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Manga & Comics: A Different Cultural Base

Presented by: Peggy Sue Wood

English Instructor, Piedmont Technical College

Editor, The Anime View

theanimeview.com

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Who am I?

Peggy Sue Wood

Editor of The Anime View

theanimeview.com

First, I’ll give you all a brief introduction about me.

My name is Peggy Wood and I currently work as a teaching assistant at a local college. I’m hoping to pursue further graduate work in Asian Studies and/or Comparative Literature. This presentation is part of my preparation for research in that field.

In addition to my work in education, I am the editor of a small blog called The Anime View which you can see at theanimeview.com.

The Anime View started as an outlet for my obsession with the anime and manga I was viewing at the time, however it has since developed from a solo blog into a small blogging team wherein we aim to create content that provides our audience of animation and comic fans with a mix of content that engages the mind to look critically at the media we love and consume.

Currently, many posts have centered on manhwa and other Korean publications, shifting away from the heavy Japanese influences of the blog’s origins. With new contributors joining the fray, we’re also looking toward games, American animated and comic media, industry knowledge, and other news to share with our growing readership.

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漫画(まんが/ma-n-ga)

Comics

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The History of American Comics

(WWII overlap)

(Censorship due to CCA

To the Marvel & DC Comics Boom!)

The medium of comics in America was initially developed through comic strips in daily newspapers, at least–that’s what we primarily refer to as the beginning of American comics.

Even now, you can find comic sections in most major newspapers, particularly in weekend issues, as well as a few political comics sprinkled throughout the pages.

A well-known example of this is the New Yorker Cartoons, and the Dennis the Menace (transition) comic strip that started in 1951 and continues to publish today.

Of course, the idea of sequential art is actually much older–think of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or cave art.

All of these could technically be the beginnings of comics, but the father of the modern comic–comics with picture stories that have panel borders, and feature words interdependent on their combination with images for context–can be found in Rodolphe Töpffer’s (transition) work.

Topffer was a satirical cartoonist who started the trend in the mid-1800s.

Fast forward (transition) to the early 1930s and you’ll find the canonical features of a comic to be established as well as the initial base of the American comic genres.

Here we have the speech balloons, captions, panel borders, gutters (the blank spaces between the panel borders), as the formatting features, and genres include–primarily–family focused stories, adventure tales, and the rise of the Superhero Archetype.

In 1938 Superman (transition) is published for the first time in June, along with many other well-known characters today like Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman.

However, these characters really gained their popularity during WWII, which started a year later in 1939 and ended in 1945. At the same time, the Cold War with Russia that began.

While the official end of WWII is still heavily debated by historians today, from the American perspective the war seemed to have ended with the surrender of Japan on September 2nd of 1945, and–in regard to the Cold War–though tension between the US and Russia had lessened and grown over the years an official claim of the Cold War ending is said to be in the 1990s, though some believe that it has never truly ended.

Regardless, the wars seemed to have had a direct impact on the sale of American comics. In fact, it is during this time that we see what is now called the Golden Age of Comic Books begin, the dates of this period being from 1938 to 1956.

During this time, modern comic books were published with rapidly increasing popularity as the superhero archetypes were featured promoting American values or ideals in exaggerated form–they largely became a form of propaganda with characters like Captain America punching a Hitler character.

Moreover, since comics were cheap, children could easily buy them with what little money they had.

New genres developed during this time, too, Westerns–for example–as well as science fiction and romances. These branched interested brought increased readership. However, as we enter the Silver Age of comics, beginning in 1956 to 1970, readerships dropped. The presumed reason of this is the development of the Comics Code Authority or the CCA. This was a form of censorship in which comics were socially condemned for their alleged harmful effects on children through exposure to mature content like crime or horror.

As a result (transition), non-superheroes saw a marketable decline, while superheroes rose in interests once again. Here we find Marvel’s claim to fame as we enter the Bronze Age of comics which spanned from the 1970s to 1985.

The Bronze Age was dominated by superheroes, specifically Marvel and DC Comics, who presently continue to reign supreme as comic publishers in the US. The age was marked by financial difficulties, but eventually we see censorship begin to decline as we come to the Modern Age of comics, or the current age, in which there has been a return of readership to genres outside of the superhero domains with many new and independent works gaining interest and fame. As an additional note, some divide the modern age into the dark ages, the new 52, and so on but for our purposes of this broad and brief overview of the topic, it’s enough to call it the modern age.

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The History of Japanese Manga

(Osamu Tezuka (c) Tezuka Productions)

Edo Period & Toba Ehon

Katsushika Hokusai

Rakuten Kitazawa

1950s Industry Blooms

1990s Manga goes International!

