But Algertman, you have a lot of terrible opinions on regular comics, so it's hard to call that a ringing endorsement. Still, even a broken clock is right twice a day. :P
Anyway, I will reiterate my endorsement of the Ghost In the Shell series. Another personal favorite of mine is Lupin the Third. Some of the earlier Gundam series were also pretty great.
Manga.
Never having actually read a Manga I can't talk shit about them, other than to say I hate 95% of the art I've seen. I'm sure there is some good manga out there but, wtf preteens, pick up some Runaways TPBs and thank me later.
The Nausicaa manga is pretty awesome, and better than Miyazaki's animated version, imo.
This is all true. But then of course the animated version was lacking, Miyazaki wasn't editing for time when he wrote the paper version...he's even said as much himself.
As for "manga" vs "traditional", no-one but comic-book nerds care and comic-book nerds aren't the ones making the buying decisions for Barnes&Noble. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it too much since the balance will eventually tip back, unless DC/Marvel/everyone else suddenly start making black and white only stories about catholic schoolgirls with unfeasibly large magic swords disguised as crucifixes.D:
Most manga is crap, most comics are crap, most of any medium is crap.
Both are filled with tons of stale cliches, lame conventions, bad art and poor dialogue.
Both having great pieces of work that anyone ought to read.
You need to take into considering that not all manga is brought over here to America. What is brought over tends to be aimed at a younger market (Naruto, DBZ, etc) so it's harder to find a mature story.
Art wise, all I can say, is if you don't like this, you have no soul:
The Hellsing anime was pretty sweet. Never did read the manga though. Same with Cowboy Bebop. Seriously, if you can watch CB and seriously say you don't like it...I dunno, you're soul-less or something. It's awesome no matter how many times you watch it. The closest thing I can liken CB to is probably Firefly, except it has fewer people and no Reavers.
Art wise, all I can say, is if you don't like this, you have no soul:
meh
I guess I don't dislike it.
It is all right.
Okay, now that I can't get the idea of that gun representing his penis out of my head, I dislike it.
It's a girl.
It's also definitely not my favorite panel from Hellsing, but the best I could find on a quick google search. The art from the earlier ones is actually pretty bad, his style improved with every volume.
The Hellsing anime was pretty sweet. Never did read the manga though. Same with Cowboy Bebop. Seriously, if you can watch CB and seriously say you don't like it...I dunno, you're soul-less or something. It's awesome no matter how many times you watch it. The closest thing I can liken CB to is probably Firefly, except it has fewer people and no Reavers.
I actually searched out American comics. Most recently the Thor Essentials and Death Dealer series. I found them to be frankly boring, waste of my money and terrible.
Death Dealer 1 to 4 was the first one I picked up. Aside from it costing 5 dollars for 5 pages worth of text and the rest of the pages with faces drawn terribly and almost no story. I actually felt sorry for wasting my money on such a product.
The Thor Essentials were text filled, but they were a bore. No character development except "I'm now Thor! RAWR!"
Manga on the other hand to me is gripping, I like the art and for $10 I get at least a 100 or so pages. Double the price of the Death Dealer comics, but twice as much comic. The street fighter series by UDON is another example if you wanna look TPB. Or how about any of the ADV large comic formatted comics that are designed like American TPB but have twice as much content for anywhere from $12 to $16.
I will pay for Manga every time because I am not disappointed in the product. However the same cannot be said of American Comics.
I actually searched out American comics. Most recently the Thor Essentials and Death Dealer series. I found them to be frankly boring, waste of my money and terrible.
Death Dealer 1 to 4 was the first one I picked up. Aside from it costing 5 dollars for 5 pages worth of text and the rest of the pages with faces drawn terribly and almost no story. I actually felt sorry for wasting my money on such a product.
The Thor Essentials were text filled, but they were a bore. No character development except "I'm now Thor! RAWR!"
