When most people think of American comicbooks they think of individual issues that are only 20 or so pages long and superheroes dressed up in tights with their underwear on the outside. That's like thinking manga only comes in the monthly magazines and characters only dress in sailor uniforms. Comics are also released in graphic novel form and depending on the story can be hundreds of pages long on any and all topics. Comics are where I got into sequential art, they were my gateway drug to the addiction that is manga. It's high time I got back to my roots.

Comics are completely different from manga, and not just in the art style. Manga tends to be a minimalized art form, often with little or no background, colored only with screentone; comics have more detail in the characters and background and are usually published in full color. The way the story flows is also different. Manga have a story that contains a beginning, middle and end, the series are often fully planned out and have a specific number of volumes. Comics don't.

A comic is created around a basic concept and it is designed to continue perpetually until something happens to end it; readers loose interest, the writer decides to end it, the publisher goes bankrupt or an apocalypse destroys the world. Even then it is usually dusted off a few years later and revamped for a new generation's entertainment. Over the course of it's life a comic will usually have many writers and artists associated with it. Comics are arranged around story arcs that are often entirly self contained stories with only the characters linking them together. New villians or problems arise in each arc. A reader can jump in at the beginning of any arc and get most of the information they need to understand what is going on. You can start to see these same traits in some of the longer running manga, such as Inuyasha and Naruto.

for instance. He's one of the oldest and most famous superheroes out there. He was created in 1932 and has had a littany of writers and artists working on his story since then. The character has been reinvented again and again, and placed in every concievable situation. He has had tv shows, movies, radio serials, video games and all manner of memorabilia designed and based on him. Comics trade on the fact that people want to read stories about familiar characters, not accustom themselves to new characters every time they want to read something. A comic called Witchblade had an anime based on it. Imagine if you could continue to read new stories about your favorite manga character for the next 74 years, rather than having to come to terms with the fact that their story is over and you will never see them again.

So, starting on Monday, in the podcast, I will be reviewing American graphic novels. I'll be bridging the gap between manga and comics with Death: At Death's Door a manga based on the Sandman comic series.

Labels: Anime, Games, magazine, MagicMysticGrl, Manga, Movie, Podcast, Videogames