I honestly did not know that so many people considered manga to be its own thing. I started reading manga in the 90's when I was a teenager, along with Heavy Metal magazine, which featured a ton...
I honestly did not know that so many people considered manga to be its own thing. I started reading manga in the 90's when I was a teenager, along with Heavy Metal magazine, which featured a ton of European creators in its pages, some absolute legends like Moebius among others. I also had access to a ton of comic TPB (Trade Paperbacks) at my local library collecting tons of the newspaper comics he mentioned (Prince Valiant, Buck Rodgers, Disney comics from the 1930's and 40's, The Phantom, Popeye, Tin-Tin, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Little Nemo, Nancy, Krazy Kat, Dick Tracy, Brenda Starr, among others) as well as so-called "Comix" which tended to be more underground and indie stuff from as early as Robert Crumb onward. I had the first nearly 100 issues of the American version of Shonen Jump, and I was big into comics until my 30's when it was more lack of time than interest that caused my readership to fall off.
I guess for me, manga doesn't seem different from Western comics at all when I was exposed to a whole range of comics from many, many sources and eras as a teenager and young adult. And I really can't define what a dividing line would be besides "was originally published in Japanese" for manga to make it something its own and unique from the entirety of comics as a whole.
But maybe I'm just not good at drawing these kinds of delineations.
I think an interesting difference is the type of comic each country might make due to cultural differences, and for whom. Like K-On! looks cutesy and like something the US would only make for...
I think an interesting difference is the type of comic each country might make due to cultural differences, and for whom. Like K-On! looks cutesy and like something the US would only make for girls. But it was published in Manga Time Kirara, a magazine targeting young adult men. Some comics may be making a cultural critique that may not match one-to-one into other cultures or explore themes in a different manner. In this way, I've learned about aspects of Japanese culture that I wouldn't have if I only read American comics (and of course this isn't exclusive to the medium).
Ultimately, it is a gradient rather than neat boxes. We humans really like to try and categorize phenomena into neat boxes.
I honestly did not know that so many people considered manga to be its own thing. I started reading manga in the 90's when I was a teenager, along with Heavy Metal magazine, which featured a ton of European creators in its pages, some absolute legends like Moebius among others. I also had access to a ton of comic TPB (Trade Paperbacks) at my local library collecting tons of the newspaper comics he mentioned (Prince Valiant, Buck Rodgers, Disney comics from the 1930's and 40's, The Phantom, Popeye, Tin-Tin, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Little Nemo, Nancy, Krazy Kat, Dick Tracy, Brenda Starr, among others) as well as so-called "Comix" which tended to be more underground and indie stuff from as early as Robert Crumb onward. I had the first nearly 100 issues of the American version of Shonen Jump, and I was big into comics until my 30's when it was more lack of time than interest that caused my readership to fall off.
I guess for me, manga doesn't seem different from Western comics at all when I was exposed to a whole range of comics from many, many sources and eras as a teenager and young adult. And I really can't define what a dividing line would be besides "was originally published in Japanese" for manga to make it something its own and unique from the entirety of comics as a whole.
But maybe I'm just not good at drawing these kinds of delineations.
I think an interesting difference is the type of comic each country might make due to cultural differences, and for whom. Like K-On! looks cutesy and like something the US would only make for girls. But it was published in Manga Time Kirara, a magazine targeting young adult men. Some comics may be making a cultural critique that may not match one-to-one into other cultures or explore themes in a different manner. In this way, I've learned about aspects of Japanese culture that I wouldn't have if I only read American comics (and of course this isn't exclusive to the medium).
Ultimately, it is a gradient rather than neat boxes. We humans really like to try and categorize phenomena into neat boxes.
Matttt goes into more detail with a free post on his Patreon blog.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/152047519