Viz Media

How did they come to convincing crush DCin comic book and graphic novel market share (23% vs 14%) and nearly beat both Marvel and DC combined (23% vs 24%)?

What are they doing right?

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it's not about what Viz Media does right but what DC and Marvel does wrong

no seriously all their comics became putrid trash infested with LGBT studies graduates and have been whoring out their characters for movies

no wonder people turn to manga when they cancel Gwenpool and allow Squirrel Girl to continue

To be fair, out of Marvel's cancelled series it's been about 50/50 between "diverse" series and "white male shitlord" series.

My hypothesis is that it's a lot less confusing to get into manga. Even for something as long running as One Piece, you can start from the beginning whereas reboots, alternate universes, etc make capeshit more confusing to get into. Additionally, their presence in mass market bookstores and book fairs gives them more exposure.

As someone who's been curious about comics but never took the dive, I'm going to guess part of it is that manga doesn't try to retardly shoehorn a universe all the characters inhabit.
You can just pick up an issue and that's it. A self contained story.

Comics = garbage
Manga = good

it's that simple

>My hypothesis is that it's a lot less confusing to get into manga
I think this is the main reason.
Want to start a manga? start from volume 1.
Want to start a comic? well you have to buy issue 1 of this hero, then issue 4 of this one because they share an event and then this special crossover because there's something that affects issue 3 of the hero you want to follow.
Also when you go to a store most of the times every comic seems to be superhero stuff, while manga usually has more variety (and I know this isn't the case, but its what looks like to a casual buyer)

...

Capeshit comics are inaccesible because you have to buy 70 years of omnibuses to understand every panel.
I wouldn't say that manga are inherently better than comics both industries fucking suck, it's just that it's easier to get into a manga series compared to a superhero series that has been published non-stop since 1949.

>Manga = good
The average Jump series is just as cancerous as the average DC/Marvel series, and the murican artsy small press comic industry is better than the jap one.

Is Gwenpool worth reading?

People like manga so they buy manga

People don't like comics so they don't buy comics (as much as before)

Simple as that

The japanese doujinshi scene beats both marvel sjw crap and your "artsy" bullshit into oblivion.

Western comics have become too politicized. A BLM comic was cancelled this year because the first two issues bombed. Manga series take place in their own world. People turn to fiction for escapism.

Even non-h doujinshi is too lowbrow to be considered good.

I wonder if the collectable market in western Comics is what is killing or dragging it down. People care more about having a first appearance of some character rather than actually reading the books. It's stupid.

Manga is kind of niche still compared to American comics (though still pretty popular) but aren't thought of as shitty as they are. Comics are nerd things in a lot of people's minds while these same people don't really think about manga so much so it stays out of those issues. There's also a large group that considers manga more "adult" or "serious" than American comics which helps.

>BLM comic
What the fuck?

It wouldn't be that comic about black people being the only ones with super powers, would it?

Sorry but your men in spandex just can't compete.

io9.gizmodo.com/marvels-cancelling-black-panther-the-crew-one-of-its-1795200916
>In this incarnation of the crew, Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage, and Misty Knight gather in Harlem to investigate the murder of Ezra Keith, a civil rights activist who mysteriously died while in police custody. With lines drawn between Harlem’s residents and the police seemingly trying to cover up Keith’s death, The Crew find themselves fighting to maintain the peace while also serving justice, and learning about the unknown history of other black heroes who protected New York during the Civil Rights Movement.

From my experience with comics, it just seems like there's zero quality control. The amount of boring stories and anti-climaxes is through the roof. I know they go through writers randomly, but it seems like the writers themselves are just random people with no skill.

I was going through the current Green Lantern continuity a few years back. While I enjoyed it, it suffered a lot from the problems I just mentioned. One chapter in particular you have Parallax take over the Flash and ends with that cliffhanger. You are like "Holy fucking shit, the Flash is overpowered as fuck and is now being taken over by an evil entity, shit's got super real!" Then next chapter Parallax just leaves his body and nothing comes out of it. No amazing tag team of all the heroes trying to stop the Flash, no elaborate plan to go against him, no foreplay, no climax, no nothing.

There's plenty of shit manga, but having your manga published means at least SOMEONE found it interesting enough, and that you'll have an editor helping you along the way. Comics just seem to hope they get carried by brand recognition and a good writer popping up every once in a while.

I have seen porn that was more subtle than this shit

fpbp

I haven’t bought any Viz manga in a long time but I’ll definitely get Fire Punch next year. It seems like the English manga industry is starting to pick up again since the Borders dumpster fire

I am in utter fucking disbelief.

>Storm
My niggres Queen came from Africa and i doubt she would give a fuck about some other dumb ass american nigga.

