What makes your stuff uptown? It cost more per page? Have you been to a book store in the last five years? Have you seen the manga section compared to the comic book section? You best recognize!

Okay, Now comes the part where I act like a grown-up. It is ENTIRELY possible for fans of Manga to become fans of superheroes. Tom is unable to understand that because he thinks it’s hopeless to get children to read (as evidenced by the utmost confidence of the depiction of two schoolbus explotions in their titles this past year). Mainstream needs to get with the program and try reach out to other audiences, because the ones they have now are getting mighty rusty.

At the risk of sounding like manga is better (It isn’t), the big two might want to think about doing something that does not involve flying men in capes to get a bigger audience, or rather, a smaller one.

As for the “one style” comment, I think people are reading too much into that. Maybe it betrays an ignorance of Manga, but maybe it was just a poor choice of words.

Jim

It’s obvious to us that superheroes are only a niche, but I’m not at all sure that it’s obvious to people working in that particular niche. They tend to see their niche as the whole world and find ways to justifying writing off the big wide world beyond them.

Brevoort started by talking about Oni in his third party post, so I’m not sure he’s as clearly restricting his comments to only superheroes as you seem to be.

Gail

(I miss Alias so much!)

This conversation came up because Tom Brevoot wished to see competition within the Super Hero market. People brought up manga as an example but he stated that he doesn’t believe it is a direct competitor to DC or Marvel. Which it obviously is not.

It’s obvious that super hero comics are a niche industry aimed at a niche clientèle. Why does everyone shit on them for doing what is obviously their business?

This is sillier than people complaining about the lack of white comedies on BET or jazz on a country station. That’s not what its there.

[...] readers; they are really in different universes (so to speak). Johanna and her commenters post some excellent responses at Comics Worth [...]

[...] getting out on the roads so much that they’ll come buy our horse-drawn buggies!” – Johanna Draper Carlson,discussing Marvel editor Tom [...]

And while she might love to write superheroes, I would see it as being a step backwards.

Castellucci is a longtime comics fan, reading everything from superheroes to French comics to DC’s Vertigo titles. So Bond didn’t have to do any arm-twisting to get Castellucci to jump onboard Minx.

“Yes, please, I’d love to.”

I don’t think Janes was an attempt to catch the attention of superhero creators or as a “try out” Johanna. I’ve read and reviewed all of her novels and Janes is very closely in line with work she has done in the past. It’s the sort of work I’ve come to expect from her (and I mean that in a good way.)

I think she’s just saying she’d love to write superhero stuff too, if given the chance.

Regarding the manga stuff, y’all said it better than I could!

But didn’t Stan Lee already win an Eisner? For that Silver Surfer story he did with Moebius?

I can understand the appeal of voting for a beloved creator more for his/her whole body of work than for the individual work at hand–it seems to happen all the time with the Oscars, say–but I don’t think it quite applies to Stan Lee here. He has won his Eisner, he has been enshrined in the Eisner Hall of Fame.

Ah, well. Let the voters vote as they’ll vote.

If manga (um, all of it?) and Marvel Comics aren’t competing, what was up with Marvel Mangaverse’s three or four different launches, the half-assed “Tsunami” line (of which only Runaways survived), the digest collections of so many of their books, which get shelved along with manga?