Why did American comics get stuck in the super hero ghetto? Manga, which is really just comics if we are being honest, covers a much wider range of themes and genres. There is a lot of truly serious, adult manga. That isn't true of comics.
I'm not trying to say that there are no good superhero stories out there, but we all know that most of this stuff is dreck.
You know why.
This is probably being simplistic but the Comics Codes killed a lot of genres.
A handful of the genres that weren't killed went onto thrive. One of which was capeshit.
Then a few decades after that. one of the big two played a mean trick on the other and caused them to make fucking retarded practices with their other genres and they accidentally everything but the capeshit.
So capeshit then went onto become the comic cliche.
Manga didn't have such a history, so they get more variety and never fell into the trend of shared universes making it easier to have a bunch of disconnected comics.
This.
On top of these issues, American consumers in general are extraordinarily cynical and tend to reject many things out of hand based on little to no meaningful evidence. Adults don't read comic books because
>Andy Griffith mentioned his son Opie reading comic books on an episode of his sitcom that aired in the 1960s, so comic books are shit for little kids and not worthy of my attention, also all the other grownups will laugh at me for not spending my money on kitchen tiles and car cars products.
Kids no longer read comics because the LCS scene and the tangled decades-long continuity are an enormous barrier to entry.
The only people who buy comic books in America are adults who grew up reading them, and the occasional handful of misfits who don't like shopping for tiles & grout. The population who buy comics in USA and Canada is MAYBE 300,000 people. The combined population is 358,246,147 people. 0.08% of the possible market actually buys comics.
So the publishers just double down on what sells, content to tread water because none of them knows the first thing about marketing. There ARE a wide range of comics about every topic under the Sun, but you just don't find out about them because they aren't advertised, they're sold to maybe 10-15k people, and ignored by everyone that isn't already knee-deep in floppy staplebacks.
If you're looking for good shit that isn't "people in painted-on uniforms posing in front of eachother" check out Mnemovore. It was a limited-run series about an eldritch alien monstrosity that eats memories.
>American consumers in general are extraordinarily cynical and tend to reject many things out of hand based on little to no meaningful evidence.
/thread
(Well, other than to say America is the only actual market for media nowadays, all others are routinely ignored in terms of preferences.)
>$4 for a comic book is too much money
>$30 for a movie ticket, pop and popcorn is a sound investment.
I will never understand this.
Seriously, fuck off to Sup Forums, weeabo.
>$2.00 for a phone game is too much but paying infinite money in a free to play is okay
Marketing is everything. That's all, really.
>I am illiterate, the post, the colouring book.
We are discussing a genuine Sup Forums issue,that being the floundering, dying state of the industry.
I like comics, which is why I want the industry to do well rather than serve as a testing ground for formulaic ideas that may or may not go into a shitty blockbuster movie
Not fooling anybody, this is a classic covert Sup Forums thread.
There are plenty of other comics than capes, it's just they aren't as well known as Superman Batman Spiderman and the rest of the characters who've been around for 50+ years and in noncape media.
Not to mention there's plenty moments where people wouldn't even KNOW something is based on a comic unless it has a cape (A History of Violence, Constantine, Kingsmen, The Mask, etc.)
And it's a bit low road to make comics better by dissing manga, but manga I feel like has more tropes they repeat.
I mean tons of slice of life romance comedies, every action manga has that power creep that keeps making "oh he beat the big baddy through willpower but now there's a Bigger Baddy being foreshadowed", and other cliches that have enough entries to be a subgenre. Literally "this girl has this kinda insane personality" happens enough to be a subgenre, cause that happens in manga.
Eh I justify movie tickets by reminding myself that it'd cost me tens of thousands to setup a home theater of that quality, and a thousand just to rent a theater for just myself.
So $10 to rent theater quality to share with others in a movie we all will prolly like? Sure.
What's low about it? I'm not trying to "diss" comics, manga actually is much deeper and broader because it is like 1/3 of Japan's publishing industry. If that offends you too fucking bad
I think it's the 90's market crash.
If you look at the comic landscape from 70's and 80's, you will see a ton of completely unique non-supehero comics - romance, horror, war stories, we had stuff like Sandman and Contract with God. Comic market was expanding in the same way manga market was expanding at the same time.
But the truth is, that since then due to the 90's market crash, comics came close to not being a thing anymore. They narrowly survived, but they're currently mostly sold to a bunch of dedicated nerds via specialty shops. Because of that, to sell to this narrow 'fandom' they try to target properties that will answer to the nostalgia, which are mostly superhero properties.
In Japan, manga is being sold to all kinds of demographics - hell, manga genres are based AROUND demographics, words like shonen, seinen - describe the kind of demographic the books are for. Because of that, it's more varied genre wise.
Basically, american comics market encompasses mostly what in Japan would only constitute Shonen market.
There is some sense to it. The monthly issue model as it currently is doesn't really work with the way comics are being written. You pay $3-4 for 15 minutes of a 3-5 part story. So getting a complete story may cost $10 or more despite being maybe 30 minutes of entertainment.