Manga on the other hand to me is gripping, I like the art and for $10 I get at least a 100 or so pages. Double the price of the Death Dealer comics, but twice as much comic. The street fighter series by UDON is another example if you wanna look TPB. Or how about any of the ADV large comic formatted comics that are designed like American TPB but have twice as much content for anywhere from $12 to $16.
I will pay for Manga every time because I am not disappointed in the product. However the same cannot be said of American Comics.
So you are saying that there is not a single manga that is bad. Is this really what you are saying.
Sweeping generalizations like this, or like "olol magna suxz dC rox" are kinda stupid. It's a slightly different medium; most of the shit is going to suck, but you can't deny that there are SOME good products in each category; whether you've found them or not is a whole different issue; I am seriously abusing semi-colons here.
CJTheran on
0
Options
Vargas PrimeKing of NothingJust a ShowRegistered Userregular
Manga.
Never having actually read a Manga I can't talk shit about them, other than to say I hate 95% of the art I've seen. I'm sure there is some good manga out there but, wtf preteens, pick up some Runaways TPBs and thank me later.
See, now that's strange to me, because Alphona's art on Runaways always seemed heavily Asian-influenced. It had his own flair, of course, which is why I liked it so much, but it came off feeling manga-esque to me. Well, whatever.
Like others have said, there's great manga and there's horrible manga. Like any other medium, most of what's out there is average-to-crappy, with a few shining gems to cherish.
I've never had trouble finding manga with interesting art, though. My trouble is finding the ones with good writing to go along with it. There are some truly awesome Japanese storytellers out there, but sometimes they're just paired with an uninspired writer, or they're writing their own stuff which isn't always a good thing.
I actually searched out American comics. Most recently the Thor Essentials and Death Dealer series. I found them to be frankly boring, waste of my money and terrible.
Death Dealer 1 to 4 was the first one I picked up. Aside from it costing 5 dollars for 5 pages worth of text and the rest of the pages with faces drawn terribly and almost no story. I actually felt sorry for wasting my money on such a product.
The Thor Essentials were text filled, but they were a bore. No character development except "I'm now Thor! RAWR!"
Manga on the other hand to me is gripping, I like the art and for $10 I get at least a 100 or so pages. Double the price of the Death Dealer comics, but twice as much comic. The street fighter series by UDON is another example if you wanna look TPB. Or how about any of the ADV large comic formatted comics that are designed like American TPB but have twice as much content for anywhere from $12 to $16.
I will pay for Manga every time because I am not disappointed in the product. However the same cannot be said of American Comics.
So you are saying that there is not a single manga that is bad. Is this really what you are saying.
Sweeping generalizations like this, or like "olol magna suxz dC rox" are kinda stupid. It's a slightly different medium; most of the shit is going to suck, but you can't deny that there are SOME good products in each category; whether you've found them or not is a whole different issue; I am seriously abusing semi-colons here.
I find none that are bad, just like I find no games to be boring. I have my own opinions and regardless I will try and see how I like it before agreeing with the populace on whether its bad or not. Currently I haven't found any manga to be boring and I have read alot of it.
I actually searched out American comics. Most recently the Thor Essentials and Death Dealer series. I found them to be frankly boring, waste of my money and terrible.
So you bought a collection of comics that were written decades ago when, for the most part, characterization and organic growth was an afterthought, and comics based off a series of fantasy paintings, written by a mediocre author.
Try some Thor comics written this decade, or one that isn't just a commercial tie-in, and maybe you'll have a better experience. But judging by your avatar, user name, and sig you're probably just some weird japanophile with a lolicon fixation, so maybe it'd be best if you kept a safe distance from any comic shops I might come into contact with one day.
I actually searched out American comics. Most recently the Thor Essentials and Death Dealer series. I found them to be frankly boring, waste of my money and terrible.
So you bought a collection of comics that were written decades ago when, for the most part, characterization and organic growth was an afterthought, and comics based off a series of fantasy paintings, written by a mediocre author.
