Chatterbox- Comic Books

Oh yeah, thirty year nostalgia cycle comics. I know those are being made, such as ones based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), and Dungeons & Dragons. Both of those are retro properties, along with the two you named, but they are good examples of being not excessively dark.

I'd like to see more new ideas that aren't excessively dark in comic book form.

There are some interesting non-serious comics out there but not as story-driven as I'd like. One I came across that was fun, but which I wish had a bit more actual suspense and adventure in it, is the light-hearted Slice of Life story Katie the Catsitter, which is set in a world where superheroes are treated as a fact of life. Just when I think the story might go in a serious direction, the only serious thing that happens is relationship drama. Like discovering that a friend's parents are supervillains, but the end result isn't adventure or danger, but comedy and parent/child conflict, as the kid isn't happy about what her parents are doing. I like the light-hearted mood, but I wish the story was a little more serious.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Sep 15th 2023 at 11:42:29 AM

Again, Gargoyles even if a pre-existing property does move forward and doesn't shy away from change while being serious in a non-edgelord way.

Random question: someone give me a teenage magic user who isn't from DC or Marvel.

Just curious if anyone fits that bill.

Sabrina Spellman.

Fair.

How about someone from another superhero universe.

I probably should have clarified that.

What makes comics outside Japan feel different from manga? I think reading direction, color, and language are just the tip of the iceberg.

Some big things that differentiate manga and American comics (specifically America since I’m American and don’t think I’m knowledgeable enough on non-Japanese or non-American comics) include:

• Variety. Manga never really had to deal with a “Comics Code”/Wertham situation like comics did, so there was never any extinction event of non-superhero comics like America went through. Used to be there was a massive variety of comic genres — superhero but also horror, sports, romance, mystery, etc. — but the Comic Code killed a lot of them and left only the supers standing. That’s been changing as the years passed and indie/underground comics gain prominence and the Comics Code had remained six-feet-under where it belongs, but still, in manga that just never happened and that genre variety is was never lost so you’ve got your ecchi, your sports manga, your horror manga, and so on, while comics in the USA are very associated with superheroes.
• Shorter length and the ability to end. Manga, with exceptions, don’t run infinitely like comics. Usually manga have either a set ending or end when the creator stops making them for whatever reason or are simply allowed to cancel or anything like that. And manga usually only have one writer or set of writers, rather than passing hands to the next writers periodically like non-indie comics. This allows manga to often have a sense of closure and finality that many comics don’t get, as the characters are given definitive endings rather than just continuing on and on.
• Lack of shared universes. Yeah, there’s plenty of manga that take place in a Shared Universe with one another, but it’s usually based around the author (e.g., Case Closed and Magic Kaito taking place in the same universe because they’re written by the same guy) and not the publisher. There’s Dragon Ball universes and Bleach universes, but no Shonen Jump universes. With comics, it’s not uncommon for publishers to have their own universe in which most of their works are set, or at least it wasn’t historically.

Edited by immortaleditor on Nov 11th 2023 at 7:29:34 AM

Ehh. Variety can be found still if one doesn't confine themselves to the big two and look at fare from other publishers or various GN.

Just that people assume that Marvel and DC being the big two means that there isn't a point to anything else or have childhood nostalgia for them.

I didn't really check out stuff from them myself until I was 16 going on 17.

As a Frenchman the points you made strike me as describing American comics rather than how manga is different. I mean you could replace manga with French-Belgian comics in what you said.

An other big difference between American comics and manga seems to be how a manga character belongs to an author while many American comics are part of franchises and belong to companies.

But then I struggle with finding important differences between French-Belgian comics and manga besides the obvious ones Iuka Sylvie mentioned.

I guess an important one would be that Japanese creators produce huge quantities of manga at a higher pace. Also publication is relatively cheap: in magazines or in thin paper books (besides being black and white).

French comics are produced at a slower pace (and I guess many authors do this as a hobby or while doing some other artistic projects) and are published in a more expensive manner (hardcover books, all pages are colored, and generally speaking a thicker paper).

Edited by gropcbf on Nov 15th 2023 at 11:35:00 AM

I read excerpts of Franco-Belgian comics and I found them hard to follow, especially Mœbius.

Franco-Belgian comics being quite diverse, of course some things will be more difficult than others, such as sci-fi aimed at adults. Or maybe most things aimed at adults.

Now I think of it, maybe many stories may seem to lack exposition, and leave many details up to the imagination of the audience.

But then some manga are quite mysterious as well.

Edited by gropcbf on Nov 16th 2023 at 7:04:28 PM

I also found that dialogue in manga tends to be shorter than in Franco-Belgian comics.

That seems quite likely to me. Although obviously some comics are less verbose than the norm.

Achille Talon aka WalterMelon is especially famous for being super verbose.

Edited by gropcbf on Nov 16th 2023 at 12:35:58 PM

Speaking of the difference between manga and comics outside Japan, I remember being shocked that the Grand Comics Database had separate entries for the penciller and the inker.

I'd say that right now, taken as a whole, American comics are more diverse than they've ever been since the Golden Age—though comics aimed at kids are still pretty under-represented. There's lots more out there than DC and Marvel. In fact, right now the largest publisher of comics in the US is Viz.

