rise of OEL. I could taste the excitement of a new kind of cartoonist eager to create work in a way that appealed to them! And more than any other kind of comics, Tokyopop created a very public perception of a career path into and through comics! You’d hear young cartoonists all the time talking about their pitches and submissions, weighing the pros and cons of direct submission versus “Rising Stars” entries. There was a sense that comics was a job that one could get by working through a set of levels. It didn’t seem intimidating in the sense that people didn’t know how one gets such a job. With Tokyopop and its programs gone, there was a sense that *THERE WAS NO PATH* anymore. I heard a lot of people asking “what do we do now?”
5) scanlations–the gift and the curse. On the one hand, scanlations built rabid fanbases for series that would be hungry for a series before it even came to the States. On the other hand, it cannibalized sales–and with teenagers’s limited spending potential and inherent short-sightedness, this eroded the rest of the manga scene. More than proper scanlations, the problem was webcomic scan sites like OneManga.com and MangaFox.com which made scanlation-reading so easy that it was no longer for the hardcore, tech-savy manga fan. I saw gradeschoolers checking out the sites at the public library. It became easier to read manga for free than to spend any kind of money or effort finding them–this, combined with Tokyopop’s collapsed created a world where paying for manga-related stuff seemed illogical to the casual fan.
6) the lack of integration with the “Western comics” world choked the last bit of life from the manga scene. The two “factions” seemed to be at war for much of the time and as a result, the readers of mainstream North American comic books didn’t have a lot of interest in reading manga or manga-styled work. It seemed that a lot of it came down to: “well now we don’t have to see or hear about THAT stuff anymore.” The jobs weren’t there for the artists because the subcultures: mainstream North American comics and manga-in-America still had fairly rigid separation.
7) I want to throw a comment in response to one of the comments that I’ve heard a lot. The idea that the manga-influenced artists needed to embrace Western comics more. Or that they were pretending or choosing manga-styled art instead of their own culture. This type of thing (regardless of the speaker’s intention) misunderstands the entire point. For these artists, manga is EVERYTHING. Manga-type comics ARE their primary influence. For many of these people, they weren’t rejecting traditional North American comic books, those comics had nothing to do with them. Jim Lee was as alien to these artists as Yukito Kishiro is to the average Spider-Man fan.
I’ve been carrying this around in my head for a bunch of years. Thanks for raising the subject. Excellent post.
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As a regular Artist Alley goer at Cons, I notice a lot of this, especially since I mostly draw manga. On the upside, I tend to get a lot of customers who weren’t originally looking for manga but end up interested in my stuff enough to purchase it. Anime-Expo, for me, went fast and I made quite a bit of money. But that’s like selling to the choir, they already know what to expect and they buy what they like. San Diego and Long Beach Comic-Cons, on the other hand, was quite different. Although I made more at SDCC, it seemed quite slower… then it donned on me. It wasn’t until I started to do commissions was the booth picking up speed. That brought them in, the anime influenced styles of American characters kept them coming back. It also didn’t hurt that I fused my American and Anime styles either. But, in the end, it’s persistence and drive that will get the American Anime artists ahead. And because they have to fight a lot harder, you will see a higher level of quality within that community of artists as the normal American styled artists move to video games
i’m on your blog!!!! >:D
i wonder if one of the main problems here is how the word manga has been appropriated by people outside of Japan and turned into a marketing thing. it’s needless differentiation when everything is comics. film, for example; unless there’s just no equivalent in one’s spoken language, nobody calls foreign movies by whatever “film” is in the original language, like when i watch Japanese movies or French movies or whatever, i don’t call Spanish movies pelicula, nobody in North America uses that and i’m willing to bet nobody elsewhere uses English to describe some global artform. it’s all just MOVIES. prose, too. i realize that different cultures have different visual languages when it comes to comics, of course, but i don’t know why the medium has to be so culturally fractured.
me again! …..on the other hand, thinking more after i posted that first hasty comment, maybe there SHOULD be some kind of differentiation between Japanese comics and everywhere else, because comics from Japan are definitely a different kind of “force,” both culturally and financially, than American and European comics and anywhere else. so maybe it does need its specific word, so people can write essays and stuff specifically about comics from Japan, since there’s for sure a wealth to write about. i don’t know. what do you think? :\
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Ross, I think a little bit of differentiation is good. I agree about the foreign film analogy, but we do have different types of movies: documentary, animated, short, experimental, etc. While it may seem a little xenophobic to differentiate on the basis of what country a comic originated in, I think it makes sense because of the inherent differences. Our traditional 4-color comics are very different from classic manga, which are very different from the large BD they were reading in Europe. But that said, we’re all in the same business. Just like a documentary filmmaker and a director of big-budgeted popcorn flicks are still in the same industry, still filmmakers.
It’s funny because a lot of people have taken this post to be about why OEL manga doesn’t sell, and that’s a fine topic for discussion, but I was more interested in why so many talented artists who just happen to be manga-influenced need to change their style to something more western to find work at those publishers. Maybe I’m naive and artists are forced to change their styles all the time, but I can’t imagine Dark Horse telling you to change your style to something more Mignola-like, Ross. Or asking Brandon Graham to draw more like Brian Hitch. It only seems to be the manga-influenced artists who get that.
Hey guys I just wanted to chime in for a bit,
here are a few reasons I think Tokyopop had such a hard time with OEL
I think Tim hints at something here: “There are likely several reasons for this, but I think you can’t deny that the fanbase Tokyopop developed through publishing titles like Chobits, Love Hina and Fruits Basket didn’t follow them on to MBQ, Shutterbox and East Coast Rising. ” I think Tokyopop brought in a refreshing women’s audience to comics. But the problem is with a track record for things like Chobits, Love Hina, and Fruits Basket…I could physically watch, most young men avoid the Tokyopop isle entirely. When that happens it’s no wonder things like MBQ, Shutterbox, and Eastcoast rising don’t do so well because the publisher has been synonymous with shoujo. They didn’t have the audience for it, nor did they realize that and take appropriate measures to balance. However they had the perfect set up for their other OEL titles like Peach Fuzz, Drama Con, Bizenghast, Vampire Kisses, from what I know did very well for Tokyopop in comparison to any other original titles.
