Rising Sun Ranger said:
PFFFT!! Sounds stupid to me!!
Manga ARE comic books, they're little books with panels inside them, altogether telling a story, so without doubt they are comics!! Don't like it? Tough!! Just because they're Japanese doesn't mean they should be forced into it's own little Dog House and let everything else roam.
These Manga comics are pretty much the only comics I ever have, thus being my only way I can respond to this thread.
If this is another one of these silly games where there's a huge party and everyone's invited aslong as you're not Japanese, then count me out!!
Its got nothing to do with being Japanese, dude. Don't be ignorant. And you'd have to be retarded to say manga has its own "little" dog house. No. American/Euro comics get the dog house, and manga gets the 30 square mile field that surrounds it. Manga sales, dropping though they are, are still for the most part WAYYYYY above standard comic sales. To keep with that dog comparison, regular American/European comics would be like a small bulldog, while manga would be like a 4ft., 200lb. Great Dane. And you know, when you buy a regular comic, you're helping the comic industry. Even if you go into a comic shop to get ONE comic, a few others might catch your eye, and you'll pick up those, and you're keeping the sickly comic industry from dying. You buy a manga volume, you ain't helping the comic industry. Most manga fans (especially female ones, which are the ones who are apparently buying the most manga) despise and look down upon comics. So if they see one that looks cool, they probably won't admit it and will spend that extra money on...guess what? Another manga. At least Vertigo and other non-superhero comic fans recognize and respect that without those 6,000 Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, and X-Men books that their favorite book (be it 100 Bullets, Y: The LAst Man, or whatever) probably wouldn't get published due to a lack of money. Hell, if one of their favorite writers writes a superhero book (as they've been known to do) they may even pick up one. See where I'm going with this? Comics and manga....not the same thing in my eyes, and never will be. Not as long as comics publishers don't do OEL Manga or anything like that. Sure, DC has an imprint for manga, but:
A.) Due to the REALLY shitty job they did on Tenjou Tenge it should be boycotted
and
B.) Supporting only their manga imprint is just telling them to drop that one awesome but totally unnoticed comic book (Richard Dragon comes to mind) in favor of picking up another manga.
If you want to talk about manga, go pick up some Antartic Press books, and then you're very welcome to come back here. ^_^
As for Kingdom Come over Watchmen....I haven't read Watchmen yet. I can't make that comparison. I CAN say that Mark Waid and Alex Ross made a GREAT team for that book, and its one of the few TPBs that I own. (Which is mainly because no one's released a HC of DC: The New Frontier....) Speaking of which, has anyone read Justice? I'm following it rather closely, and its fantastic. Its much like Kingdom Come (since its Alex Ross, the art is of course reminiscent of KC), except its set right before the "Modern Age" began. The basic premise is that the villains have teamed up (whether just of their own free will or because of a higher power is unknown) to solve all the world's problems and take down all the heroes at once. The only thing they have in common so far is that all of them have this very apocalyptic dream of the heroes trying to save the world but failing. And after every hero fails...the human race dies. And the planet explodes, leaving Superman the Last Son of two planets.
How everything connects in it is yet to be seen, but I know so far its VERY kick-ass.