I just got the first volume of Children of the Whales today and I'm pretty happy with it. Going to get the rest as they come out and Fire Punch of course.

>manga
spends good amount of time building the world and explaining the rules of the world to readers then gradually introducing certain exceptions and twists to make things interesting and fresh

>comics
what's suspension of disbelief? why can't my hero just deus ex machina through everything? how dare you criticize our writing it's fiction who cares if something randomly happens you fucking nerd (this was actual article or tweet or whatever)

Frankly the comics that much more worth wild are ones outside the Big 2.

Is there a Berserk or Vagabond of the comic landscape that is not capeshit? What is considered the absolute classic of comics on par with Berserk or Vinland Saga or what have you?

For me personally, the lack of authorship for the comic industry is a huge detriment - how can I be expected to care about an universe/character if its fate is always in the hand of a random different author, or ever worse at the mercy of a "committee".

Hellboy. Northlanders. Watchmen. There are probably a couple more.

I looked at the first issue of northlanders and I noticed the the type of paneling and directing of the shots is more similar to how its being done in manga. Capeshit always looks quite different though, at least the ones i have seen. Is that something you noticed too?

Source.
Japan's indie scene is thriving. Most don't get scanlated though.

This.
With manga, at least there's a singular vision behind the direction.

It's quite simple. Manga > American Comics

This. Superior Japanese entertainment wins out.

Sandman is leagues better than Berserk and Vinland Saga. So are a lot of Will Eisner and Alan Moore's work.

Where do the Ojou No Yokushitsu style of Hokuto no Ken crossovers fit in to your classification?
Anyone know if they are they still releasing?

Who is the Charles Burns equivalent in anime and manga? Always wondered that.

Yeah, it does stand out from the beginning.

Arc quality is very inconsistent in Sandman, and the changong artists don't help.

Is that Nail Gaiman's sandman? or another?

As if Berserk or Vinland Saga are consistent.

Yeah, the Neil Gaiman one.

Junji Ito?

This. Comics seem to be brands that companies just need to put out on a regular basis, they're not contained stories and there's no artistic vision going into them on the whole. Yeah, good things can come out of them every now and then, but there's absolutely no reason to follow a series like you would a manga.

More than Sandman for sure.

I can kind of see the comparison but I really don't think they are all that similar.

I've not read it but his other books are interesting, especially the collaboration with Terry Pratchett Good Omens, Neil can write quite well.

Seems they still are.
No innocent SOL series is safe from this depravity.

Why?
Is it because the burgers don't give you panty flashes and small girls in skimpy clothes?

Aren`t western comics in longtime decline? I thought no one bought comics anymore. Not even with so many movies.

Man I have a love hate relationship with Viz. During 2004-07 when I started diving into manga they were great to me for a couple of reasons
-I was a shonenfag so them having stuff from Jump and Sunday always had me hooked
-They were coming off that 90's trend of reversing everything for American audiences
-Compared to comics I always felt like I was getting more for my money

Tokyopop was big too but most of their title never caught my attention like ones that Viz had. Then when Tokyopop had trouble in in the mid 2000's Viz become the big dog. Sure you had others like Yen Press, Del Rey, etc but Viz was still a go to for me.

But there was that period form 2007-12 were they had that huge focus in stuff like Naruto, Blue, and Death Note and it just turned me off.
To add insult Viz would cancel titles sometimes. I was collecting Gintama and Reborn and out of nowhere they just stopped releasing new volumes. I think they're still unfinished.

What gets me now is that they still tend to ignore series here and there that you would think would of been licensed/translated especially when their goal is to beat piracy.

tldr. I liked Viz growing up but I think they make stupid decisions.

I just emailed both Viz and Tokyopop the other day about picking up a manga and Tokyopop's response said that Viz has basically exclusive rights to every series run by Shueisha so that's one of the reasons they were always bigger than Tokyopop and had the more popular series.

But yeah, they have done and still do some stupid shit. Censorship is still a small problem I think and I know they only released like 2 volumes of Patlabor before canceling it, though that was before the time you're talking about. I haven't bought anything by them in a while since I think fan scans are a lot more convenient but it would be nice if they could pick some stuff up that isn't being fan scanlated.

Didn't Tokyopop die?

No, they're apparently still around. But they're basically irrelevant because they don't really have very many big series, especially when compared to Viz. Or at least they answered my email and still have a website.

Marvel and DC's comics are a convoluted mess. With manga you can pick up a volume 1 and you know it is the start of the series. The constantly changing creative teams can drive people away too. And then there is the price of manga vs the price of comics. You can get a 6 issue trade for $15 or you can get a 200 page manga volume from Viz for $9.99.

Viz isn't doing anything. DC and Marvel's business model chases more people away than it brings in.