Also OEL for the most part can’t complete with the top mangaka in Japan (except maybe Felipe and REM). Anyone who compares the two sets of artists may not realize the artists on our side don’t have an actual industry to support us, things like proper pay, tools, training, learning opportunities, editors with loads of experience to help guide us. You don’t just go to school, learn everything and boom! suddenly you have a talented comic artist. You have to eat, sleep, and fight for comics on a daily basis to actually improve.
If anything I think the whole shebang with Tokyopop had more good than bad, they got more female readers reading comics, and gave new guys like me a shot at doing it.
And I’m thankful for that. However I do think that publishers ran off after Tokyopop was forced to take a knee.
But we’ll come back fighting in the form of digital anthologies, I’m 98% certain.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, Tim, I’ll admit that, in my current role as an editor at a traditional book publisher, I’ve asked manga-influenced artists (artists I like and whose work I adore) to “westernize” their style. I’ve requested that they get rid of character’s “manga bangs” and utilize more traditional panel layouts. I avoid any trim size remotely resembling a “manga trim”. In certain areas of the publishing world, manga does have a stigma attached to it and—perhaps as a veteran (or victim) of the “Manga Revolution”—I understand that I need to bend to the needs (perceived or real) of the marketplace. For those who have read, created and enjoyed OEL, manga, western comics, and/or any other kind of comic know that they are essentially one beast—however to the people who go out and sell these books (at the publisher, distribution or retail level) they are different formats that live in different parts of the store. Many publishers have been burned by early, failed attempts to publish manga or manga-influenced books and that word has left a bad taste in their mouths. The major manga publishers have failed or have been failing for a number of years and, despite the causes, the perception to most is that manga has seen its day. And while I agree with Maximo that manga and manga-influenced artists will grow and thrive via digital publications, in the struggling print world it has become a bit of a “dirty word” and I don’t think publishers are willing to give it second chance. Sadly, I feel that the fate of many of these artists relies more on the current marketplace than the quality of their art.
I agree with Ross’ first comment, I think marketing “manga” has laid to stereotyping, labeling, and prejudice against artstyle. Which could have been avoided had we just referred to everything as “comics” and separated based on medium like “strips”,”black and white books” “single issue” “graphic novels” ALL working under the banner of “comics”.
Rob, I’ve had to have the same conversation with manga-styled artists. I’ve had to push them to draw in a more traditionally western style, and I’m sure I’ll have to continue doing that. I’m just saying that it’s a shame. I don’t enjoy it and while I have no doubt from a publishing standpoint it makes sense (or does it? After all, Scott Pilgrim is highly manga-influenced), I do feel we should be doing what we can to change it.
Maybe if Maximo’s right and we start seeing an influx of manga-influenced comics on the web and available as digital downloads, they’ll have time to come into their own and build a younger, more tech-savvy fanbase that eventually traditional publishers won’t be able to ignore. But that’s the idealistic side of me. And I usually just ignore that side. =)
What a great post. I wish I had written it myself. I’ve also noticed with dismay the death of “OEL” manga over the last few years, really beginning with Tokyopop slashing their OEL program in 2008 (which was not coincidentally timed around the same time as the leaking of Tokyopop’s contracts and the public scorn that followed — although Tokyopop’s contracts, although not ideal, were really not that bad as comics industry contracts go).
Surely, some fault for this is due to bigoted manga fans, and to an attitude of exclusion against manga that isn’t from Japan — my own “Manga: The Complete Guide” included. There are still plenty of people who like manga, and manga-influenced artists are going to continue to survive as much as any ‘indy’ comic artists can survive, via self-publishing, the Web, etc. But, coming after a time when even companies like Dark Horse would publish works as shamelessly manga-esque as “Red String” (not a favorite of mine, but I’m using it as an example of how in “manga” was), it’s hard — it’s REALLY hard — to see the majority of financially viable outlets for manga-influenced artists in America go up in smoke. To the vast majority of surviving comics companies, be they mainstream or indy, the manga style is the kiss of death — maybe even MORE so than it was pre-2003, when manga still had the flavor of something “up-and-coming”, rather than the flavor of something old and has-been.
The idea of publishing manga as a way to generate ‘franchises’, which is a big factor in the financial success or at least survival of many American comics publishers, definitely failed. I’m not a big fan of the idea of publishing comics as a way to develop properties for hypothetical movies, animation and TV shows, but even that could have been been okay, if the contracts hadn’t been too transparently greedy or hostile to the original creators, and if it had, frankly, succeeded. But for manga, it didn’t. The greenlighting of manga-influenced movies in Hollywood is going to be judged for the foreseeable future on the abject failure of “Dragonball: Evolution.” (I was around Viz for the very first overtures between Shueisha and the movie studios, and I can’t think of two more equally immovable objects, with regard to their corporate arrogance. But I guess Hollywood had the home field advantage.) Heck, even the partially manga-influenced Scott Pilgrim, one of the greatest comics I could think of, flopped at the box office. All Tokyopop has to show for Stu Levy’s many comments about how hard he’s pitching movies to Hollywood studios is the “Priest” movie and “Van Von Hunter.” Hardly a recipe for success.
But what I find saddest about this is that for a brief time, it seemed like companies like Tokyopop and others were really trying to develop ORIGINAL CONTENT. Whether to sell movies or books or just the *idea* of OEL manga, they were trying to create something new. Now, most of the decently-selling OEL manga published in America — whether it’s “Twilight,” “Mameshiba” or “Warriors” — are just adaptations of properties from other media. (Jake, I love “Return to Labyrinth,” though! 😉 ) What a humiliation, what a scaling back of dreams — OEL manga publishing, which once attempted to actually generate new stories and new artists who could become popular on their *own* merits, is reduced to making whatever money they can off of existing properties. Is this just a way to economically ‘weather the storm’? I’d like to think so, but it seems more like a complete shift of focus away from ever returning to that business model.