2020 Manga market totals $5.6 Billion! (US is 1.28 Billion)

Japan has a somewhat similar development of comics, though with a very different cultural base.

To start with (transition), Japan has a long history of pictorial integration—it’s literally in the language where we see Chinese ideograms facilitating meaning within the words. In fact, when researching this topic, many of the resources I found declared manga’s origin in Japan to be around the 12th to 13th century when the language takes a written form, and the structure of reading from right to left becomes standard.

However, it is really during the Edo Period around the early 1600s to 1867, that manga sees it’s base as picture drawings are paired with words in works called “Toba Ehon” are made and distributed. These became the predecessors of Japanese manga.

During this time the term “manga” was created by Katsushika Hokusai, a Japanese artist during the Edo period who was famous for his Woodblock print series, which included ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’ (transition).

Around the 1890s, Western comics are introduced to Japan, particularly the American style of newspaper cartoons. In 1902, Rakuten Kitazawa started the first modern Japanese comic strip and by the 1930s, numerous monthly magazines began publish comic strips. Manga in the 1920s through to the 1950s becomes a growing industry, one which also sees it’s war influences (transition) during World War II through propaganda, messaging, and the like.

From here, however, manga takes a very different turn from the American counterpart which saw increases in censorship and large drops in readership.

To start, in Japan, manga/comics become a major publishing industry around the 1950s, and post-WWII is where we really begin to see a break from the American comic’s form and Japanese comics. Certainly, the influences of bubbled dialogue, gutters, and panel have maintained their role in Japanese manga, but there is a major shift in content focus.

A prime example of this is Osamu Tezuka (transition), who is often recognized as “The Father of Manga.” Tezuka was 17 years old when he created his first manga, “Dairy of Ma-Chan” in 1947, and he made many more after including Dororo, Astroboy, and Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi). Though his first major success was actually Kimba The White Lion published by Manga Shonen in 1950 and continuing through to 1954.

In the 1990s with titles like “Sailor Moon,” “Pokémon,” and “Dragon Ball,” manga becomes an international business. So much so that in 2020, the estimated combined market size of both print and digital manga totaled around $5.6 billion USD, beating the US’s estimated combined market size of both print and digital comics of $1.28 Billion USD. (Publisher’s Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/86791-2020-north-american-comics-sales-grow-to-1-28-billion.html)

What makes this so? You may be asking.

To that, I find that the answer resides in the very different cultural depiction and treatment manga has in Japan compared to comics here in the US.

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Manga & Japanese Culture

In Japan, manga (transition) integrates pretty much into every genre you can imagine. Sci-fi and fantasy are as typical of manga as they are in American comics, but so is just about every other genre available, whereas here in the US, the biggest publishers of comics (Marvel, DC Comics, and Dark Horse respectively) are primarily and predominantly publishers of the superhero-fantasies and sci-fi works.

Want a cute romance about newly-weds? There’s a manga for that! (Hapi-Mari)

Want (transition) a manga depicting your typical office employee with office drama and life changes? There’s a manga for that too! Take Kosaku Shima (transition) for example, which follows the story of a young man as he grows and rises through the corporate ladder.

This diversity of genres has allowed for a huge growth in readership as works are published with different target audiences in mind, and these target audiences expand to include works aimed specifically at adult, teen, and children demographics.

Likely because of this large difference in target audiences, we also see Japan integrate manga into their marketing across different industries. For example, Japan's Official World Cup Mascot for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) in 2014 was Pikachu from Pokémon or, using the example I gave before (transition), here is Kosaku Shima in an advertisement for alcohol.

All this is to say that manga is often depicted alongside regular entertainment media, like we see in the image above, wherein the fictional manga character can be found enjoying beer along side a celebrity. Manga is, essentially, fully integrated into the culture, publishing, and media mainstream consciousness.

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Comics & American Culture

Comparatively, American comics are not nearly as integrated into media or culture, though there has been a notable rise in popularity of comics and its integration into mass-culture through media over the last few years (consider, for example, the popularity of The Walking Dead and Marvel cinematic movies on mass culture).

Still, unlike in Japan, you will rarely see comic books advertised with traditional entertainment unless there is a comic book adaptation into a live-action movie or show, and–even then–(more often than not) you will see the actor in costume as the header image rather than the comic book original or the two versions (actor and character) featured together.

In fact, I spent over 30 minutes looking for a traditional article from a well-known publisher that featured images of a comic book character and their live-action counterpart in the header image with no luck. Most of the publishers that included comic versions of the character at all were from the comic book publishers themselves, such as the examples above which is pulled from a Marvel.com article, which depicted Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark as the featured image with the comic book version appearing later in the article.