Try some Thor comics written this decade, or one that isn't just a commercial tie-in, and maybe you'll have a better experience. But judging by your avatar, user name, and sig you're probably just some weird japanophile with a lolicon fixation, so maybe it'd be best if you kept a safe distance from any comic shops I might come into contact with one day.
Don't worry. I don't go to borders/coles/indigo or dank basements.
I'm very happy Manga came along and got so popular; It taught American Publishers that a comic book can sell without having to be centered around Superheroes. One of the things I adore about it is that Manga, much like Anime, is allowed to do things that American publishers/animators couldn't dare get away with, or at least just aren't willing to try.
I won't say that Manga, in of itself, is constantly pushing the envelope or anything, that's just not true; Every medium does what it can get away with and little else. But the character designs and writing style of a lot of Japanese comics are just such a fresh change from the stuff you see from American publishers. It makes it very easy to get into whereas most American comics just seem like more of the same stuff I've seen since I was little, and it's hard to care. Oh there's another spiderman series. Oh look, more Superman. Oh yay another Wolverine mini-series, lord knows he hasn't gotten enough coverage.
I'm very happy Manga came along and got so popular; It taught American Publishers that a comic book can sell without having to be centered around Superheroes. One of the things I adore about it is that Manga, much like Anime, is allowed to do things that American publishers/animators couldn't dare get away with, or at least just aren't willing to try.
I won't say that Manga, in of itself, is constantly pushing the envelope or anything, that's just not true; Every medium does what it can get away with and little else. But the character designs and writing style of a lot of Japanese comics are just such a fresh change from the stuff you see from American publishers. It makes it very easy to get into whereas most American comics just seem like more of the same stuff I've seen since I was little, and it's hard to care. Oh there's another spiderman series. Oh look, more Superman. Oh yay another Wolverine mini-series, lord knows he hasn't gotten enough coverage.
I do like the New X-Men though.
I don't think American Publishers learned anything. I mean, unless you're talking about companies that were already publishing comics, I don't think any new and high-profile publishers have emerged since the dawn of Manga.
If you're talking about the mainstream media learning to take comic books seriously, I think you're better off looking at the success of the Frank Miller adaptations along with Ghost World and American Splendor, all of which did far more to legitimize graphic novels in the eyes of non-fans and prove that commercially and creatively successful properties can be spawned from a medium that's known for neither of these things.
I'm not sure I'm contributing to the thread, but to date, I've never read any manga.
I don't hold a low opinion of it or those that read it, I've just never seen any appeal to it, and thus, I don't buy or read it.
I guess it's not for me.
Edit: I would like to say, however, that I'm happy with just about anything that gets people (particularly kids) reading. Comic books, Manga, Harry Potter, anything.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I think it's fair to say that Katchem_Ash is more than a little bit biased. Dude, you picked up, what, two books, and that's informed your opinion of American comics? Wait, you're basing your opinion on some Silver Age superhero comic and a fantasy comic with stupidly low circulation? That's great, really. I think I'll go read a Sailor Moon doujin and then a giant robot manga from the 60s, I'm sure that'll really be representative of what manga has to offer to me now. :roll:
I dunno, maybe it's hard to be all snooty about manga's superiority when you have to acknowledge that comics aren't comprised totally of superheroes. I don't even feel like listing all of the awesome books that exist. Just take two steps down the aisle away from the manga shelves at the bookstore and actually look at what comics have to offer. Don't like superheroes? Fine, ignore those books, there are plenty left after that. Just get it out of your head that manga is the only place that offers compelling stories and art. Most of the manga that sits on the shelves at the store is pretty generic stuff, just like most of the comics are generic superhero stuff.
Don't like superheroes? Fine, ignore those books, there are plenty left after that.