As for Western comics — whatever. Well, let me clarify that. Not “whatever.” I do love indy comics. I love Scott Pilgrim, I love Achewood, Kate Beaton, Dylan Meconis, Jen Wang, Derek Kirk Kim, Gene Yang, Gabrielle Bell, Jason Shiga, Shaenon Garrity, assorted webcomics, etc. And although I hate the franchise mentality of superhero comics, I do realize that there are some great artists and writers living off of superhero comics, so I appreciate a good story by Grant Morrison or Alan Moore with art by Duncan Fegredo or Frank Quitely or whoever. But I love manga the most. I love manga because it is creator-owned, or at least as creator-owned as old newspaper strips in their heyday. I love manga because the stories are long and spacious whereas Western comics are generally short and cramped (sadly, for economic issues as much as anything — manga-influenced artists are going to have trouble telling stories in anything like a ‘manga style’ in the 32 or 48 page increments or, ooooh! 80-page “graphic novels,” allotted to them by American publishers). I love manga because it is emotional and warm and mushy whereas bestselling Western comics are generally hard and dead and cold (i.e., every bestselling Western comic about some ‘realistic’ superhero or boring-ass assassin or hitman). I love manga because, at its best, it is flowing and visually expressive whereas Western comics are chiseled and stiff. There are many terrible, wretched manga (and terrible manga fans who are totally ignorant of non-manga comics), and many wonderful Western comics. But in the publishing world, the whole idea and image of manga is sullied, and with it, I think, the idea that manga will be accepted as a viable part of American comics culture rather than some perpetual foreign invader.
Oh, and Rob, I actually think it’s very commendable that you’re willing to work with artists like Emma Vieceli on such high profile books! Even if she needs to alter her style, the fact that there are editors in comics who don’t hold that bias no doubt means a lot to all of the talented manga-influenced artists out there still harboring hope for a comic book career.
I’d submitted to Tokyopop in the past and had good experiences…. I love that you guys are bringing up these issues, as I’ve seen this sort of stuff play out in artist alleys and with friends who’ve attempted to get published. The stigma attached to manga, and to mangainfluenced comics really is wierd and occasionally unsettling. It’s something that makes it hard to keep working at comics, with the strange growth in anti-creator sentiments in fandom recently.
It also reminds me how much superhero comics have changed in terms of their manga influences. It was everywhere in the 90’s, now replaced with a very realistic house style in many cases. Just look at how DC de-mangafied Impulse over the years after Humberto Ramos’ classic run. The guys from that era are still working, having established their fanbases [Chris Bachalo is one who really got into cartoonier influcences throughout the 90’s and stuck with that revamped look], but it seems publishers have shyed away from it lately.
Thanks for the excellent discussion everyone 🙂
Would you have asked Van Gogh to tone down his Japonisme influence? Eastern and Western art have cross-pollinated so much for centuries that I don’t understand why anyone needs to cry about manga-influence.
Tankouban are expensive. Buyers must be selective. The market is glutted with licensed manga tankouban – in the west we now have domestic access to the best manga in the world. But publishers wanted OEL manga to compete with and sell comparably to Chobits? Fruits Basket? DeathNote? Yeah, right.
Honestly, I never saw a single OEL title that was as good as top tier manga. A lot of publishers put OEL books out and thought they would sell just because of the style when many of these books lacked compelling premises, appealing characters, solid writing, and in many cases, solid art. You can make excuses ’til the cows come home but the fact is the majority of the OEL books were and are mediocre.
You know the page rates though. It boiled down to minimum wage and sometimes less than minimum wage. Combined with TP’s bloodsucking contract, of course you were going to get freshman art and amateur writing. The whole OEL experiment was doomed from inception and I’m glad to see it mostly over with. It was a waste of everyone’s time.
This is something that has seriously annoyed me.
I’m going to have to quote myself from an earlier rant to set this up:
“There’s this idea, of telling stories through images on paper – that is really amazing and interesting and has endless possibilities. But in practice it’s like somebody invented the piano, and an entire industry has sprung up and perpetuated itself on playing “hot cross buns”. You KNOW that a lot more could be played on that piano, but all you ever get is “hot cross buns” again and again and again. It’s not just that the potential is unexploited that is annoying, it’s also that “hot cross buns” itself is also annoying and uninteresting.”
Here is the problem. I’m not a comic enthusiast. I don’t have a box of comic books in plastic sleeves in my closet. I don’t collect comics. I don’t really care about Superman, the other superheros, their “universe” or any of the associated historical baggage that goes with them. I’m not in the tiny minority of the general public that comic publishers cater to.
The comic industry seems to be really insular. They don’t seem interested in trying to make anything for anybody other than the fans they already have. To me looking in from the outside, if the comic book publishing industry were the auto industry – they’d be going “hey tail fins were a big hit in 1958, so let’s just keep doing that”.
From my where I stand, asking artists to be more “western” is silly. The artists live in the western hemisphere, their art is western. Period. When you try to make a “manga style” more “western” you only make the “fakeness factor” increase. I also can’t imagine any self respecting artist going “oh hey, now that I have to do something I’m less interested in I’m REALLY GONNA GO ALL OUT!” – you know? It’s just not right from any angle. It doesn’t make the comic any more appealing to me (a potential customer), it doesn’t increase the quality of the product, it probably doesn’t inspire the artist to be more into their work. It’s just pointless counter-productive ostentation.
Earlier this year I went to a large comic shop when they had their annual sale. I’m not a comic fanatic, but I do like comics. I have some of the Calvin and Hobbes books, Far Side collections, a few compilations of early U.S. comics like Mutt & Jeff, etc – and a couple volumes of misc. manga. But like I said earlier, no boxes of comic books in sleeves, no bookcase filled with comics.
I walked out empty handed despite things being buy one get one free.
You know why? Because I’ve seen excellent comics online being produced by excellent artists. These guys make stuff far and away more interesting than anything I saw in the entire store. Believe me I tried to find something, I like a good bargain, and I buy stuff at the grocery store all the time just because it’s on sale.