The Japanese comics industry has historically functioned more like a "features syndicate," with the creators getting deals more in line with the kind of deals comic-strip creators traditionally got—or at least that's the closest parallel I can think of. American comics functioned like that in the beginning, in some cases. Siegel and Shuster had a deal like that in regards to Superman until Siegel's demands for more money prompted DC to axe him and Shuster out completely (make no mistake, Siegel and Shuster were screwed, but Siegel was often his own worst enemy). Bob Kane, co-creator of Batman, is the one case I can think of of that kind of deal surviving until the creator's retirement—Kane retired in the 60's, after which DC owned Batman outright. It was Kane's retirement that allowed for the shake-ups in the Batman title in the mid-60's and afterward.

The lack of "shared universes" in Japanese Manga can probably be attributed to individual creator control as well—those have only happened when companies have owned a lot of characters and could govern their management themselves. The only things like that you see in Japan tend to be for properties (most often anime-originals) created and owned by companies rather than individuals—like Tatsunoko's stable of heroes, for instance.

Edited by Robbery on Nov 23rd 2023 at 10:58:02 AM

Manga does involve a lot of division of labour on the art as well, though, it’s just split up in different ways using largely-uncredited assistants.

Scott Mc Cloud’s Understanding Comics has an interesting bit about the typical panel-by-panel pacing of manga vs. American comics.

Edited by Dayraven1 on Nov 24th 2023 at 1:26:03 AM

Yeah, you'll find the same kind of studio set-up that, again, persists with a lot of the more successful American comic-strips. The division of labor is up to the creator in charge, but usually has the person who gets name credit doing layouts and writing the script, and then handing it off to assistants to do finishes, inks, lettering, and so forth. Sometimes the creator collaborates with someone else on the script, sometimes just approves it. In some cases, it gets to the point where the named creator is only approving things, and not actually writing/drawing anything themselves (Dennis the Menace was like that). Siegel and Shuster worked with a studio—Siegel did all the writing, and Shuster's art assistants included Jack Burnley, John Sikela, and Wayne Boring (one of Siegel's later complaint was that he was writing everything himself, while Shuster did very little actual drawing himself, and they got the same amount of money). Bob Kane didn't do much of anything on Batman, letting Jack Schiff do the writing and leaving the art up to assistants like Sheldon Moldoff and Dick Sprang. Charles Schulz did in fact draw (and ink, and letter) every Peanuts comic strip himself, but he employed assistants to create the art for merchandise (calendars, greeting cards, etc). The studio system isn't exactly a secret, but it's not something that's widely known either. A lot of people see a Manga with one name attributed to it and come to the conclusion that a single artist is producing that feature on a weekly basis, when in fact it's produced by a team of artists with a lot of lead time.

These days, most American comics from the bigger publishers are produced by teams put together by the publishers themselves, who sometimes are in communication with each other and sometimes not.

Unfortunately, the new Japanese translation of Understanding Comics is out of print and copies are sold at more expensive prices than the actual price. I wish the library had a copy of both the old and new translations.

Update: I read Understanding Comics last week and I found it effective that Scott McCloud dissected comics and everything else through the medium of comics.

Edited by IukaSylvie on Nov 29th 2023 at 5:15:38 AM

Is there a reason comics for children are under-represented in the West? From reading David Hajdu’s “The Ten-Cent Plague,” it seems American comics were always raunchy. This was even before the Comics Code Authority and I imagine its disestablishment made things worse.

Though not a comic, if you want to read about how horrific censorship can be, I can’t recommend “The Ten-Cent Plague” enough.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Dec 4th 2023 at 9:17:09 AM

American omics aimed at kids were very common through the 60's. In the 70's, they shrank to mostly licensed properties from Charlton Comics and Dell. These were still common into the mid-80's. Since the mid-80's, various companies have taken a stab at producing comics for kids, but none have managed to stay around for very long. Archie has managed to hang on, and even they seem to be aiming more at tweens and teenagers than kids these days.

The reason seems to be what the reason always is—the comics aimed at kids don't sell enough to warrant their continuation. Or possibly mismanagement. Or both.

‘The West’ is a bit too broad, the UK market has newsstand comics for kids — The Beano is the old stalwart there, but there are others usually more tied to TV/Film. I’m less familiar with the Franco-Belgian or other European markets, but I think there are modern examples there too.

Also, superhero comics. While they pretty much always had a slightly more complex audience than simply ‘for kids’ and there’s definitely been an aging audience the last few decades, kids were an important part of the genre’s market up through at least the Bronze Age.

Edited by Dayraven1 on Dec 5th 2023 at 6:43:58 AM

From what I understand, Disney Ducks blow basically everything else, including Marvel and DC, out of the water in Scandinavia, Italy, and Brazil.

There's tons of French-Belgian comics aimed at kids.

"From reading David Hajdu’s “The Ten-Cent Plague,” it seems American comics were always raunchy. This was even before the Comics Code Authority and I imagine its disestablishment made things worse."

That's overstating things quite a bit. Before the Code, there were a lot of mainstream comics that skirted the edges of what was appropriate for children and general audiences, but I wouldn't say that "American comics have always been raunchy."