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...