But the thing is I’ve been exposed to better comics than those available in stores. Better comics than publishers are willing to print.
It really sucks that some of them have to put their work online and print their own books, when it seems like publishers are willing to hand out jobs to anybody who kind of sorta, half-assed draws like Jack Kirby.
But sadly, such is the state of the American comics. Style over substance.
The more I think about it the more I become of the opinion that American publishers haven’t got a single clue what people want, let alone what makes an interesting product.
Sorry that that is kind of a down note. But it is amazingly frustrating. You see people do amazing things online and go “hey I wonder if I can find something like this at the comic store” – and 90% of what’s there is just shoddy facsimile Jack Kirby schlock.
Whatever the stigma of manga is in the comics industry, trust me the stigma of “comics” to the general public is much worse. Maybe publishers should do something about that.
@Erica — Wow, nice to see you’re so thrilled by the lack of work for non-Japanese comic artists. I guess Americans should just resign themselves to being only consumers of manga, never producers, then? If you’ve really never read a single manga-influenced non-Japanese title you liked, including webcomics, that’s a shame, but that also makes you the manga equivalent of one of those superhero comics fans who only reads DC and Marvel, meaning it doesn’t sound like you’re very open to new experiences. Japanese stuff is always separate from everything else for me too, on some level, but I also like indy comics, etc.
It’s true; a lot of OEL was awful. Obviously OEL artists don’t have access to, among other things, the scads of assistants that high-paid manga artists do, so that’s one reason they were less polished. But among the chaff, there are tons of great artists who started out at companies like Tokyopop and Oni and Dark Horse back-in-the-day: Svetlana Chmakova, Felipe Smith, Tintin Pantoja, Joanna Estep, James Stokoe, Maximo Lorenzo, Lanny Liu, Takeshi Miyazawa, Chynna Clugston-Major, Adam Warren (the latter two a little more oldschool)… I’m sure I could list a ton more. And while American writers may not be as polished as the top tier of manga artists, they also have the advantage of being able to write about subject matter which is closer to American readers (unless they’re being complete weeaboos and writing stories set in Japan at Japanese high schools, of course).
It’s true that companies threw a lot of garbage out there under the label “manga,” and I’m glad that the world won’t see the likes of “Manga Claus” any more, but Tokyopop gave paying work and some degree of creative control and ownership (you do realize that most comic companies in the U.S. apart from Marvel and DC don’t even pay advances, right? And the page rates from Tokyopop weren’t that bad) to a lot of aspiring comic creators. Their withdrawal from the OEL market meant less opportunities for manga-influenced artists everywhere, which sucks, unless you’re in it for the schadenfreude.
Really, what I have always wanted to see the most in OEL manga — the highest achievements of OEL manga — is something that draws from manga, but is original. I love the overall format and field of manga, but I’ve read so many formulaic, crappy stories (and most amazing of all, so many chosen-to-be-translated crappy formulaic stories) that I thirst most of all for originality. For every awful “OEL” artist, some American manga publisher published an equally awful translated manga. And in this case, I would give the OEL the benefit of the doubt. The worst OEL are mindless rip-offs of Japanese stuff. The best OEL manga achieve that precious mix of the goodness of manga with ideas and artistic influences that the typical Japanese artist would never have. THIS is the awesomeness of OEL manga at its best.
By manga influences, do you mean the use of decompressed storytelling, or the typical manga conventions of big eyes/small mouth, sweatdrops, vein pops, etc etc?
An artist could imitate any sort of style if they so chose, but whether or not they enjoy it will definitely show through the art. As a reader, I want to see an artist’s original and unique voice, not a forced imitation. Readers can definitely pick up if an artist is just trying to mimic the style (be it Western or manga) and that the artist doesn’t really understand it. This will only earn scorn from the readers and put them off even more.
As an artist myself, I personally do very much want to support OEL works. A good comic is a good comic irregardless of what the marketing dept decides to label it. Unfortunately many of the OEL titles (mostly Tokyopop’s) I came across were lacking in many ways – either in art, characters, story or all combined. Reading them was often times frustrating, and I am obviously not the only one who felt this way. I understand that those OEL artists and writers were still honing their skills, but readers are still consumers and they will be picky with both their money and time. They are not going to bother with second/third rate work because there are many other choices for them to cherry pick through.
On the flip side of the coin, there are many manga-inspired webcomics that blow published OEL out of water. There are some very talented Western artists drawing in the manga style out there. I personally don’t care if a comic is manga-inspired, Disney-inspired, or Western-inspired. It all boils down to if the comic is worth my time and money.
Wow… Excellent comments all around. Thanks for sharing them, guys. I wasn’t expecting this.
Jason, thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts. I couldn’t agree with you more. The bottom line is that both formats have their strengths and weaknesses from a storytelling perspective, and it’s disappointing that one of them has been effectively stomped out in this country.
And Erica, I really feel that if you never saw a single OEL title that was as good as top tier manga, then you just didn’t read enough. They may not have had the sales, but I would say that MBQ, DramaCon, Scott Pilgrim and East Coast Rising ARE as good as Chobits, Fruits Basket and Death Note. Yes, there was a lot of mediocrity, but there’s a lot of mediocrity in all formats, including manga from Japann.
And Jason’s right about the rates. Tokyopop’s advances were very decent considering they were publishing unproven properties and often working with unpublished creators. They may have been well beneath Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, but the fact that creators who had worked for those publishers–such as Becky Cloonan, Jimmy Palmiotti, Barbara Kesel and Pop Mhan–were willing to also work for Tokyopop should be proof that they were hardly below industry standard for what they were doing.
“I guess Americans should just resign themselves to being only consumers of manga, never producers, then?”
As a matter of fact, Jason…YES.