That’s not to say that there are not more examples or that someone with, perhaps, better technical skills and more time couldn’t find more examples–just that news coverage of these works are often left to smaller publications, like CBR.com or fan blogs. Occasionally, and with more frequency now, some will break into the mainstream consciousness through larger news sources like The New York Times, but not nearly as often as in Japan.

Moreover, with the major comic publishers in the US being Marvel and DC Comics, there is still a heavy preference for publishing superheroes.

Of course, we are seeing an expansion, such as First Second’s publishing of OMG!Check Please (transition), a comic that follows Eric Bittle, a college undergrad and hockey player which would potentially fall under what Japan categorizes as slice-of-life, and, of course, Avatar: The Last Airbender (transition), which would probably be considered a shonen in Japan (a genre typically marketed to a young teen male readership).

It’s (transition) just that these genres are sold far less in the US market or treated with as much reverence as the hero and scifi genre in American comic publishing.

Moreover, even with the current rise in popularity these works are aimed primarily at younger crowds rather than to all ages or older demographics. In fact, during my internship at DC Comics, it was made clear that children and teens are the focused demographic, despite the large adult readership.

Though, as mentioned, with the Marvel cinematic universe being so popular and the rise of webcomics, US markets do show that the public perception of comics seem to be changing as the industry slowly integrates more and more into the mainstream media.

With that said though, why is this integration so slow? What makes manga so much easier to integrate? Is it simply story and genre variation?

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Publishing Differences

I would argue that while story and genre variation are an important element to this idea, it may have more to do with differences in their production and distribution–a topic that seems to often be left out of this discussion on manga’s rising popularity.

You see, American comics are typically sold first as single chapter issues, with each issue totaling about 24 pages or 32 pages. Oftentimes these issues are split up with an advertisement in the front, back, and middle or front, back, and every 1/3 to 1/4 of the issue.

Every page is colored, and this makes the print cost extremely high.

In addition, the typical release cycle is one issue per month, per series.

Manga, however, is typically printed in black and white, or in a singular color print. They are often featured first in manga magazines and you will typically find that these magazines are large in size, containing anywhere from 180 to 220 pages in one volume.

Each chapter of this manga magazine consists of around 18–20 pages (with more than that being closer to 30, though that is a little more rare). Each magazine typically features 9 to 10 chapters per issue, with each chapter coming from a different series. Often, the magazine will have a recurring selection, with some new series coming into the rotation as titles lose or gain popularity.

Though, again, the magazines are mostly filled with recurring, popular series that the publisher finds to be selling well. Later, these chapters are sectioned into unique volumes (or tankoban) of 4-6 chapters on average.

There may be a few color pages in the manga magazine, but the full color pages are more often advertisements or covers rather than pages of an actual chapter. The lack of color, and grouping, makes the magazines significantly cheaper to print.

Moreover, the typical release cycle for a manga chapter is either weekly or monthly (usually clarified in the name of the magazine publication). The example I have provided on the slide here is a monthly version.

Like American comics, these magazines also have an advertisement book-ending their chapters, although almost never in the chapters themselves, so readers are not interrupted while reading.

Because of the differences in cost, the sale prices are also very different.

As an example, I went to Kinokuniya (transition), a Japanese chain-bookstore in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, and was able to find a few manga magazines prices around $10. Each containing more than one series I would be interested in picking up or continuing. For that same $10 price, I could walk into a comic book store around the same area in Los Angeles and only walk out with 1 to 3 issues of a few popular or new American comics (realistically, probably only 2 issues).

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Publishing Differences

How our media is published does matter, and we can see this in real time by how quickly webtoons and manhwa, or Korean comics that are published online, have grown in the marketspace over the last few years.

The Economist, a British weekly newspaper that focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture released an article titled "Japanese Mangas are being eclipsed by Korean webtoons" wherein they note that in 2021 the manga print market shrank by 2.3% (about $1.9 billion), while the size of the global webtoons market grew to valued at $3.7 billion that year and it has only continued to grow since.

This seems directly related to accessibility and reading ease.

Manga, as with American comics, are designed for printed reading. They focus on the turning of a page. So, as you read, you may notice action building and cliffhangers at the end of several panels. In fact, most “how-to” books on creating Japanese manga and American comics will tell you as much, because if you want a reader to engage long-term with your story, you often need to give them reasons to keep reading.

Panels are structured in the same way as language, for manga, as with the example above, it is from right to left. American comics being ordered in the reverse as we tend to read from left to right.

