Shojo and Business
I'd read this article some time back, but forgot all about it. Thankfully, shutterbox put one up this weekend, making it all the much easier for me to comment on it.
She's Got Her Own Thing Now
I have to say, I agree with it. I've seen the gulf between manga and (Western) comics, and the gulf is wide. With the exception of a few scattered communities, tell a person you're a comic artist and you might get some recognition. Tell them you're a manga artist and you'll either get stares or (as my wife so loves to rail against), you'll end up getting bitched out that you're not a "real" comic artist. Here in the US, there's all sorts of help and assistance if you want to get into comics. Tell them that you want to get into manga, and you get mostly hobbyist books and equipment, and you'll have to modify the real stuff to make sure you get what you need.
Meanwhile, the only ones really suffering the result of turf battles of east vs. west are the fans. Ayne has told me that every time she goes to work, she sees boys and girls carrying (you guessed it), manga, with the rare case of someone packing something from one of the western non-manga imprints. On the other side, every time I go into a comic store, most of the people I see browsing the comics titles are adults, with the rare teen or kid...and only once or twice someone of the female persuasion. Granted, it could (and partially is) that superheroes have always been a boys' game, I don't think I've ever seen a girl purchasing a Wonder Woman, Batgirl or Supergirl title. But it's more than that. It's that shojo manga, for the most part, speaks to girls (and yes, guys; I'm a shojo fan and a shojo-style writer) because it gives them what they want, how they want it. Shojo creators have managed the simple (or maybe not, since some western companies haven't figured it out) task of getting girls to buy comics.
And even beyond the ken of shojo manga or even manga itself, it's partially that comics in the past few years have been recycling the same stories. Granted that superhero stories tend at one point or another to mobius in terms of creativity, DC took a large chance when they radically reinvented themselves back in 1985. Twenty years later, most of the stuff that was tossed out the window is back, largely due to the lack of creativity on behalf of most of the teams there. While I suspect this is largely because DC is owned by media behemoth Time Warner, I'm not entirely sure on that. The reason for that is DC's rival, Marvel, which I don't read, but from what I understand has a history of regarding anything other than their own works (and that of DC, by extension of rivalry) as nothing more than "fads". While Marvel is a seperate company, they have the attitude of a corporate monster, suing any and everything that comes near their territory in order to gain an advantage.
Even so, all of the originality in western comics is by and large coming from indie labels, but alas, with few exceptions, most of them treat manga as a red-headed stepchild of their craft. All but a few of them, and those tend to be the Amerimanga artists, who are naturally working on Amerimanga. So as you can see, it's a rather tangled web.
Someday it's going to get sorted out, and I hope that Ayne and I are part of that wave that does so. In the meanwhile, if I ever see an eight-year-old girl left out like that again, she's getting an autographed copy of everything Megami has out to date...and she'll get front-row seating the panel where I'll rip my "colleagues" a new one for ghettoizing the future of our industry.
(edit: fixed link. ^_^;;;)
She's Got Her Own Thing Now
I have to say, I agree with it. I've seen the gulf between manga and (Western) comics, and the gulf is wide. With the exception of a few scattered communities, tell a person you're a comic artist and you might get some recognition. Tell them you're a manga artist and you'll either get stares or (as my wife so loves to rail against), you'll end up getting bitched out that you're not a "real" comic artist. Here in the US, there's all sorts of help and assistance if you want to get into comics. Tell them that you want to get into manga, and you get mostly hobbyist books and equipment, and you'll have to modify the real stuff to make sure you get what you need.
Meanwhile, the only ones really suffering the result of turf battles of east vs. west are the fans. Ayne has told me that every time she goes to work, she sees boys and girls carrying (you guessed it), manga, with the rare case of someone packing something from one of the western non-manga imprints. On the other side, every time I go into a comic store, most of the people I see browsing the comics titles are adults, with the rare teen or kid...and only once or twice someone of the female persuasion. Granted, it could (and partially is) that superheroes have always been a boys' game, I don't think I've ever seen a girl purchasing a Wonder Woman, Batgirl or Supergirl title. But it's more than that. It's that shojo manga, for the most part, speaks to girls (and yes, guys; I'm a shojo fan and a shojo-style writer) because it gives them what they want, how they want it. Shojo creators have managed the simple (or maybe not, since some western companies haven't figured it out) task of getting girls to buy comics.
And even beyond the ken of shojo manga or even manga itself, it's partially that comics in the past few years have been recycling the same stories. Granted that superhero stories tend at one point or another to mobius in terms of creativity, DC took a large chance when they radically reinvented themselves back in 1985. Twenty years later, most of the stuff that was tossed out the window is back, largely due to the lack of creativity on behalf of most of the teams there. While I suspect this is largely because DC is owned by media behemoth Time Warner, I'm not entirely sure on that. The reason for that is DC's rival, Marvel, which I don't read, but from what I understand has a history of regarding anything other than their own works (and that of DC, by extension of rivalry) as nothing more than "fads". While Marvel is a seperate company, they have the attitude of a corporate monster, suing any and everything that comes near their territory in order to gain an advantage.
Even so, all of the originality in western comics is by and large coming from indie labels, but alas, with few exceptions, most of them treat manga as a red-headed stepchild of their craft. All but a few of them, and those tend to be the Amerimanga artists, who are naturally working on Amerimanga. So as you can see, it's a rather tangled web.
Someday it's going to get sorted out, and I hope that Ayne and I are part of that wave that does so. In the meanwhile, if I ever see an eight-year-old girl left out like that again, she's getting an autographed copy of everything Megami has out to date...and she'll get front-row seating the panel where I'll rip my "colleagues" a new one for ghettoizing the future of our industry.
(edit: fixed link. ^_^;;;)