If you want to know the very reason “manga” is considered a dirty word everywhere else, then Erica, Tim, yourself, and many of the other commenters have ALREADY explained exactly why that is! I’ll re-quote some of Tim’s original post, since he hit the nail so perfectly on the head:
“Unfortunately, I still think there’s a lot of misunderstanding among both readers and publishers. They hear manga and they instantly think of big eyes and flowery backgrounds. The problem is that far too many people still cling to the idea that manga is a style. Manga is not a style. It’s a format, and even within that format there’s a lot of diversity…But we’re not talking about Japanese manga here. We’re talking about American comics that just happen to be drawn in a style that’s influenced by Japanese sequential art.”
Emphasis mine. Why, pray tell, would so many publishers and consumers alike be associating anything to do with “manga” as being “sub-par” product in the first place? Whatever might have given rise to and perpetuated this unfortunate misunderstanding of which we speak? It’s because even though we’re all talking about American comics that just happen to be drawn in a Japanese-influenced style, that’s not how they were sold and marketed. They were sold as “manga.”
Even the rest of you guys, fully aware and fully educated of the difference between the two, are still using the terms interchangeably here. (Justifications for why one may choose to do so are beyond the scope of the current subject.) And so it is that when a super-majority of these manga-influenced American comics were labeled “manga” (or perhaps even “100% Authentic Manga”?) and were AWFUL (for whatever reason), the direct result is that–surprise, surprise!–publishers and retailers alike started equating “manga” with “sub-par comics.”
This isn’t the fault of “bigoted manga fans,” Jason. It is not “bigoted,” “hateful,” or “divisive” to distinguish between “Japanese comics” [what “manga” is in my book, and nothing more] and “American comics influenced by Japanese comics.” Rather, the fallout and resulting stigma is the direct result of the little game that publishers like Tokyopop et al chose to play with retailers: selling them American/Korean/Chinese comics with superficially similar-styled artwork and bindings under the guise of “manga” so that they’d stock them right alongside the Japanese stuff.
The right thing to do if they wanted other US publishers to be more accepting of manga-influenced American comics would have been to simply not attempt to brand these works as “manga,” “Amerimanga,” “Original English Language manga,” etc in the first place and just call them by the name we already use in English for non-Japanese comics: “comics.” After all, you can take one glance at Scott Pilgrim and conclude “that’s a manga-influenced comic!” with no special distinction necessary. The problem was the entire marketing campaign for “manga” was built on the very notion that “manga rules, comics drool!” such that they HAD to attempt to brand these manga-influenced works as “manga” somehow. And so THEY are the ones who re-branded “manga” as a style instead of the format that it actually is! THEY are the ones who said “if you draw artwork with big eyes, flowery backgrounds, speed lines, sweatdrops then YOU TOO can be a ‘manga’ artist!” They couldn’t just call them “comics” because in order to establish “manga” as a retail concept, they made “comics” into a dirty word.
And it worked. Mission accomplished.
Well, it can’t go both ways. Either “manga” is one thing and “manga-influenced comics” are another, thus enabling people to easily distinguish between the two and therefore not judge one based upon the other, or they’re one and the same such that people equate the two for better and for worse such that we should all just accept the backlash. I prefer option 1. I say if you want “manga” to not be a dirty word, then make “comics” not be a dirty word first. And step one for that is this: “Americans should just resign themselves to being only consumers of manga, never producers.”
So frustrating to read this as a manga and western comics fan.
Art, honestly, is basically irrelevant. Most of the people I know can’t remember a layout from an issue or two back – but they’ll recall a storyline, or a twist, or a new take on a moldy “big two” character that charmed them. That’s where the love is. Not saying art isn’t important in comics, just that it’s almost never the thing that makes a non-artist fall in love with a title.
Great Manga is great because it’s all about the reader.
Great Superhero comics are great because it’s all about the brand.
Great Indie stuff is great because it’s all about the story.
OEL Manga, to me, seems to generally be all about the creator. And don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of Indie stuff that feels the same way – it’s just that the Indie comics that “make the shelf” are of a quality level far beyond anything I saw out of OEL Manga, with an exception here or there.
Overall, I think creators should just forget the idea of making a segregated category for OEL Manga, period. Either
a) “get a factory job” playing with someone else’s license (and following whatever rules they have, which are usually pretty clearly stated),
b) focus on creating original work the market WANTS to read (slave to a slightly different, harder to understand but easier to please master), or
c) go ahead and tell us “your story” (but be sure you do a damn good job of it).
Do at least two of the above at the same time, consistently (by the way, FUCK YOU ONSTAD), and you will not starve to death (though you may have to live with your parents forever).
Excellent points, Daryl. Very well stated. I actually agree with your argument as a whole, but I do disagree on a few pretty important points.
First, I’m not convinced that the stigma derives from so much stuff that isn’t from Japan (manhwa, manhua, OEL) being labeled as manga, though I agree it probably didn’t help. As someone who grew up a superhero comic reader and spent much of my college and post-college years hanging out in comic book shops, the stigma was there even before companies started trying to produce the stuff out here. We were fine with Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Lone Wolf and Cub, as well as other occasional manga titles being sold in our stores as long as they kept to their own little sections in the corner of the store and never encroached on our Sin City or Hellboy. As soon as they started to, not long after the start of the millenium, that attitude changed and all of a sudden manga almost started to be seen as a threat. That’s at least how it seemed to me, which made my move into manga publishing a very strange experience for me since at first, I really wasn’t sure what I thought of it.
The other point I don’t agree with–and I’m speaking strictly from my experience at Tokyopop here–was that there was ever a consistent style to any of Tokyopop’s OEL titles. Just looking at some of their more succesful ones, DramaCon looks very different from Bizenghast, which looks very different from Re:Play, which looks like it comes from a entirely different world than I Luv Halloween. One could argue (and probably justifiably so) that this just makes labeling them all manga that much more ridiculous. However, if OEL is responsible for perpetuating the fallacy that manga is a style, it certainly wasn’t intentional over at Tokyopop, and looking at their titles, it’s hard to see how that could be the case.
But like I said, I’m speaking only of one publisher and I realize the issue transcends them. Also, I do realize that I’ve been using the terms “manga-influenced artists” and “manga-style artists” interchangeably, and you’re right, perhaps I shouldn’t. It’s just that “manga-influenced artists” is so goddamn unwieldy. How about I just call them MIAs from now on? Considering the topic, it seems appropriate.