This. Even the most entry level manga such as Dragon Ball is superior to most western comics.
>>>/reddit/

If only. I think that fuck went all in on the OEL manga meme this time.

There needs to be more manga companies though. That exclusivity deal between Shueisha and Viz also needs to die so maybe we'd get some of the smaller series.

What bothers me about both DC and Marvel is every hyped up event that is supposed to be world shattering and a change to the status quo is reversed like a couple months after it happens so it's why even fucking bother with that shit?

That's no different than Dragon Ball to be honest, just that with Dragon Ball it's not taken very seriously.

Tokyopop was always total fucking garbage though. Awful meme translations and they dropped series as often as scanlators.

>That exclusivity deal between Shueisha and Viz also needs to die
Seven Seas has been licensing Shueisha stuff lately. My biggest problem with Viz is how they have the Shonen Sunday line but hardly license anything for it. Lot's of great titles get completely overlooked.

Which recent DC book/series is "infested with LGBT studies graduates and have been whoring out their characters for movies" out right now? I'll give you Marvel but so far DC hasn't been that bad.

>There needs to be more manga companies though. That exclusivity deal between Shueisha and Viz also needs to die so maybe we'd get some of the smaller series.

Seven Seas has definitely broken through. They got freakin To Love Ru

Too late for that. Viz is like Kodansha US these days, just without the name.

Neverwhere and American Gods are better than Sandman tbqh

It's not really an exclusivity deal. Viz is owned by Shueisha so of course they want to save they're series for Viz.

>Neil is the guy everyone Sup Forums goes to when defending comics
>Neil is also the same guy who preaches that piracy is good for business and even proved it with his experiments
I wonder how the industry feels about him? On one hand, he's the pride and joy, yet at the same time he's the one calling them out for being too greedy and pig headed.

It's funny because if you leave it just to publications like Jump and Sunday, Viz has barely scratched the surface on those two. Sure you haves tons of series/ titles that end before they even start but you think they would bring series over that were complete or had long runs.

Zettai Karen Children, History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, Sket Dance are some titles I wanted over here but Viz never touched them.

Hell they never licensed To Love Ru, despite it starting out as a Weekly Jump title, now I think Seven Seas finally got it a couple months ago.

Also, you know remember that failed Shonen Sunday line Viz tried to copy the Jump one.

It's really easy. Most Westerners live through cognitive dissonance. Anything that conflicts with their world view they just ignore or block.

Kek you're right how did I forget about that. I'm just glad they haven't turned on him yet.

>Hell they never licensed To Love Ru
Viz readers hate ecchi. I forget what manga it was but when they tried to put an ecchi title in their digital Jump magazine people sperged out. Since then they don't even bother licensing ecchi Jump titles even when they have legs like Yuuna-san, which also got licensed by Seven Seas.

Honestly the manga back catalog of untouched titles is ginormous, honestly amazed series like Again!! haven't been licensed. I guess they don't like series that are already complete.

>Capeshit comics are inaccesible because you have to buy 70 years of omnibuses to understand every panel.
The vast majority of stories don't even end up mattering and are never referenced.

This
Old DC stuff is pretty cool though

Yeah, I can only follow hellboy. All other American comics are free for all writer pissing contest

why are shounenfags so gay

Comics just stagnate. It's constantly the same shit. Manga tend to be freshed and more enjoyable in the long run

Yeah, publishers like Fantagraphics are the pinnacle of graphic narrative.
Only on Marvelshit, DCrap major events are full with obscure references converted into plot points.

Non superhero comics aside from newspaper strips and stuff that got adapted don't get much publicility so the idea that all American comics are about superheroes continues to be the prevailing idea. So people don't try to get into them and just look at the manga next to them at the bookstore.

If you like 4th wall breaks yes. Gwen is also actually a surprisingly well written character

I don't know where people got the idea you HAVE to read everything. I always just read whatever sounded cool.

It's because DC and Marvel (especially Marvel) have been going full retard with all this forced SJW nonsense and it's been pushing away a lot of their core male audience who don't give twelve fucks about any of it, some already established character were even rewritten as a result of this dumb shit. Comics didn't even have diversity issues in the first place, plenty of female and black superheroes and most people don't mind a little sexy fan service here and there.

As someone who used to read a fuckton of Big2 comics, I can list multiple reasons.

>constantly changing writers
>writers that do not respect the work others have previously put in on a book
>constant crossovers
>continuity resets
>constantly resetting the issue count to 1
>six special variant covers!
>having to push a political narrative
>needing permission to do stories or being forced to write a story they may not particularly like
>shitposting on twitter about shit they know nothing about
>artists that use GIS and trace
>no real end in sight, have to keep coming up with retarded asspulls
>bizarre time compression where society and technology march forward but characters from nearly a century ago are still in their prime
>flat out bad art and writing

At least if a manga is bad, it's often genuinely bad in that the creator just may not be very good or have bad taste vs western media which is a frankenstein's monster of awful formed by a committee.