In an age where we have such a massive choice of entertainment, on demand, for insanely cheap, that kind of price doesn't seem justified, while the price of music, movies, etc. have gone down significantly especially if you just use Spotify and Netflix.
I don't know if it'd be economically viable with the way artists are currently paid, but you should be able to basically get a subscription to an entire line for $5-9 a month, with a Marvel Unlimited style access to back catalog, and creators get a small royalty every time someone reads one of their issues. This COULD increase sales and interest to the point that it becomes financially viable, but it could also flop and fail to attract enough new interest to offset the cost.
because comics have been trying to pander to a dwindling fanbase for literally decades
manga panders to fans a lot too but they also go out of their way to do prestige and experimental projects on top of the ones designed to pander to established fanbases
also manga isn't written by glorified fanfiction authors, if you wanna go into manga you can write your own story, if you wanna go into comics you have to write someone else's character that's probably older than you
>what are Vertigo and Image
You sound retarded OP and have no idea what you are talking about.
Exceptions that prove the rule. As I said earlier in this thread, manga is like a third of Japan's publishing industry. It is healthy in a way that comics just aren't and maybe never were.
>dying
>close to not being a thing anymore
>dwindling
Do any of you retards do a simple google search before you speak about topics you clearly are not familiar with?
Those inflated sales numbers are how much the shops buy, not how much actually sells, and it's being propped up by a wave of unsustainable cash-grab tactics. Google is not a source and surface numbers are not an accurate representation of the bullshit that is going on right now.
Vertigo was at its height DURING and after the crash. They also attracted the biggest influx of new readers until probably the early 00's.
Also though there were war, romance, horror and Western comics in the 70's they were long past their heyday and sold pretty bad. House of Mystery got turned into a budget comic, House of Secrets was cancelled, the All-Star Western revival was cancelled after 2 years, etc. It was an attempt to bring back those genres but it didn't work.
There were underground comics but they were... underground.
There wasn't much of a market for alt comics (read: not superheroes) again until the 90's, around the same time manga was branching out from robots, shonen and magical girls.
That´s because its bait for this stealth Sup Forums thread (to talk about manga). Sage and report OP.
But manga publishes tons of the same ideas.
It's like how people feel like every movie idea's been done at least twice, but it's that feeling x5.
Monstergirl harems in a cheesecake style? Crazy idea yet been done prolly a dozen times.
Thriller horror of our hero getting powers to kill badguys but slowly loses sight of his humane goal. Am I describing Parasite DeathNote Jangaaaan or D all the above?
Slice of Life story about an average looking guy having every female friend of his secretly pine for him? Not even gonna attempt that long ass list.
Kids get inside a videogame style fantasy world. Lordy there's like a dozen .Hack// ones alone.
yeah pretty much all forms of print got a sales bump from digital distribution in recent years, looking at raw number for a single industry doesn't show greater trends or comparisons
for a short example, the manga industry is worst about 3 times more than that in just Japan alone, that just shows how pathetically small comics are, but that isn't obvious without extra research since you are just putting out data without context to try and prove something untrue
yeah manga rehashes ideas, but there is a different between doing that in one genre and doing it in like 12
...
Why does it having to be physical matter?
If people are reading it on tablets that still means they're reading comics.
Hell there could be other factors that would technically count as comics that aren't factored in.
Like webcomics, which some are popular enough to make thousands a month via Patreon or even afford to be printed as physical comics.
The only depressing thing here is the unwavering willl to post anything but comics and cartoons on this board. Enjoy the (you).
Actually its down to Trades/GNs and Bookstore sales being on the up. Digital meanwhile is regressing and floppies (where the shit like overshipping happens) arent growing significantly at all.
it doesn't matter if its physical or not
I was saying that digital sales becoming more common is an upward trend found in literally all forms of print medium, so you show me comics having an upward sales trend and I say that's just reflecting the general trend in print and doesn't say anything specific about the future of comics themselves
Do you really think all superhero comics are the same?
Christ, I can't wait for September to roll around again.
If manga is so much better than comics, then why have they turned to comics to make their Godzilla stuff?
It's been, what, 20 years since a Godzilla manga? Meanwhile Darkhorse pumped out goodness and IDW has dropped some solid fucking gold on us.
Yes, I imagined you missed your classmates, thus this bullshit.
no, but comparing diversity, its like superhero comics have one story they repeat and manga has like 12
The problem I see is that writers cram every other genre into a superhero costume to sell it. Animal Man is existential horror, ANGR is an ultra-violent revenge rampage, Vision was a cathartic meditation on masculinity and the dissolution of the nuclear family. You take away the costume, and they're all completely unrelated. Superhero as a genre is fairly small, but it's used as a motif or aesthetic amd fictional in-universe zeitgeist in too many other stories.
Good thing superheroes are far from the only genre in American comics then.
I don't have a problem with that but I could see someone that doesn't like superheroes in general be turned away from comics because of that.
I disagree. I think superhero comics cover a wide range of stories and ideas.
There's a lot more manga, I agree with that. I don't think you can find something like Capeta or Drops of God in western comics. Maybe if you search outside of American comics you will.
>Why did American comics get stuck in the super hero ghetto?