Really? Then please show me where I can find comics about either a) Chinese Historical Fiction, b) Korean Historical fiction or even c) Central Asian Fiction? Cause I keep looking and looking and I can't find them. Or how about some comics about the Crusade? Or any sort of comics that focues on Central Asia/China/Korea?
While Manga doesn't do option C or Crusades they do option A and B.
Don't like superheroes? Fine, ignore those books, there are plenty left after that.
Really? Then please show me where I can find comics about either a) Chinese Historical Fiction, b) Korean Historical fiction or even c) Central Asian Fiction? Cause I keep looking and looking and I can't find them. Or how about some comics about the Crusade? Or any sort of comics that focues on Central Asia/China/Korea?
While Manga doesn't do option C or Crusades they do option A and B.
I guess since there's no manga about Brazilian historical fiction, that there's no point in reading it either.
Don't like superheroes? Fine, ignore those books, there are plenty left after that.
Really? Then please show me where I can find comics about either a) Chinese Historical Fiction, b) Korean Historical fiction or even c) Central Asian Fiction? Cause I keep looking and looking and I can't find them. Or how about some comics about the Crusade? Or any sort of comics that focues on Central Asia/China/Korea?
While Manga doesn't do option C or Crusades they do option A and B.
I guess since there's no manga about Brazilian historical fiction, that there's no point in reading it either.
If my interests were in Brazilian Historical Fiction I wouldn't read it. But it isn't. I can see at least two fields plus much much more that manga wanders in while American comics don't.
Are we seriously supposed to sit here and document each and every subject manga and comics cover and then judge the worth of both by the length of their lists?
When did we decide that the subjects covered by a medium, and not how well that medium has captured the subjects it chooses to cover, is the true measure of its worth.
Incidentally, art without words (you know, the kind in museums) beats out sequential art hands down in every area.
Incidentally, art without words (you know, the kind in museums) beats out sequential art hands down in every area.
Not if it badly drawn art showing ugly faces with no prespective at all. Just to take up pages. You know because the main character only comes on the last two pages.
Don't like superheroes? Fine, ignore those books, there are plenty left after that.
Really? Then please show me where I can find comics about either a) Chinese Historical Fiction, b) Korean Historical fiction or even c) Central Asian Fiction? Cause I keep looking and looking and I can't find them. Or how about some comics about the Crusade? Or any sort of comics that focues on Central Asia/China/Korea?
While Manga doesn't do option C or Crusades they do option A and B.
Manga does stories revolving around Asian history and culture? COLOR ME SURPRISED. By your logic, I should discount manga because there's no manga about the the American Revolution.
Look, it's not hard, really. Go to a bookstore and look around. Shit, I was just at BAM yesterday and was flipping through a comic adaptation of I AM LEGEND. Marvel Comics puts out adaptations of classic literature. Pride of Baghdad has zero superheroes in it. If you're not finding non-superhero comics, it's because you're not fucking trying. And even then, shit like Watchmen disproves the notion that superhero comics are inherently inferior to manga. Good storytelling is good storytelling, PERIOD. You being a slave to one particular medium has no bearing whatsoever on the value of the stories being told in another.
Incidentally, art without words (you know, the kind in museums) beats out sequential art hands down in every area.
Not if it badly drawn art showing ugly faces with no prespective at all. Just to take up pages. You know because the main character only comes on the last two pages.
Incidentally, art without words (you know, the kind in museums) beats out sequential art hands down in every area.
Not if it badly drawn art showing ugly faces with no prespective at all. Just to take up pages. You know because the main character only comes on the last two pages.
Okay, Ash, just be quiet. You clearly don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Comics are covering all sorts of subjects and just because you're ignorant of that doesn't mean your beloved manga are the peak of graphical storytelling.
Posts
Guh those dark days sure were bleak. Were you on PNMB by any chance?
I don't think so.
As for my two cents, the only manga I ever read was Akira. Because I wanted to find out what the hell was going on in the movie.
