Certain people… certain evil people… have taken it upon themselves to keep me up to date on just what the Newsarama community thinks of this whole manga thingamabob. Over the last week or so, they’ve been kind enough to point me to threads that address this complex subject.
First came word of this thread, winningly named “Do You Weep for Manga?” As near as I can determine, the central argument is that there are many people bemoaning manga’s limited success in comics specialty shops. The consensus? There isn’t one, but I do like this comment:
“I don’t weep for the comic shops that don’t recognize if their customer wants the product. Around here, most the comic shops carry as wide, or even wider variety of manga as the big bookstores.”
But that thread’s title is a masterpiece of subtlety compared to this little gem, called “Would you buy Manga if the art didn’t suck?” A poster starts things rolling:
“If the art was like David Finch or McNiven or JR Jr I would read Manga, but it all looks like bad Pokemon or Yugio cartoons.”
Okay, now I’m weeping. Not to worry, though. A number of manga fans, scanners humming, ride in to defend manga’s visual variety, non-suckiness, and even its bargain per-page price. My favorite post in the thread is a compare-and-contrast of a Chobits cover (Tokyopop) and one from Coven 1 (Image).