Global questions

In a post cleverly titled “Even a Gaijin Can Draw Manga,” Bento Physics takes on the question of global manga. Here’s the key quote:

I believe that OEL manga should be an aspirational ideal and not a marketing/publishing conceit, that ideal being that non-Japanese creators who choose to write comics using the forms and conventions of manga as a ‘narrative style’ rather than just its visual tropes.

David Taylor jumps right in:

Someone needs to let Tokyopop know that. Being the more dominant OEL producer in the US they do have an overwhelming tendency to release works that fly the whole gamut of that quotation above.

Of course, there is considerable range even among Japanese manga. I tend to agree with Tania Del Rio that what defines manga is not so much character design as a method of storytelling. One of Scott McCloud’s definitions is that the artist often uses several panels to describe a single moment. Or, as Matthew and Jamilla say,

For example, manga makes use of a lot of temporal decompression across multiple panels that spread beyond the confines of one page.

and they found a really awesome example.

David points out that “OEL manga” is really a marketing concept, and that’s true, but it’s a useful one. The manga publishers, both here and abroad, have created a standard manga template. We expect manga to be a trade paperback of a certain trim size, price, and format. I think that’s useful, in that it encourages people to try new things within that format.

Consider Afterlife, which is this weird dystopic comic about the afterlife. Tokyopop sent it to me, but I can see myself picking it up in the store because it would be on the shelf next to the other stuff I read, and I usually like Tokyopop comics. Whereas if it were published in some other format, it might not be carried by my bookstore, or I might pass it by because it’s too weird looking. Superficial, but true. I do believe people make decisions this way. It has certainly proved to be a winning strategy for Harlequin, the Strathemeyer Syndicate, and even the publishers of chick lit.

Carrying that analogy even further, I think publishers like Yaoi Press are probably helped a great deal by the fact that they are working in an established genre. If they tried to publish those books without Japanese manga as a precedent, they might not be so successful. People are more likely to try something new if they can classify it first.

Most global manga do fit the popular concept pretty well; I wouldn’t be fooled for a minute if Marvel did a black and white, trade paperback version of their comics, even if it read right to left. But I do think there’s room for a lot of variation, and I like to see publishers supporting creators of new work (some of which is going to suck, but that’s the price we pay) and making interesting comics more accessible to readers.