With its talking cats and wandering samurais, Japanese manga is taking France’s booming comic-book market by storm, challenging home-grown icons like Asterix as young readers lap up the eastern fare.
Talking cats? Is Where’s Michael? that much bigger in France than here? This article on the popularity of manga in France updates the Asterix-is-dead meme with a nod to Vanyda, author of The Building Opposite, but manages to mangle both the title and the book’s recent distinction. (There is no Publishers’ Weekly’s best manga award; the book merely topped their best-of-2006 list.) Given the French national tendency to revere its own culture above all others, I thought this fact was interesting:
France’s publishing giants, who saw the manga wave coming, have managed to salvage their overall market share by licensing and distributing most of the Japanese titles sold in France.
Very pragmatic. But the reporter still seeks out the crusty old guy who sees modern art as degenerate:
Joseph Verhoeven, a 76-year-old retiree and fan of comic book artwork, tut-tutted over what he calls the manga “invasion”.
“It’s an easy option for authors, but there’s a lot less subtlety, fewer facial expressions,” he said, as he pored through the bookstore’s shelves for the latest French or Belgian gem.
Good luck with that, grandpere. Actually, I think the French do most things better than anyone else, but their comics leave me cold.
The new manga list is a bit thin this week, but the MangaCast crew still finds some books to like.
ComiPress translates a blog post responding to American complaints about racial depictions in manga. It’s interesting that the Japanese blogger didn’t really see what the problem was but feels manga-ka should be more sensitive to the opinions of others.
Takeshi Miyazawa posts some scans from the Japanese version of Spiderman. (Via Journalista.)
At Shuchaku East, Chloe has no problem with Japanese names and customs in global manga.
Case Closed fans take note: A museum dedicated to manga-ka Aoyama Gosho will be opening in Hokuei, Japan, in March.
News from Japan, from ComiPress: The adult manga magazine Comic Dolphin calls it quits; boozy manwha are popular in Korea; fans are accusing the creator of Switch of copying a photo too closely; and an announcement is imminent about Kodomo no Jikan (which has been licensed in the U.S. by Seven Seas under the title Nymphet.). Also: Tohan’s Top Ten!
MangaCast has a press release on three new titles from Viz, InuBaka: Crazy for Dogs, Backstage Prince, and The Gentlemen’s Alliance. Also: a preview of the latest 18+ title from Icarus.
At One Potato Two, Satsuma is halfway through Devil x Devil, a title we’re unlikely to see at Wal-Mart.
Manga Creep Watch: The Daily Nebraskan includes references to yaoi and yuri in an article on slash and erotic fiction.
Pata starts off the latest Right Turn Only!! column with a One Year Later parody, which confuses the readers. In his usual eclectic style, Pata reviews Hibiki’s Magic, Negima, and Blank, among others, and manages to find something interesting to say about each one.
Yuno Ogami, the creator of June’s Japanese Original English Language (!) manga L’Etoile Solitaire, has a blog. It looks like mostly drawings and sketches so far.
Reviews: Active Anime’s Holly Ellingwood enjoys the new twists in vol. 3 of Enchanter. At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie reviews vol. 4 of Land of Silver Rain. At Mangamaniaccafe, Julie likes Kissing. Comicsnob’s Matt Blind reviews vol. 1 of Utopia’s Avenger and vols. 1 and 2 of Suzuka.
How interesting. The Japanese blogger comipress refered to was trying to figure out what’s wrong with those character’s EXPRESSIONS. There’s nothing offensive about what they’re doing. It’s the way the artist draw their face that’s offensive, and yet they can’t see it at all. This is just what I was talking about before – they have no clue about our Sambo past and just can’t see why can’t a black person be drawn this way.
I don’t understand what you mean by, “French national tendency to revere its own culture above all others.” The French are dead. After WWII so many young Frenchmen died, they had to import Algerians to do work for them. The French are a dieing race, and the French that do exist don’t have enough conservative drive to protect her from the French intifada, wapanese manga artists, invasive American culture, etc… What else would you expect from the French though, lol.
As far as manga outshining Asterix goes, it’s all just hype. Asterix has been going strong for 44 years, and is one of the best selling graphic novels in the world. Manga in France, and America, is basically just a fad. Asterix has been what Hello Kitty is to Japan, or what Buggs Bunny is to America; an icon of the Gaelic people and France. Manga isn’t going to destroy the western comic or convert us all to Islam like mangablog might like it to, but I’d say manga’s continued coexistence with the European comic industry is highly plausible.