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Publishing Differences

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Publishing Differences

You will find the work of webtoons to be just as varied in genre as manga, along with unique art styles and form that take from their international counterparts. Similar to the comic form that we’ve discussed already, this type of comic has bubbling and panels and a specific order of reading. If word captions are close together, you can assumably read them from right to left, though predominantly you will read from top to bottom, making this an easy transition for both Eastern readers and Western readers, without a necessity to flip pages or bubbles.

Like American comics, these stories are typically published in full color. However, unlike Japanese manga and American comics, the publishers of most webtoons have more in common with Wattpad authors than they do Penguin Random House, and by that I mean they are more like platforms where anyone can publish than traditional publishers like Marvel or Kodansha. This is true of Webtoons, which I have presented a screenshot of above, and Tapas, also known as Tapastic, wherein creators tend to make their money through crowdfunding and interest on the sight rather than through contracted amounts.

The ones that contract like traditional publishers, Lezhin and Tappytoon, for example, are typically looking at works that were already self-published online first and then may or may not become singularly published there.

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Publishing Differences

Webtoons, unlike either Manga or American comics, tend to come out much quicker.

This is because the page count between a webtoon and manga is overall much smaller and tends to make use of a lot of blank space rather than abundant paneling, captioning, or detailed backgrounds.

That’s not to say that webtoons don’t sometimes make use of the properties in such a way, but that they are more likely to quickly piece together a handful of 3D models and filter them than spend too much time on designing a background by hand and drawing it all out.

The use of digital tools goes a long way and helps this speedy publishing, allowing some teams of a single writer who doubles as an artist to publish every few days as a team of one, though many also follow a weekly or monthly schedule. To give you an idea of the difference that makes, most manga and US comics have separate artists and authors, sometimes multiples of each, not to mention the publishing team that work to create even a single issue before it releases.

Move over, the interest for a chapter needs to hold through at the end, rather than on a single page, so you will typically see chapters taking their time to fully flush out scenes or conversations with the cliffhanger techniques manga and American comics use on a page-to-page basis happening only at the end.

As the saying goes, “Content is king” and if the story is good and the content comes out quickly–even in significantly smaller doses–it will help creators bring in traffic and leads. Moreover, the cost of reading these translated single chapter issues is sometimes less than half a dollar, so if a reader wants to try something new and doesn’t like it, they have not lost much in terms or time or cost.

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Publishing Differences

Of course, this means that the webcomic doesn’t naturally fit into the typical print layout, unlike their American comic and Japanese manga counterparts.

So, for example, Solo Leveling which has been licensed for official translation into other languages and received a print deal shows a significant amount of blank space on pages and doesn’t always cut well (example above)

Take, for example, the image on the right of this slide. In the mobile version, readers will first see the looming statue with glowing eyes. Then the characters talking and our main character noticing something odd as they continue to scroll down the page. The scrolling gives this stretched feeling as you move through the chapter (also called episodes) and this helps build up the story’s ominous feeling for this particular scene.

In print, the mood of the scene sort of changes with way the story feels based on how it is presented and how it is read. Notice how we see the full statue, then the characters talking but only the main character noticing the glowing eyes. As a reader, the statue no longer feels as large and looming, moreover some readers may be confused as to why only the main character is noticing the eyes.

Print is still a very large aspect of our media and publishing industry, so more people may become exposed to the story of Solo Leveling through this distribution given our print-heavy market. However, as more people gain cellphones everyday, and the ease of access and reading continue to grow, it is easy to see how the market is starting to shift away from Japanese manga and American comics to webtoon platforms for the same reason that the market shifted from US comics to manga:

cost, distribution, and how media treats it.

Manga is cheaper than American comics, and Webtoons are cheaper than Manga. The distribution related to the ease and cost of production/selling is also different, and–perhaps most importantly–how our media treats these things and how we as a culture treat these things goes a long way to helping or hindering their popularity.

Essentially, the publishing, distribution, and cultural integration on the individual, consumer’s level is a huge factor to consider in this industry.

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A Different Cultural Base

Returning to Manga and Comics:

Both historically and presently, there are differences in how comics are treated between the two cultures.

Essentially, in Japan, comics are seen as pretty much any other form of entertainment and thereby treated as such in the culture as shown through how manga is marketed and the kind of content featured.

In America, comics are still seen as largely children’s entertainment, and thereby treated as such in the culture, as seen through the selective marketing and content choices of major US publishers.

These cultural differences at the base, play into how the works are published and distributed, leading to changes in sales and interests from those reading.

That has been my brief introduction to the basic differences between manga and comics from a cultural standpoint. There is, of course, a lot more to this subject and I would encourage anyone interested to look more into this as my discussion here is only an introduction to the depth of differences between manga and comics.

Thank you.

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