I think Daryl, you are applying more significance to certain aspects of the marketing of “manga” in the U.S. than there really exists.
Yes “manga” was/is treated as a marketing buzzword. Yes it carries certain connotations to certain people. But I don’t think it was the downfall of OEL.
The idea of OEL is rather recent. Tokyopop took some baby steps and fell over. Everybody else has over reacted. It’s like a child tried riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time, fell down and everybody said “well I guess we should just give up, because this obviously will never work – OEL is obviously unworkable, just like riding a bicycle is”.
Additionally the economic climate hasn’t really stimulated any efforts. I took a keen interest in Viz’s plans to launch a line of OEL books and watched the effort closely. They sincerely intended to do it, it seems, but various problems inside and outside of the company ended up freezing the project. It’s not completely dead as of yet (at least so far as I know) – and perhaps in the future it may be revived. I’m not going to hold my breath though.
I think the comic world will suffer for them halting it, but they had to lay off almost half of their staff for economic reasons (ostensibly) – so it would seem to indicate that taking on a costly endeavor such as publishing original works simply wouldn’t have been practicable.
Tokyopop took a gamble. On the whole I think their efforts benefited readers, artists, and the comic world in general. They brought us some real lemons, true, – but if you look at any publisher, 90% of what they print is garbage too. TP was pioneering and attempting to build a new market and brand though, so of course when they brought out a bomb it was harder on them than it would be for one of the major U.S. comic companies.
Think about this, in 1958 Studebaker introduced one of the first American “compact” cars. By 1966 they were out of business. Ford and Chevy didn’t go “oh gee look Studebaker made a ‘compact’ car and it killed them – let’s stay away from that”. Ford and Chevy realized that Studebaker had management problems, was a far smaller company, and had far less resources to work with and smaller distribution than they did. They went ahead and turned around and brought out their own compacts, the Falcon, the Chevy II, etc and those cars ended up making them a lot of money.
I feel as though the situation is similar in many ways here in comics. Excepting of course that U.S. companies don’t seem to have caught on to the idea that maybe if they do something similar, only better than what TP was trying to do – they might end up with a winning formula.
This is a valuable discussion but I seems to me that the death of manga and its influence in the U.S. market is great exaggerated. In some areas of U.S. publishing its seems as though manga is doing quite well and growing. Indeed there are many manga-influenced works produced by children’s publishers like Papercutz and Candlewick Press as well as educational publishers like Lerner Graphic Universe, Abdo and Capstone. These programs are focused on a growing market of graphic novel publishing (and the manga influence) aimed at the library and school market, and they all have manga-influenced works that are selling extremely well. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think the death of manga in the U.S. market (both in translation and so-called OEL) seems more than a bit overstated.
Vertical Inc (including their OEL superstar Felipe Smith) seems to have revived its manga program; Penguin is picking up manga bios from independent packager Emotional Content. Yen Press (including their OEL superstar Svetlana Chmakova) has titles up and down the bestseller lists and seems to be doing just fine to me, even opening up digital access with YenPlus Online and promising even more digital access (that means an iPad app) to come. Scott Pilgrim may have “flopped” as a film (let’s just see how it does in DVD) but it certainly isn’t a publishing flop, in fact its a publishing mega-hit for a graphic novel series. OEL is one thing but you also have publishers like Top Shelf, Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly, indie houses that used to have a reputation for supposedly hating manga of all kinds, now these houses are publishing some of the most interesting licensed manga in the U.S. market.
Tokyopop’s OEL program has a complex series of effects on the U.S. manga/comics market and its impact was mostly good and important despite its subsequent collapse. The question now is what comes after. Its also not unusual for U.S. comics editors to come all-consuming decision that this or that drawing style doesn’t work or isn’t commercial. That’s been the problem with U.S. comics for years, so I’m not sure why we’re assuming that their short term decisions mean anything other than that. shortsided aesthetics that will be ignored as soon as the next manga influenced artist gets popular. Beware the all-knowing editor, no matter whether is prose or comics. They are wrong all the time.
The days of U.S comics (outside of comics shops0 being dominated by not only a single genre and style is over. The fact is that manga’s influence hasn’t disappeared, manga still sells a lot of comics in the U.S. market and I believe that as digital access to manga grows, a new generation of manga influenced American artists will emerge again over the next few years to assert themselves on the marketplace. The influence of manga and Japanese comics is growing throughout the world and I’m not convinced that somehow the U.S. market will be the exception. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Nothing is stopping these creators from publishing on the internet. It’s so easy for your work to get seen by thousands of people. And if enough people are interested you can get a publishing deal. That’s what writers have to do. I believe that if a book is good enought, somehow and somewhen, it will get published. It’s just so easy to promote yourself. I think most of the talent when it comes to comics are going to the mainstream publishers, and even then, how many times have you opened Marvel or DC books and just seen how awful some of the art is? So a declaration of a dead Manga-inspired market, I think it’s just not true. I think the deadness is a result of there just being no really good manga inspired artitsts coming to the forefront. And I also do not think there any writers either that I know of. I really wish there was some sort of Messiah like figure in the States that would have a gigantic manga-esque book hit on the scale of a Harry Potter, but I suppose I can only hope.
Sorry Daryl, but that rant just reminds me of all the superhero comic fans I’ve encountered over the years who go on hatespews if you suggest any other comic could be good. The ones who come up with lists of “comics to get people hooked on!” that are nothing but superhero trades, or “Comics for Women!” that are with maybe one or two Vertigo titles [because DC published them, thus they are ok. But not on the top of the list] but mostly Superhero reprints. The ones who freak out if Ed McGuiness gives Superman a cartoony face.
