That was my first reaction when I read USA Today’s story regarding Manga’s loosening grip on readers in Japan.
After all, we lived through it in America starting some 30 years ago, where three things happened around mid-decade:
Cable television was introduced and began snaking through the country, suddenly captivating television watchers and keeping them watching with extra channels, premium movies and so on.
At much the same time, the first home video games were also capturing peoples’ attention.I still remember being fascinated playing Pong on the playroom television and then flipping to watch an uncut movie on HBO.
The rise of the direct sales distribution system for comic books, which began an evolution away from readers finding comics at the local stationary shop and towards hole-in-the-wall outlets that sold comics and related stuff.
An avalanche of alternatives sprang from those days, and people suddenly had more and more choices on how to use their free time and spare cash.Society was also discovering new ways to keep kids active, so suddenly there were all new manner of diversions mixed in with increased athletics (when I was a kid, we had Little League, now it’s soccer, Little League, lacrosse, Pop Warner football, etc.).Again, free time for casual reading of books or a stack of comics, was diminished.
When the internet and e-mail was introduced in the 1980s, things snowballed at much the same time the comic shops finally gained a nationwide presence.
Apparently, the same thing has finally hit Japanese culture but their diversions are cutting edge.Rather than read comics on the subway to work or school, former Manga readers are now obsessed with their multi-function cellphones.
A global question seems to be, how to translate comic books and comic strips to the small screen available on a cellphone.Several mobile companies have been experimenting but no “magic bullet” has been found.
The article also quotes readers as saying they are tired of the stories, characters and premises, feeling they are all blending together.So, as the Manga tsunami continues to wash through American bookstores, one has to wonder how long before domestic readers also feel the same sense of ennui and stop reading the latest from Tokyopop or Viz?
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.