Manga, and the Comics Industry

If there�s one thing this industry (and every participant in it) seems to hate, it�s being told what to do. It really seems that, only through numerous and increasingly catastrophic failures do they begin to learn from their �mistakes�, although the general culling seems to occur very heavily during the mistake-making process, and they only manage to get up to speed just as it�s too late to bother.

Take the comic book/movie relationship, for example. Starting with SUPERMAN, people went to see the films and went to get the comics that they loved and found� nothing that resembled the film. So they rebooted the series and even had a �graphic novel� of the John Byrne revamp available, to get you up to speed on the monthly adventures of the Man Of Steel. Granted, most of it was still pretty incomprehensible, but the Byrne Superman sold VERY VERY WELL in a variety of formats, particularly while the movies were going. It only took 3 movies of missed opportunities to get there. Moving forward to BATMAN, the BATMAN comics had nothing to do with the ultra-successful movie. They were especially impenetrable to the casual reader, and the only thing that people who�d just seen the movie COULD read was the shitty adaptation of said movie, Dark Knight Returns, and Arkham Asylum. There was simply nothing else out there. By the time of the second and third movies, DC had started publishing 48-64 page one shots, with foil covers and consisting of stand-alone stories featuring the characters from the movies. Of course, it was still continuity-laden and featuring the characters from the ongoing comics. They never managed to integrate the movie looks of CATWOMAN or PENGUIN into the comics, despite Catwoman in particular being both very good and very popular. I never quite go that, actually. They managed to do a bit better by the time BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES rolled around, but not by much. Flash forward to X-MEN the movie, and? The books were entirely impenetrable, none of the characters on the X-Men teams were the same as the ones in the books, there were little-to-no comics to buy for the casual X-Men fan, save for a square-bound movie tie in� It�s at this point that someone in a position of authority realized it had all gone right to fucking shit, cleaned house and put someone in charge who could get shit done (which would never happen at DC, by the way, as the people there that need to be fired have those jobs for life, pending some sort of company apocalypse). They put together a few decent pieces for the Spider-Man movie, had lots of stand-alone, continuity-light stories in the monthly books, launched ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and ramped up trade paperback production. They did the same thing for X-MEN 2 and HULK this year as well, and I think they organized probably the best media tie-ins that you could expect for the comics too. I know most stores now are making more money off of Spider-Man and X-Men than they have since �the bust� of 93/94.

So, between Superman in 1978 and Spider-Man in 2002, comics as an industry managed to get their shit together regarding movie adaptations of their work. Not bad for 22 years of effort.

And now you expect them to adapt to the rapid changes that the Japanese publishing industry has enacted over just the past 4 years? What are you, fucking nuts?

Here�s to Random House, Broccoli, Tokyopop, CPM, Dark Horse, and Viz for figuring out that comics is more than just boys 18-35+, and for making comics better.

From: http://www.previewsreview.com/shipthisweek/040101/.