I love superhero comics, but that kind of view is extremely closeminded and rooted in extreme nerd issues. Just like that “That’s not manga!” argument you and Erica expressed. Artists branding their work as manga don’t need your permission, and aren’t making their comics for you anyways- they’re making them for people like themselves, who feel inspired by manga and want to see whatelse can be done within it’s realm. There’s lots of readers who don’t have these ingrained dogmas, and books like Scott Pilgrim, NightSchool, DramaCon, Bizenghast, Odd Thomas, Maximum Ride, World of Warcraft and Peepo Choo are reaching them in droves, and why despite the crash, some manwha is still making it’s way here. Not to mention all the webcartoonists who just don’t care and make their manga/comics anyways, all by theirselves each week, hoping that eventually, they’ll get their chance at making it Pro. Comic companies just need to help these creators read these audiences without your hangups, and ignore the hatespew.
Okay hold on,
If manga is a format what does it look like?
Digest-size over 100 pages? That doesn’t make sense to me.
If manga isn’t a style, what do you call the common visual stylistic elements of many comics from Japan? Big eyes, pointy chins, tiny waists, textured backgrounds.
This also makes no sense to me.
It’s all comics. Bottom line, right?
Also, it’s very easy for manga fans to rant about artists and publishers calling their work manga when it’s not japanese, but extremely difficult to actually sit down, put together a pitch, have the courage to send it in, patiently wait for a polite rejection, keep repeating that cycle until your accepted [for months, or years], improving your work along the way, finally get accepted, and then work with an editor and crank out 200 pages of comics/manga to fill a graphic novel, prepare them to publishing, go back and make changes, market/promote that book a year or two later depending on how far in advance your pub works on it [I know folks who’ve just finished books they won’t be releasing until mid 2011 or 2012], shove all your love into it, deal with harsh critics, find readers, and then repeat the process for your *next* book.
There’s very little respect for artists nowadays, especially in the bootleg-tastic realm of self-entitled manga fandom, and I wonder if that’s part of why many OEL creators have moved onto massmarket book publishers, and target those readers, libraries and shelfspace, rather than targetting the anime community.
But the question remains: Should manga-influenced artists change or adopt a new style in order to find paying work? Personally, I’ve taken writing assignments simply because I needed the money—and I’ve written whatever the publisher wanted me to write, in the style they wanted it written. But, then again, I’m not trying to build a career as a professional writer. So… should professional artists evolve/change with the marketplace or hold fast and wait for the market to round back to them?
You know…I’ll simply repeat what everyone else was saying.
This kinid of sucks…but to get on Emily’s side for a minute in regards to OEL I don’t really blame them for wanting to go the way of the dinosaur. A vast majority of the OEL I read are either about ninjas (Ninja High School for instance) japanese high schools or students, or poor attempts at yaoi or some sort of strange combination of all. I know that this isn’t always the case but I did notice a trend in all the crap that was coming out and I do kind of blame the big publishers. You say that the titles you release now are the best but when all you’re exposing us to IS Japanese high schools and ninjas in orange jump suits…I think you’re just asking for a problem.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn and grow as independant students of the art.
Me, for instance, I’ve vowed to never draw anything to do with ninjas or high school. If I do tell a story geared toward a younger audience it’s going to be about what is like to grow up in AMERICA.
real life examples!!
I used to for Broccoli international (don’t know if any of you remember them; we published Galaxy Angel and Kamui) and while there I was exposed to the more Japanese side of the specturm so I got to as a lot of questions and one of them was: “Why don”t you all (as Japanese publishers) embrace more American artists?”
short answer: “Your stories are always the same -OR- the artwork is always influenced by the same Japanese artist.”
I know that the guy who was in charge of the place worked specifically for Bro-Japan and Gravity Interactive and ended up going into this fast-paced rant in Japanese about how he was sick and tired of American artists trying to breach the Manga bubble but never with anything new and fresh or something worth picking up off a Japanese shelf. About how everytime he picked up an American artists work how he couldn’t tell the difference in story approach between a budding Japanse artist and the American artist. And furthermore, he doesn’t want an American to tell him about the life of a Japanese high school…if you’ve never been a Japanese high school student!
It was an hour long rant and by the time he was done talking my jaw and drool were on the floor.
I wish I could say that the solution to our problem here is to have more companies like AP who specializes in American OEL but I don’t think that would work either. Flooding the market with another Manga thing wouldn’t be beneficial…however, if we do wish to see this wonderful medium continue (and I DO encourage young artists to embrace whatever style they wish to do their art in) I think we, as fans, as artists, as writers need to be the ones to tackle this issue ourselves. I don’t think that the major companies are worth dealing with at this point. So I think the only solution to this is to do it ourselves.
I know we can do it but maybe we need to start re-evaluating our approach to the entire industry. Can’t expect instance success but this can be dealt with. Like the Government! <3
It seems like the problem with calling the Japanese inspired western comics “manga” is that the term “manga” is meaningless to anyone who reads comics but doesn’t read manga, but for people who do read manga, it carries some level of expectations. Are those expectations that the comic is done by a Japanese artist? Possibly. Though much of the OEL “manga” I’ve seen suffers from more problems than just having a western sounding name below the title; that being, it tends to feel terribly derivative. The artists that are picked up to do these OEL manga are the ones who try very hard to emulate the publisher’s idea of what manga is. It seems like the publishers truly believe that they have zeroed in on a definition of “manga” as a style. That might be the biggest detriment to OEL, because nothing gets called OEL that doesn’t fit this derivative style. If a western artist were to, for example, make a comic inspired by gekiga or any more realistic looking Japanese comic, it would just be called a comic by western publishers.
@Daryl – You’re right that Tokyopop et al. screwed themselves by their insistence that their comics were “manga,” thus setting themselves above the (obviously worthless riffraff) of “non-manga” comics produced in the West. Personally, I try never to use the word “manga” in reference to Western comics, but I slipped up here, so just substitute “manga-influenced comics” for “OEL manga” in all of my posts. -_- Some of these comics were slavish imitations of manga, others were genuinely original. Either way, it’s still a bad thing for American artists that the whole idea of “OEL manga” and “manga-influenced comics” has become a black mark.