Anyway, I will reiterate my endorsement of the Ghost In the Shell series. Another personal favorite of mine is Lupin the Third. Some of the earlier Gundam series were also pretty great.
I used to buy Ranma 1/2 books for $15-20.
Now they sell it for around $10.
I'm a little pissed.
Never having actually read a Manga I can't talk shit about them, other than to say I hate 95% of the art I've seen. I'm sure there is some good manga out there but, wtf preteens, pick up some Runaways TPBs and thank me later.
As for "manga" vs "traditional", no-one but comic-book nerds care and comic-book nerds aren't the ones making the buying decisions for Barnes&Noble. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it too much since the balance will eventually tip back, unless DC/Marvel/everyone else suddenly start making black and white only stories about catholic schoolgirls with unfeasibly large magic swords disguised as crucifixes.D:
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
Both are filled with tons of stale cliches, lame conventions, bad art and poor dialogue.
Both having great pieces of work that anyone ought to read.
You need to take into considering that not all manga is brought over here to America. What is brought over tends to be aimed at a younger market (Naruto, DBZ, etc) so it's harder to find a mature story.
Art wise, all I can say, is if you don't like this, you have no soul:
Ja, as is my Av/Sig. One of my guilty pleasures, for certain.
meh
I guess I don't dislike it.
It is all right.
Okay, now that I can't get the idea of that gun representing his penis out of my head, I dislike it.
It's a girl.
It's also definitely not my favorite panel from Hellsing, but the best I could find on a quick google search. The art from the earlier ones is actually pretty bad, his style improved with every volume.
Firefly sucked though
PSHAW!
Death Dealer 1 to 4 was the first one I picked up. Aside from it costing 5 dollars for 5 pages worth of text and the rest of the pages with faces drawn terribly and almost no story. I actually felt sorry for wasting my money on such a product.
The Thor Essentials were text filled, but they were a bore. No character development except "I'm now Thor! RAWR!"
Manga on the other hand to me is gripping, I like the art and for $10 I get at least a 100 or so pages. Double the price of the Death Dealer comics, but twice as much comic. The street fighter series by UDON is another example if you wanna look TPB. Or how about any of the ADV large comic formatted comics that are designed like American TPB but have twice as much content for anywhere from $12 to $16.
I will pay for Manga every time because I am not disappointed in the product. However the same cannot be said of American Comics.
So you are saying that there is not a single manga that is bad. Is this really what you are saying.
Sweeping generalizations like this, or like "olol magna suxz dC rox" are kinda stupid. It's a slightly different medium; most of the shit is going to suck, but you can't deny that there are SOME good products in each category; whether you've found them or not is a whole different issue; I am seriously abusing semi-colons here.
See, now that's strange to me, because Alphona's art on Runaways always seemed heavily Asian-influenced. It had his own flair, of course, which is why I liked it so much, but it came off feeling manga-esque to me. Well, whatever.
Like others have said, there's great manga and there's horrible manga. Like any other medium, most of what's out there is average-to-crappy, with a few shining gems to cherish.
I've never had trouble finding manga with interesting art, though. My trouble is finding the ones with good writing to go along with it. There are some truly awesome Japanese storytellers out there, but sometimes they're just paired with an uninspired writer, or they're writing their own stuff which isn't always a good thing.
Dude... don't bother, it's not worth it.
sketchyblargh / Steam! / Tumblr Prime
I find none that are bad, just like I find no games to be boring. I have my own opinions and regardless I will try and see how I like it before agreeing with the populace on whether its bad or not. Currently I haven't found any manga to be boring and I have read alot of it.
So you bought a collection of comics that were written decades ago when, for the most part, characterization and organic growth was an afterthought, and comics based off a series of fantasy paintings, written by a mediocre author.
Try some Thor comics written this decade, or one that isn't just a commercial tie-in, and maybe you'll have a better experience. But judging by your avatar, user name, and sig you're probably just some weird japanophile with a lolicon fixation, so maybe it'd be best if you kept a safe distance from any comic shops I might come into contact with one day.
