Occasional superheroine

[pauljholden]

DOOOMED!

I disagree, to me this imprint (and, in fact, manga in general) is like the little early mammals nipping between the heels of the lumbering dinosaurs who don't yet know they're extinct - we've as much chance of recognising our demise as they had.

In the past few years I've met a tonne of girls who read/want to draw comics - or, more specifically, manga - previous to that there'd only be the very odd one or two.


- pj

[Bico]

Manga has a noticeablly high representation of strong female characters, hence teenage girls getting into it - but strong females are more a result of the western translation of the manga toning down the patronising female characterisation than the original Japanese scripts themselves.  The interest is more the bastardised result of the culture clash than any intentional design on the part of the creators.

Plus DC's credibility in the manga field is as dead as a dodo after their disasterous forays into heavily-censoring adult Japanese comics and then releasing them as incomprehensible kids' books.
It sounds like a bit of ill thought-out bandwagon-jumping from a company known for jumping onto bandwagons after the wagon has not only left town, but been superceded by the invention of the automobile.  Teenage girls read manga, ergo they run off some crap comics that will appeal only to the mentally deficient and market them as manga in order to grab some cash.  No thought of how patronising the book pitches sound to any potential audience, and no market research beyond some editorial bright spark.
Mind you, considering how their superhero books have been in the creative tank for the last few years, anything must seem like a good gamble.

[Bico]

Oh, and I can't believe no-one's pointing out that the biggest-selling manga books (and the digest-sized American manga-esque books that Marvel put out infrequently) are DIRT CHEAP and cost little to nothing to publish - surely a more likely reason for their popularity with both publishers and consumers alike than any negligible merit in the comics form?

[Quirkafleeg]

>I'm guessing you're not the target market, Gary

True, in that I like reading stuff that does not sound COMPLETELY GAY! I mean I'm as right-on as the next guy, I used to read Crisis, for pity's sake! But this looks just so damn wet... Can't they do stories about ponies or ballerinas?

[Art]

COMPLETELY GAY!

IIRC, from some comics journal or a half remembered Tokyopop article no doubt, extremely soft-core gay pr0n is a huge girls manga market.

[House of Usher]

There's an article about it on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi).

I've put in a link, but I'm not certain it'll work because I've just upgraded to Windows Internet Explorer 7 and I'm not sure the URL came out right. Probably it did. The only Yaoi manga I can think of that's published by Tokyopop is 'Love Mode'.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi" target="_blank">Wikipedia link

[House of Usher]

Oh, and the article helpfully reproduces the cover art from Tokyopop's 'Fake', but doesn't include it in it's list of yaoi titles...

[Bico]

I've not even read the half of that blog, but it's horrible in a suspicion-confirming kind of way where the whole Identity Crisis thing is concerned.

I'm personally of the opinion that very few comics people aren't fucked up in some way or other, and the more interviews I read with comics writers and artists who have distinctive talent (as opposed to slavish adherence to the American writing or scripting model), the more this view is reinforced.

[Art]

Er, what American writing or scripting model is that?

[Art]

Oh, and I can't believe no-one's pointing out that the biggest-selling manga books (and the digest-sized American manga-esque books that Marvel put out infrequently) are DIRT CHEAP

Now there you might be on to something.

[Bico]

Not an ACTUAL scripting or writing model - more trying to draw like Jim Lee or that broad Joe Mad anime style, for instance - or writing like Brian Michael Bendis or Mark Miller.  That way leads to the likes of Rob Liefield and Jeph Loeb not only creating books, but apparantly being hailed as geniuses for years before someone points out the obvious.
Oddly, those two are doing some sort of Marvel Onslaught/Heroes Reborn thing, and it's possibly the first time I've ever looked at a professionally-produced comic and said to myself "I could do better than that" AND MEANT IT.  I may buy the book purely for the boost it'd give to my confidence.

On the cheapo books front, it's apparantly not unusual for people in comics shops to come in and buy exclusively from the sales/discounted back issue boxes - and you can find discount bins of manga tpbs going for a quid each in most Forbidden Planet stores.