@Rob – My standard for comics, in terms of how creators are viewed, has always been and will always be indy comics artists such as the kind published by Slave Labor, Oni, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Top Shelf (Alex Robinson, etc.), and to an extent Dark Horse, and these are all drawn by people with very distinct styles and sold on that merit, so I personally think the manga market should aim for this standard. Whether selling “comics as an art form” isn’t so easy for tweens (manga’s primary audience) as it is for the generally college-age-and-up audience of indy comics, I don’t know, but basically, all the best comic artists are those who have a distinct style and don’t follow trends.
“But the question remains: Should manga-influenced artists change or adopt a new style in order to find paying work?”
The problem is such – “paying work” doesn’t always translate into “good” comics. Mutilating an artist’s style to try and fit them into some niche that the publisher wants to fill, instead of just marketing the artist’s work to the proper people is backwards. It doesn’t make any sense.
I’m going to paraphrase Gary Larson, who said that an artist should make art that interests them. If other people are sympathetic to the artist’s views – their work will be popular. Larson didn’t go “hey, talking cows and fat scientists seem to be popular with the kids these days, so I’m going to draw those things” – he just sat and drew things he thought were funny.
Additionally my own two cents: If a creator makes something they’re happy with – and it gets rejected – then at least they still have something they enjoyed making. If they compromise and pervert their own vision to try and appeal to more people, they may still get rejected, but they’ll have something they don’t even care for personally.
So I would say no, they shouldn’t compromise the quality or uniqueness of their work, or sacrifice innovation – so they can get a few bucks. If they don’t want to. If they want to they should go ahead. Some people like a challenge – but this is kind of like a challenge to be like everybody else. It’s counter productive from every angle except that of getting some cash.
On a related note, art is a lot like invention in that it is inspired by necessity. When a bunch of kids start drawing “manga” inspired work – publishers should be looking into why – instead of writing them off. That people are interested enough to go through the trouble and time necessary to draw comics on their own in such styles is a clear indicator that that there is a potential demand.
I’d like to add another potential twist t the sordid tale of how “manga” became a 4 letter word. I was one of those girls who grew up reading the first few Japanese comics to be made available in the US- Things like InuYahsa, Fruits Basket, and so on. By college, it had occurred to me that maybe there were some American comics- even those that didn’t look like the comics I was used to reading- that could be good to! So I brought my self over to the local comics shops, to try to find some new, western-style comics to read. Well, I found Sandman, and that was good, so I wanted to continue. But I hit a wall. I remember going to comic shop after comic shop, stating “I’m a 22 year old female, I’ve read Sandman, and I want something to read with no teenage romance”. And I was met with blank stares. I discovered quickly that the American standard market had very little to offer me, and turned away from it’s sexism, need for 20 years of back story, and constant barrage of adds between the pages with utter disgust. It took me many years to find a stable base of non-manga-influenced art that was aimed at me. They are certainly out there, but they can be very hard to find for someone just trying to move from manga to American comics. So, it may be that some of the animosity towards manga may be an understandable reaction to the bitterness, rejection, and anger manga fans felt when they tried to branch out to non-manga-influenced comics. I was very bitter with traditional American comics for many years, and any fan of the guys-in-tights would be able to plainly see my disdain. That would not have encouraged them to view my preferred comics with generosity, curiosity, or good will. I think, perhaps, this is a rivalry that goes both ways. This is a situation that would be silly at the best of times, but unfortunately has extra negative impact now that manga is left out-of-favor, with few friends left to defend it in the US. I wish now that I had done less to encourage this rivalry when I was younger, I certainly did nothing to help these two fanbases end this pointless rivalry. Now half my favorite comics are off the shelf, and I am paying the price for my close-mindedness.
Actually, a few companies are still soliciting manga-influenced work. Yen Press, for one. And I don’t think Tokyopop’s doors are completely closed, just a lot harder to get through. It’s hard to say how much is the general publishing/economic downturn, and what is a backlash against manga specifically.
Mostly, after 2003-2008’s “manga will take over the woooorld” rhetoric, I’m just disappointed that manga-influenced art and storytelling is still (with a few exceptions like Scott Pilgrim) not accepted as an equal among the American comics community. Then again, the manga community was equally closed-minded about American comics, so I guess you can’t blame them.
I’ve skimmed bits of all the arguments, and I have to say that one thing I experienced in art school comics classes was definite gender and manga-based bias going around. And a lot of it, I personally feel, came about because people really do feel like manga is taking over space that used to be occupied by their personal comic style preference – the western comics they grew up with.
But, I think in a way it can be even harder on girls, because the word ‘manga’ is so heavily associated with flowery big-eyed shoujo imagery. If you’re a girl drawing in a manga style at art school you instantly have some kind of stigma attached. If you’re an Asian girl, it gets even weirder. I once heard one student tell another student something along the lines of “You’re in America now, you should draw like an American.” Of course, that student just so happened to be American, but she was of Asian descent. She lived in the states her whole life, and so did her parents. And nobody in the class – not even the Professor – said anything about it.
When it comes to being told or asked to change your style, I will say right now: yes. They tell you to do it. In art school, they told us that if we ladies want to work, then we need to have styles that can appeal to western comics fans – especially men. I’m sure that all students were encouraged to develop more than one drawing style, for diversity and marketing, and in a way, I understand it. However, in other ways I am appalled by the way it was put to me. It was as if wanting to write or draw girl-oriented stories was a lesser form of storytelling than drawing comics that are more boy-oriented. It made me feel like I was less of an artist for just being born female, on top of being influenced by manga.
That said, comics is a business. The hard truth is that if you want to find paying work easily, you have to cater to the needs of the publishers. It works that way in all industries, and just because art is played on a more personal level doesn’t mean the rules of the game have changed. I wish it was easier for us, and I feel that the industry has been changing a lot in recent years – for the good – but it’s a slow moving process.
I have to add one more thing to this as well:
As an artist (especially in college) everytime on of my instructors told me to change my style or to “conform” to what everyone else was doing I literally felt like I was burning at the stake or they were trying to rip my heart out of my chest. It’s a serious blow to my creative soul as I imagine it is for others.