@Ninja337: I don’t even want to reply to your first paragraph, so I’ll stick to the second.
Manga in its current form (small paperback books) has been published in France since at least 1994, in Germany since 1996, in America since 2001. Isn’t that a bit long for “just a fad”?
Have you even read the most recent Asterix volume? Yes, it sold as much as the one before, but more because Asterix is a fixture of popular culture, not because it was a good comic. The 2-3 Asterix volumes before that (some even argue all Asterix volumes since Goscinny died; I do not subscribe to that) weren’t really good, either.
BTW, I actually concur (minus that inexplicable Islam comment) with the opinion you state in the last sentence. Yes, Manga isn’t going to destroy the western comic. And I’d say manga’s continued coexistence with the European comic industry is not only highly plausible, but has been practised successfully over the last decade.
Re: The actual blog post
I don’t know what talking cats the writer was thinking of but “What’s Michael” was cancelled in France after 3 volumes were published by Glénat in 1998.
Actually I found the passage >>France’s publishing giants, who saw the manga wave coming, have managed to salvage their overall market share by licensing and distributing most of the Japanese titles sold in France.>Actually, I think the French do most things better than anyone else, but their comics leave me cold.
Hum. The last part of my comment was mangled a bit, probably because of how I marked the citations. Let’s try that again:
Actually I found the passage [i]France’s publishing giants, who saw the manga wave coming, have managed to salvage their overall market share by licensing and distributing most of the Japanese titles sold in France.[/i] quite refreshing, since up to now most articles about the “manga invasion” read as if it was something very recent that surprised the whole BD industry.
In fact, it’s been going on for the last decade and all the big players are in on the game. There’s probably no big BD publishing house left in France that does not have at least one manga label in the running (if not more). Very pragmatic indeed, but far more natural growth than frantic salvage attempt.
BTW: [i]Actually, I think the French do most things better than anyone else, but their comics leave me cold.[/i]
That makes me want to ask which ones you tried and what the main problem was for you (story, presentation, art?). Personal taste is of course a valid enough reason, but I think the catalogue of BD is diverse enough that there’s something for everyone (just as is manga).
Personally, I read a lot of manga, but also BDs and american comics and I have favourites from each, so I’m always curious about the reasons when someone dismisses a whole field of comics (seemingly) out of hand.
Let me say first of all that I have lived in France and I love the place and the people. When I talk about them revering their own culture, I’m thinking of things like their attempt to preserve the language by eliminating foreign words, or the constant anxiety about cuisine. Perhaps it’s because I was an outsider, but they seemed to think about their own culture more than we Americans do, and that’s not a bad thing.
As for BDs: To be honest, I haven’t read very many. I like the art in Tintin but I find the stories tedious. I never liked Asterix very much, but I picked up a recent volume and it wasn’t as bad as I remembered; it’s by the new guy. But the reason I said “leaves me cold” as opposed to “stinks” is that my reaction is a personal one. They just don’t seem accessible to me. I like comics, but when I go into a store full of BDs and flip through them, there is nothing I want to read. What I recall is that the art was exaggerated and the panels were complicated, so it was hard grasp what was going on at a single glance.
Let me say first of all that I have lived in France and I love the place and the people. When I talk about them revering their own culture, I’m thinking of things like their attempt to preserve the language by eliminating foreign words, or the constant anxiety about cuisine. Perhaps it’s because I was an outsider, but they seemed to think about their own culture more than we Americans do, and that’s not a bad thing.
As for BDs: To be honest, I haven’t read very many. I like the art in Tintin but I find the stories tedious. I never liked Asterix very much, but I picked up a recent volume and it wasn’t as bad as I remembered; it’s by the new guy. But the reason I said “leaves me cold” as opposed to “stinks” is that my reaction is a personal one. They just don’t seem accessible to me. I like comics, but when I go into a store full of BDs and flip through them, there is nothing I want to read. What I recall is that the art was exaggerated and the panels were complicated, so it was hard grasp what was going on at a single glance.
@Brigid:
They just don’t seem accessible to me […] and the panels were complicated, so it was hard [to] grasp what was going on at a single glance.
Ah, so it’s the un-decompressed (is there such a term?) storytelling, if I read you correctly. That should indeed be fairly widespread in BD, so it *would* be quite a stumbling block if one doesn’t like it. Comes with the format, I guess. You can fit more panels of a reasonable size on those huge pages. And you even have to, if you want to tell a complete story on 48 pages.