Tumblr Twitter
Don't worry. I don't go to borders/coles/indigo or dank basements.
I won't say that Manga, in of itself, is constantly pushing the envelope or anything, that's just not true; Every medium does what it can get away with and little else. But the character designs and writing style of a lot of Japanese comics are just such a fresh change from the stuff you see from American publishers. It makes it very easy to get into whereas most American comics just seem like more of the same stuff I've seen since I was little, and it's hard to care. Oh there's another spiderman series. Oh look, more Superman. Oh yay another Wolverine mini-series, lord knows he hasn't gotten enough coverage.
I do like the New X-Men though.
JoJo's Bizzare Adventure is fucking awesome and you are a classy gentleman.
I don't think American Publishers learned anything. I mean, unless you're talking about companies that were already publishing comics, I don't think any new and high-profile publishers have emerged since the dawn of Manga.
If you're talking about the mainstream media learning to take comic books seriously, I think you're better off looking at the success of the Frank Miller adaptations along with Ghost World and American Splendor, all of which did far more to legitimize graphic novels in the eyes of non-fans and prove that commercially and creatively successful properties can be spawned from a medium that's known for neither of these things.
I also consider Berserk and Blade of the Immortal to be excellent.
I don't hold a low opinion of it or those that read it, I've just never seen any appeal to it, and thus, I don't buy or read it.
I guess it's not for me.
Edit: I would like to say, however, that I'm happy with just about anything that gets people (particularly kids) reading. Comic books, Manga, Harry Potter, anything.
I dunno, maybe it's hard to be all snooty about manga's superiority when you have to acknowledge that comics aren't comprised totally of superheroes. I don't even feel like listing all of the awesome books that exist. Just take two steps down the aisle away from the manga shelves at the bookstore and actually look at what comics have to offer. Don't like superheroes? Fine, ignore those books, there are plenty left after that. Just get it out of your head that manga is the only place that offers compelling stories and art. Most of the manga that sits on the shelves at the store is pretty generic stuff, just like most of the comics are generic superhero stuff.
Really? Then please show me where I can find comics about either a) Chinese Historical Fiction, b) Korean Historical fiction or even c) Central Asian Fiction? Cause I keep looking and looking and I can't find them. Or how about some comics about the Crusade? Or any sort of comics that focues on Central Asia/China/Korea?
While Manga doesn't do option C or Crusades they do option A and B.
I guess since there's no manga about Brazilian historical fiction, that there's no point in reading it either.
If my interests were in Brazilian Historical Fiction I wouldn't read it. But it isn't. I can see at least two fields plus much much more that manga wanders in while American comics don't.
When did we decide that the subjects covered by a medium, and not how well that medium has captured the subjects it chooses to cover, is the true measure of its worth.
Incidentally, art without words (you know, the kind in museums) beats out sequential art hands down in every area.
Not if it badly drawn art showing ugly faces with no prespective at all. Just to take up pages. You know because the main character only comes on the last two pages.
Manga does stories revolving around Asian history and culture? COLOR ME SURPRISED. By your logic, I should discount manga because there's no manga about the the American Revolution.
Look, it's not hard, really. Go to a bookstore and look around. Shit, I was just at BAM yesterday and was flipping through a comic adaptation of I AM LEGEND. Marvel Comics puts out adaptations of classic literature. Pride of Baghdad has zero superheroes in it. If you're not finding non-superhero comics, it's because you're not fucking trying. And even then, shit like Watchmen disproves the notion that superhero comics are inherently inferior to manga. Good storytelling is good storytelling, PERIOD. You being a slave to one particular medium has no bearing whatsoever on the value of the stories being told in another.
What?
Okay, Ash, just be quiet. You clearly don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Comics are covering all sorts of subjects and just because you're ignorant of that doesn't mean your beloved manga are the peak of graphical storytelling.