>bizarre time compression where society and technology march forward but characters from nearly a century ago are still in their prime
I don't even mind this depending on how it's done. A recent example in manga is the new Cardcaptors Sakura series that's only two years in the future (so would be early 00s) but everyone has smartphones. Yet a character that carried around a digital camera in the original still has basically the same type of camera.

I haven't read much western comics that would do something like this though so I don't know how shitty it gets. I agree with you with a lot of your other examples though. I've only really read stuff like Transmetropolitan, Preacher, and some shorter self contained stuff like Watchmen.

For the most part, manga has the same people working on it from beginning to end and, most importantly, every manga will end at some point.

Also, manga knows that girls have money too and that girl authors know how to appeal to girl readers, therefore making it much easier to squeeze their wallets dry too.

Yeah, but that's a far smaller scale vs having characters that were fighting in WWII that still look to be in their 40's.

Females prefer shoujo, josei, shonen, seinen over capeshit

Also, the comic scene is too weird for normalfags compared to anime and manga scene.

Those Furry Conventions are hurting the comic brand.

Superhero comics just aren't good. They aren't as clever as they think they are. They aren't as dramatic as they think they are. They aren't as funny as they think they are. They aren't as relevant as they think they are.

I tried picking up superhero comics multiple times over the past 15 years, long before I really starting reading manga consistently. I just could never stomach it. I think the people who read comics do it because they read them when they were kids and they feel oddly obligated to it.

I used to go to Sup Forums a lot and read the threads there and I never once thought to myself, 'wow maybe I should pick up this superhero comic! I'm interested in what people are saying about it.' That happens in Sup Forums all the time. Sup Forums manga threads people seem to actually enjoy manga. Superhero Sup Forums threads are often just awful arguing over esoteric canon bullshit I just cannot give a damn about.

>want to read one piece
>go out and buy one piece volume 1

>want to read spiderman
>have to choose between spectacular spiderman, amazing spiderman, sensational spiderman, new adventures of spiderman, spiderman unlimited, japanese spiderman and a billion other tiles

It's just easier to get into manga.

For me at least its their ability to tell some more personal/experimental stories. I'd buy stories that have a solid conclusion like Taiyo Matsumoto's Sunny from Viz or Welcome to the NHK from the defuct Tokyopop that read stagnant and "spectacle" capeshit any day of the week

Manga is more exotic to some people.I know it sounds like I'm saying this with a mouth full of pocky I bought off of Jlist but the way that manga is shaped by the culture and attitudes of its origin country give it a unique feel that keeps drawing me back in . Some of my favorite series are ones that I can't imagine an American writing and others that simply wouldn't be allowed to thrive in the fetid swamp that is the western comics industry.

They have found a way to separate women from their money as effectively as men by having series written by women for women.

American comics have gone to complete shit
The market doesn't really appeal to anyone anymore

The Nerds dont like it
The jocks only like the movies
Girls only like the idea of liking it (I see loads of girls in comic shops, None actually buy anything)

I tried to get into comics a few years ago but everything is so filled with their agenda, You can't have a bad guy and try to make the audience sympathise with them becuase it will trigger everyone.
The best villains are the guys who are doing horrific things but you can't argue with their logic.

Usually events are compiled into run and end up being self-contained that they're like your usual major manga arcs. It's not like I need to read Infinity Gauntlet to understand the recent Infinity run or have to look up legacies of Cap just to see Brubaker's run of Captain America which goes through the first Civil War event.

That said, the attempts of Marvel and DC trying to reset their shit so people can easily get into their comics have been ass at best. In the end, I rather read known runs of an author/artist (like the aforementioned Brubaker run or Abnett's Guardians of the Galaxy run) than just getting everything in. I get more value reading the capeshit that way.

Comics arnt really that hard to get into, For the most part you can buy any trade paperback and just read that.
Not everything is going to make perfect sense but since its a "self contained" story whereas manga is a continuous one.
You can often just buy any trade and you'll be ok from there, in fact I don't even recommend reading everything since alot of arcs are going to be shit/not worth reading.

Even then thats only cape stuff, Indie comics are alot better
There are alot of good comics that arn't a long running series, Image in particular are great!
Rat Queens, Saga, Hack/Slash and Wayward are all great!

That all said, I've also fallen a bit out with comics.

Image fucking sucks, all series feel like shoddy pitchs for netflix sci-fi shows.
Dark Horse and Fantagraphics are superior.

yes, i was surprised Fire Punch got a localized release so quickly. its a hidden gem not many people know about.

Yes, it's fun.

It’s not that obscure, already published in France