Well, I just want to say, as a female comic book reader, during the 90s there was a series put out by Marvel called Generation X that I read and I know I wasn't the only female reading it, judging by what I recall of the Letters pages and nowadays reminiscing about it on messageboards.

Although I'm sure there were female readers reading things like Catwoman and Wonder Woman, too, lol...

Here's my take on why kids (and adults) are finding Manga, in general, to be much more relevant/interesting in their lives - and keep in mind my ideas about how Manga gets made was never very good to begin with, and is at least about 10 years old by now:

1. Because Manga is in black and white, and the home market is pretty big, it's cheaper to make, and there's a lot more room in the market to produce a greater volume of material. So you get a lot more viable experimentation for different story types.

2. This has resulted in (relative to American comics) shorter series length (Ranma 1/2 ends after, what? 8-9 years - Batman is going strong at about 70?), a greater variety of stories (no one genre dominates the market, like "superheroes" do here), and therefore creates some stories that can maintain a high level of quality (internal consistency) and more likely to be relevant/intersting to SOMEONE in the audience.

3. Too many people in the American comics business seem to have too insular an idea about what makes a "good" comic. They look at Batman, and they see a character that lasts freaking forever and whose stories can be retold over and over again. And it's true, the core of Batman, and the many good stories that have been written about him by many talented people prove the longevity of the character (we tend to forget a lot of the bad ones). So people try to create more "icons" - characters that will last forever and therefore have to be centered around a perpetual concept. Manga artists and fans can fall into the same trap - they figure that "Manga" has its own idiosyncratic style/language that MUST be maintained in order to be "good" - by and large these works tend to be crap, or succeed DESPITE the misuse of language. [I can't help myself - the "adult" stories that sell a lot of American books really aren't that accesible to new/young readers - a lot of these are actually little more than comic-masturbatory exercises than anything else).

4. We generally get a pretty filtered view of the Manga world here - we tend to see only the successful properties, and by then, there is so much of the series completed that we can get the "TPB" right away - getting a whole story rather than the piecemeal stuff (which is, by the way, pretty much the standard delivery system for both American comics AND Manga - the monthly serial).

Now, not all American comics are bad, or don't appeal to kids. And you don't HAVE to use the Manga "style" in order to attract them to comics.

It isn't the art - both forms can have crap art with no pacing and no energy. Neither is inherently better on the art side. It's the other stuff - the story, dialogue, and characters - that matters. Look at Bone by Jeff Smith, and look how popular THAT is. It isn't "Manga" or "American" - its just "GOOD COMICS" that appeals to kids AND adults. (it's also "DONE")

Surely the biggest difference between traditional superhero comics and manga is the pacing- which is the thing that western comics have incorporated the most in the last decade or so, so it makes sense that a superhero reader making the switch now would notice less of a difference than say, I did fifteen years ago?

Things like sweatdrops and chibi-isms, they're a bit odd to western eyes, but decodable. It's training yourself to turn the page that much faster, so that a 300 page book lasts half an hour, when you've been used to taking twenty minutes on 22 pages... that's what causes culture shock. With the proliferation of "decompressed" storytelling, there's not such a big gap anymore.

Seriously, I've loved reading this these last four weeks.

And it has been quite a bit more assimilated, these days. But ten years ago Jim Lee was still something of a current template for superhero comics and the culture clash was a bit more obvious. "

Oh sorry, Greg, I wasn't being critical of you so much as responding to Mark's points. I can see that being confusing if you're unfamiliar with Manga and you're trying to figure out why a character has a large sweat drop next to their head. LOL. I know what you mean about Jim Lee too. In the 90's, that Lee/Liefeld style was EVERYWHERE. I knew artists who mimicked their style because they couldn't get a job with Marvel or Image otherwise. For better or for worse, it looks like that style played itself out after a few years and never caught on outside of a small minority of artists.

Oh, but don't you just HATE "continuity"?!?

I mean, that's just like saying you missed the last 20 years of whatever you're collecting (ie. Batman, Superman, X-men, F4, etc.) and you must collect 'em all to get caught up!!!

I gave up alot of books just to avoid the "continuity", and went for the unorthodox writers (like Ellis, Ennis, Morrison, F.Miller, Gaiman, A.Moore) and the hell with continuity!!!

"Over 20 issues of continuity!"

There are also visual tropes like nosebleeds, sweat drops, and the like, but I also think those are very easy to pickup and understand from their context.

Oh, absolutely. But in my defense I do want to point out that I first saw these demonstrated to me in the work of my ten-year-old Gatzert students, and I had to struggle a little at first to figure out what the hell they were trying to do and where they were getting it from. I knew it wasn't from the comics *I* was showing them. Once I understood that these things were standard idioms in their OWN source material and influences -- which is to say, manga -- it made quite a bit more sense to me.

And it has been quite a bit more assimilated, these days. But ten years ago Jim Lee was still something of a current template for superhero comics and the culture clash was a bit more obvious.

And I’m having less trouble than I thought with it. Maybe it’s incorporated enough into American comics now that I’ve absorbed many of the tropes without really noticing it?"

I hear people make comments about the differences between manga and American comics, and I honestly don't see a HUGE difference between the two. Their both sequential art forms and after 20 years of reading exclusively western comics I transitioned between them pretty easily. The only differences I can think of are minor cultural ones like how interpersonal relationships play out, or how their schools are set up in Japan. But they aren't so different that a reader can't easily understand or relate to them.

There are also visual tropes like nosebleeds, sweat drops, and the like, but I also think those are very easy to pickup and understand from their context.

Then again, I think you're right in guessing that the proliferation of these elements in our own culture has helped. Look at how many American cartoons now adopted the anime 'art style.' I also see a lot of western comic artists adopting the 'manga style.' Just the fact that Manga as a word has even made it into some dictionaries should tell us that it has become more than just a 'trend' in my opinion.

CPM was big for a little while, and one of the first to infiltrate into the bookstore chains, but the company ran into financial issues a couple years ago and distribution problems with Diamond, and have pretty much become a non-factor. TP, Viz, and Dark Horse are still power houses in US manga, as are Del Rey and Digital Manga, and Yen Press and Seven Seas are both growing quite nicely. And those aren't even counting the smaller publishers like Infinity or the really large numbers of publishers and labels that specialize in just Yaoi manga...

Manga - sigh - I've been reading manga on and off ever since Eclipse Comics first brought out Area 88, Legend of Kamui, and Mai - the Psychic Girl. Then Marvel brought out the first colourized manga - Akira, and First Comics - Lone Wolf and Cub.

Seems like since the 90's, Dark Horse, Viz Comics, CPM manga and Tokyopop, have pretty much covered the manga market.

The pacing, the construction, everything about the manga idiom was different from what I was used to

I JUST started reading Manga, like two months ago.

And I'm having less trouble than I thought with it. Maybe it's incorporated enough into American comics now that I've absorbed many of the tropes without really noticing it?

DC and Marvel are giving it the old college try with the Johnny DC and Marvel Adventures books, but I can't help but wonder if it's not too little too late and that a whole reading generation may have passed over American comics in favor of manga (and Harry Potter, of course...)

Heck, I find myself reading mostly manga these days just because I have gotten tired of the crossovers and general direction a lot of the Marvel and DC books.