Is Manga a Passing Fad?, by Robert Greenberger

Robert Greenberger

Robert Greenberger is best known to comics fans as the editor of Who's Who In The DC Universe, Suicide Squad, and Doom Patrol. He's written and edited several Star Trek novels and is the author of The Essential Batman Encyclopedia. He's known for his work as an editor for Comics Scene, Starlog, and Weekly World News, as well as holding executive positions at both Marvel Comics and DC Comics.

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2 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    You do realize that even weakening weekly/monthly mags sales in Japan still means they sell like 10 times more than the bestselling US comic book, right? Not to mention the sales of collections (tankoubon), whose average ratio to US TPBs is again insert-your-favourite-multiple-here:1? There are plenty of sales charts for Japanese manga magazines online if you want to check.I can't say about sales of manga in the US, I'm from Europe and I don't really care about it, but saying that WEEKLY (I stress the weekly part) Shonen Jump dropped from 2,990,000 to 2,900,000 or even 2,800,000 regular buyers equals to "manga is dying even in its homeland" is a bit naive, don't you think?Data ref: http://comipedia.com/magazine/manga-anthology-cir…Btw, I suggest you follow the online essays of an American scholar living in Japan, mr. Thorn. Lately he wrote: "Sales of all commercial publications have been declining steadily in Japan over the past decade or so. The chunk of the whole pie that manga occupy (about 33% in terms of unit sales, 25% in terms of money paid) remains pretty much unchanged from what it was in 1990.And, yeah, cell phones are undoubtedly the biggest culprit."

  2. Anonymous says:

    Concerning my previous anonymous comment, I'd just like to add that I highly appreciate mr. Greenberger efforts with DC and Marvel reprint dept., and I avidly collected all of the titles under his editorship (I think I own everything Archives/Masterworks/Omnibus).But manga is a very complex and unbelievable-for-Westeners industry, so talking about it requires an uncommon degree of knowledge.