Comments on: Comic Book Survey

By: HitTheTargets

HitTheTargets — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:31:33 +0000

American comics are chocolate ice cream, mangas are vanilla ice cream. Both are ice cream, but they have different flavors. Incidentally, bandes dessinees can be strawberry, because food metaphors are like Neapolitan ice cream: they make me hungry.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:50:17 +0000

“Can we stop pretending that manga is a genre? ”

*slowclap*

on a forum I was on I once stumbled upon a nearly 100 page thread debating if SAO was even a comic since it was korean. people overthink too much.

By: Valhallahan

Valhallahan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:24:31 +0000

Loads of Manga from Tokyo Pop in most big bookstores too. I never see anyone buying/reading them though.

By: Valhallahan

Valhallahan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:23:31 +0000

In the Uk we have loads of comic shops selling primarily US imports and you can get a limited number of UK titles (Like 2000AD and er… Viz?)and some monthly US reprint anthologies at the newsagents. I always find it strange that the comic shops don’t really champion British books or have any European translations to speak of. I guess we have Heavy Metal (Metal Hurlant), but that really does just seem to be naked barbarianesses riding hover bikes! The only times I see European books are when they’ve been translated and imported from the states.

Incidently if anyone is in London and speaks french, they’ve got loads of french comic albums in Oxfam in Crouch End.

By: david brothers

david brothers — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:41:18 +0000

And not two minutes after I post, I come across this interview where Helen McCarthy says:

Do you think it’s significant that we still call manga “manga” rather than just comics?

I think it’s only important semantically to people like me who are interested in history. I don’t think it’s a stylistic description because there are too many different styles of comics embraced in the word manga. I find it very annoying when people say “I’m doing manga but it’s English.” We have a perfectly good word for comics in English, which is “comics,” and I don’t see why anyone should be ashamed of the terms in their own language that describe what they’re doing.

I can kind of understand where it comes from though, in that I think an awful lot of young people, particularly women, have felt that for a long time Western comics in the American mold haven’t really described their experience or talked to them. They want to consciously reject comics; therefore they say “I’m doing manga”.

Interesting stuff.