By some fluke, manga is more popular than it's ever been in the U.S., yet less alternative manga is being published now than 10 years ago. Pulp magazine (RIP) was an important vector for the dissemination of alt-manga in the U.S., but it folded in 2003. In 1996 Comics Underground Japan was published, and Secret Comics Japan came out in 2000, but since then there's been a total drought of such survey volumes of important, alternative manga, with the exception of Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators, which has a totally different flavor. Even horror manga can't, for the most part, sell in America anymore. Dark Horse cancelled (or at least "indefinitely postponed") publishing Junji Ito's Museum of Terror after just three volumes, the primary publishers of Hideshi Hino in America folded, etc.
The wane of alternative manga in the U.S. is contemporaneous with a huge boom in mainstream shounen/shoujo fare. Manga like Naruto, Fruits Basket, and Bleach have reached unprecedented levels of popularity in the U.S. even while publishers like Viz have appropriated the clever Japanese system of charging readers on two ends (once for the Shounen Jump subscription, again for the tankoban). Nowadays manga that doesn't hew closely to the established genres or sub-genres has little chance of being translated and published stateside. The overall effect is a homogenization of what's commercially available here. If you want shounen action, there's a plethora of series; if you want shoujo romance, you can take your pick; even slightly more obscure tastes, e.g. for yaoi, can be accomodated. But if you want something to really surprise you, if you want to read authors who radically disregard the normative laws of genre, good luck.
There are a few notable exceptions. Viz has been willing, intermittently, to publish indie manga like Sexy Voice and Robo and their upcoming omnibus reprint of Tekkon Kinkreet. Fanfare/Ponent Mon is closely associated with the somewhat pretentious school of "La Nouvelle Manga," but their release schedule is sparse (seven or eight books a year) and their business model is horrible (print books on super high quality paper that gets oily fingerprints on it just by looking at it, charge an arm and a leg, and then distribute them almost nowhere).
My questions are manifold:
1) Why is it so hard for anything that strays too far from the popular formulas to sell here?
One of my pet theories is as follows. Prestigious indie comics have taken off in America (e.g. Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Eightball) in the past decade, to the point where now Time includes graphic novels in its end-of-year best-of lists, and the New York Times prints reviews of comics without blinking. Yet there is little cross-over between people interested in "quality" American or European comics and the few of us interested in "quality" manga. Why is this? I have no idea. Surely anybody interested in the possibilities of the medium should explore beyond the Western canon, right? Then perhaps a first step would be something like what Drawn and Quarterly has done with Yoshihiro Tatsumi's works: sell quality "underground" manga to the people who care about quality, NOT the people who care about manga!. The assumption subtending this marketing tactic is clear: market on the basis of a taste for quality rather than a taste for comics of a particular national origin! The precedent is obvious! Who do you think tends to line up at Hirokazu Kore-eda screenings? Fans of art cinema, or fans of anime?
2) Why, at a time when the U.S. manga industry is more successful than ever, and ostensibly has the most capital it's ever had, are publishers more afraid than ever to take risks on alternative, critically acclaimed manga (e.g. the stuff that used to get published in Garo and now gets printed in periodicals like Ikki)?
I think they aren't giving readers enough credit. I followed a pretty conventional trajectory, from consuming superhero comics as a kid, to discovering anime and manga as a teenager, to wanting something more and subsequently discovering the trailblazing work being done at the margins of the medium, by artists like Junko Mizuno, Taiyo Matsumoto, and Jiro Taniguchi. Publishers should expect the same thing to happen en masse in the next decade. Just as the average video game player is now in his late 20s, at least some of the kids currently devouring Naruto will soon be looking for something more. If there's alternative, more "adult" manga to be read (and by "adult" I certainly do not mean "adult" content like sex and ultraviolence), these people will read it. If there isn't, then they'll think manga is something they have to "grow out of" like sugary cereal and Saturday morning cartoons and the U.S. manga industry will, ironically, have subverted itself...
>less alternative manga is being published now than 10 years ago.
HAY GUY HAVE YA TRIED THA INNANET????
ITS PRIDDY GRATE
>>>2) Why, at a time when the U.S. manga industry is more successful than ever, and ostensibly has the most capital it's ever had, are publishers more afraid than ever to take risks on alternative, critically acclaimed manga (e.g. the stuff that used to get published in Garo and now gets printed in periodicals like Ikki)?
Because, just like every other publisher and competitive company in American, profit is king! If you KNOW the genre's not wildly popular then you can't make nearly as much money are more mainstream material can!
Also their is the 5%+ rule. This rule is that each quarter if the publisher cannot increase it's earnings by at least 5% then the poorest sellers are axed in favor of well known sellers.
Another point is the country laws themselves. The cry of "Child Porn" would bring the manga industry down within the week. Dozens of titles would be immediately yanked from the shelves and others would be placed under heavy evaluation. The major book stores then would be very unwilling to put the product back on the shelves and then the prices would be increased 2-5 dollars per book just in added packaging and editing.
dicks
for fucking serious. I'm a major fan of war drama and political drama, of which there is actually plenty produced in Japan, but very rarely is it ever translated.
It's not like stories about revolutions and international conflicts are going to be mistaken for child porn, it's just that, honestly, I don't think the "average" American reader is interested in reading such material; Viz, Tokyopop, and the like realize this as well.
>>6
voice of reason
Well I want to see lolicon licensed in English. No direct sales, just online, print it in Mexico, it could work.
As soon as I inherit my mom's 2 million dollar estate, I'm going to use it as well as I can to spread lolicon to the English-speaking world. It's my life's mission!
>It's not like stories about revolutions and international conflicts are going to be mistaken for child porn, it's just that, honestly, I don't think the "average" American reader is interested in reading such material; Viz, Tokyopop, and the like realize this as well.
Most manga isn't aimed towards the "average" American reader anyways though. You're selling things to a niche, and I think the "realistic war stories in graphic novel form" niche is just as big as the "yuri fanboy" niche that Seven Seas is going for.
lolicon is something you are
>>10
there's nothing wrong with that
I'm proud of it
speaking as a major manga supporter, I somewhat understand the reasons for the actions taken by the english publishers of manga. manga is more expensive in english than the manga that's sold in japan, and sadly the audience FOR the manga is much smaller than in japan. it can't be cheap to make a manga english, and more of the more recent fans aren't as dedicated as the average otaku. with more mainstream things like gundam, yu yu hakusho, or dragon ball, you'd be hard pressed to find someone aware of densha otoko, sekachu, or hoshi no koe even though they are significant to those in the anime/manga scene. with casual fans the overwhelming majority outside of japan, it seems only those with the most potential for success will make it into an english format.
It still seems like it should be cheaper to translate into English than it was to produce the original work.
Yet many original works enter the market with nobody knowing whether it will succeed or not. Sadly, some of the good ones never get popular over there, and thus US companies think "nobody" would buy it.
I'm sure most of the reason for it being expensive is unrelated to translation costs, but rather related to the relative cost of books in general. A 400 yen novel becomes $8 by merely being shipped over the ocean. English native novels are quite often much more expensive than that though.