Well, for starters this is demonstrably false. The number of non cape books is higher than the number of cape books.
The real question is why does capeshit sell more overall?
>but I could see someone that doesn't like superheroes in general be turned away from comics because of that.
And this is a big part of the problem.
And what about the tons of comics that AREN'T superheroes?
While capes are the most popular that has NEVER been the only things produced.
Family/teen comedies like Archie or Peanuts, action/adventure like Conan or John Carter, horror like old EC comics or Hellraiser comics, scifi stuff like Star Trek comics or Valerian, western comics like Jonah Hex, etc.
Acting like comics are JUST superheroes repeating the same single story over and over not only shows your ignorance in how broad the comics medium could be,
But also kinda proves you're just trying to make this the stealth Sup Forums thread that other poster was accusing you or OP of.
Manga is so fucking formulaic and repetetive it often makes comics seen robust.
I get that there are so many more "genres" of manga but half the fucking time you can take a tennis manga, a cooking manga and some shit like Bleach and they all follow exactly the same beats, with nearly identical reactions, etc etc. I loved Hikaru No Go, for example, but fuck if it wouldn't have just been a season of YuGiOh if you had replaced the go matches with monster fights.
>you can take a tennis manga, a cooking manga and some shit like Bleach and they all follow exactly the same beats, with nearly identical reaction.
That's because you're probably only looking at shounen manga. Have a look around in the seinen section.
That's because manga has the same problem as (superhero) comics: it fails to reinvent itself. When you're published in a magazine you either go big or go home, and even if you go big your work might get terminated if it loses popularity. Meanwhile in cape comics you have a never ending string of stories but the quality varies a lot between runs and it's hard to do something new or to bring meaningful changes since those can be undone or ignored by the next writer.
But really, american comics should be more like European ones, with a wide range of stories and themes to give something for everyone. There's more than capeshit already but it's still only what most people see and think about when they look towards comics.
That's like saying "you're only looking around in the superhero section. Take a look at the noir stuff."
And if we were capable of this kind of rational thinking, we wouldn't have this thread.
That's a problem caused by the people, though, not by the comic producers.
Cause tons of noncape stuff is made, the issue that you're pointing out is people don't check them out.
No seriously does noone here read even normie tier Image?
Marvel and DC don't publish fucking everything.
You people trawl down the weekly release list sometimes right?
>Been hearing that kids don't read comics anymore all my life
>I always liked comics as a kid
>Started reading them again in highschool, just not your average hero crap
>Brought them to school and everyone in my class took turns reading them
>That's 30 kids that liked comics granted none of them bought comics since I was bringing them to school anyways but that's proof that kids like comics, comics are just marketed horribly so nobody pays attention
Last big thing they tried that I remember was making comics digital Wich is a terrible idea since kids don't want to read a comic in the computer, they want to play videogames ans watch YouTube
The problem is obviously female marketing team that have no idea what boys want
Because Osamu Tezuka refused to let that happen and most American adults are snobbish assholes who turn their nose up at anything even tangentially for children.
They don't.
These are the same people that whenever they say "comics" they actually mean "big 2 comics".
It's a side effect of the characterfag disease.
The problem is no marketing at all.
Imagine, seriously imagine this: a YouTube video is loading, and the pre-vid ad is a 15-second animated montage of scenes from a comic, with a link you can click to locate the nearest comic shop.
Comics are only ever advertised in other comics, this is why so few people buy them, there is nothing being done to draw in new blood.
>But movies and TV are advertising
No they fucking aren't. That strategy has been ineffective for decades.
I like American comics but man oh man are some of you delusional. If you can't see that the American comics industry has a problem then you should literally blow your brains out.
If you actually love comics stop ignoring the serious issues that exist
The problem with Sup Forums v Sup Forums threads is that Sup Forums gets unreasonably butthurt and defensive when other boards point out the exact same flaws in comics/cartoons that Sup Forums spends all their time complaining about.
There's so much move than capeshit though you just need to know what to read.
I almost never read Marvel or DC (except for Vertigo) and I'm much happier for it.
I could turn your question around and say why is all manga generic shonen when all I read is Shonen Jump or Shonen Sunday. Ignoring Young Jump or Shojo Beat.
try reading
>Oni Press
>Top Shelf
>Dark Horse
>First Second
>Drawn and Quarterly
I find it very strange to be quite honest. They have adopted comic book fan as an identity to be protected or something, so they see criticism of the industry as an attack on them. It's unhealthy
Comics Code and the death of the casual market as comic books became the preserve of specialist shops. We've had this thread before and that's always the right answer.
>Wich is a terrible idea
*Which is a terrible idea
>noone
The comic code authority
Before you had a lot of horror and romance comics scattered around, then defacto censorship made it so only super heroes and cheeseball romance like Archie could survive
But there is nothing wrong what OP said
Oh and
>Sup Forums
>weeaboos
They are hardly weeaboos
Manga isnt anime, user. Manga is much more original than anime and alot of great manga will never get adaption
What I listed was manga though.
And yeah there are more manga than anime, therefore higher chance for variety, but also a bigger list of examples.