I never even thought of this. Why the holy frick are comics so overpriced? It’s what, $8 for 25-30 pages?
I never even thought of this. Why the holy frick are comics so overpriced? Its what, $8 for 25-30 pages?
I never even thought of this. Why the holy frick are comics so overpriced? It’s what, $8 for 25-30 pages?
Off the top of my head?
-Higher grade paper and color printing is inherently more expensive than the monochrome newsprint of manga.
-Individual series as opposed to anthologies means there's more individual comics, which translates to more shipping and shelving costs, which are largely passed onto the consumer.
-More corporate middlemen owning the IPs means more people that want a slice of the pie.
-Capeshit as a genre is largely based around FOMO due to the persisting misguided idea that these will someday be collector's items, which invariably leads to exploitative pricing
-Higher cost of labor. Most mangaka get paid poverty wages.
Probably way more on top of that too.
I hate glossy pages so much bros...
I wouldn't be opposed to them downgrading to something less glossy. They don't have to go all the way back to newsprint (though that would be the cheapest) but I have some comics from the 90s that have a sort of "in-between" type paper, with a very slight gloss to it. they hold up well and colors reproduce nicely too.
The high gloss pages of current day are definitely the worst version. I remember having to reposition myself while reading a few times because I couldn't see the page under the blinding shine of light bouncing off of it. Maybe it's just my autism but I can't stand the way they feel or look. Personally I'd rather go back to newspaper days but I'd take 90s gloss too.
kids comics mostly use matte white paper, it's the best
That seems to be the best for black and white comics too, which are of course, cheaper to print by default. Another reason manga is cheaper.
If US comics actually wanted to compete with manga then they'd adopt a similar model.
Using Weekly Shonen Jump as an example:
>Releases on time every week
>Sells for like $3
>20+ different series in each book which allows cross promotion and competition
>if a series can't sell graphic novels of collected chapters then it gets dropped
But the US comic industry nowadays isn't about profit apparently. Wait, what even is the point of the US comic industry?
>what even is the point of the US comic industry?
Comics that lose money acting as the source material for TV/film adaptations that lose money.
They don’t even use the current source material because it’s so bad and too far left for the characters.
I'm just waiting to see if X-Men 97 is stupid enough to adapt the Krakoa era.
>use the current source material
they do and that's the root for the issues in current adaptations.
I don’t.
>-Higher grade paper and color printing is inherently more expensive
This argument doesn't work because digital comics are just as expensive as physical comics, and there are no production costs there at all.
They're priced to their physical iteration.
They absolutely shouldn't be, digital should be like 50% off.
But they are priced to that, because otherwise digital would replace physical entirely. And the publishers don't want that.
I think it's more likely that the production cost per comic is so low that it's not worth bother with.
I think Amazon Kindle sells older comics for cheaper than the physical, but I haven't read an ongoing series in a while so I can't comment on that.
Whether a book is produced physically or not, a 'unit sale' counts the same on any contracts that guarantee a creator a cut of unit sales, or provide for bonus to a creator for unit sales, or for which their is licensed IP that must be paid per 'unit sale.'
You do see deeper discounts in digitals when they are sold. For example, I own the equivalent of digital HCs (and yes, I was and am able to download them and back them up so yes, I do actually legally own them) that retail physically in stores for $XX for as little at $5.99 during some sales like Black Friday.
And yes, I also agree, in some cases, I would rather own the physical, but in some of these instances, for example, I just wanted to register support for a title, or a creator. And it's easily well within my budget.
true
Yes it does because the Big 2 have decided to price digital the same as physical comics to avoid "cannibalizing" their physical sales
Both manga and comics are priced and produced with physical books/magazines as the lead platform
E.g japanese comic magazines include color pages every few chapters for a pin up type page, but they grayscale them in volumes to lower costs. The digital volumes reproduce that grayscale instead of just keeping the color to make sure they're not better than the print.
Probably way more justifiable with manga because the printed volumes are a tradition in every demographic while comics have lost everyone and need to be in the best possible format in every case.
These are all correct. This is a medium that never should have aspired to become anything it wasn't in 1984 because everything it became since then proved unsustainable. The industry still exists, but only to service other more popular media which do not particularly value it.
>higher grade paper
Lmao no. Most comics fall apart if you look at them wrong.
>color printing
Yeah actually that tracks. Being able to print 99% of the book in black and white does save a lot of trouble, but generally I find most manga hold up just fine even decades later. The edges do tend to yellow though.
>Individual series as opposed to anthologies
Trades and collected volumes are still a thing, but the problem is that they go out of print very quickly and tracking down earlier volumes becomes impossible, so people refuse to buy later volumes.
>More corporate middlemen owning the IPs
Manga industry has middlemen too. You think having a few dozen secondary industries full of their own middlemen acquiring, translating, reprinting, and distributing manga doesn't factor in compared to the Big 2?
>Capeshit as a genre is largely based around FOMO
That's more of a greed problem. Printing extra covers doesn't make comics more expensive to produce.
>Higher cost of labor. Most mangaka get paid poverty wages.
Western comic creators are paid worse.
>Lmao no. Most comics fall apart if you look at them wrong.
Mind you, I'm not talking about manga volumes or tankobon, but the average weekly printings of stuff like WSJ.
In terms of paper grade, manga is printed on recycled newsprint called senka paper.
Your average big two book is printed on a much thicker #60-70 matte paper. This costs more. To say nothing of special issues, which are printed on even more expensive glossy #80 pages.
Weekly compiled manga magazines are a different beast entirely and are not distributed around the world. They are printed on literal trash paper though, so you are technically correct there. The best kind of correct.
and the most important thing of all comics use alot more compared to manga, C O L O R
Color is overrated, most of the time it looks like shit.
Thinking things will one day be worth money is the reason for hording. People live in shit-filled houses because they think one of their bargain basement trinkets will be worth thousands one day.
all of these are correct but glossy paper + color is like half of the reason and the other reasons (the american market) is the rest
Make the paper lower quality, make collections with more pages. Keep it the same price
>Most mangaka get paid poverty wages
you know mangaka can be far richer because they basically own their creation, right?
Most mangaka newer reach that level of wealth.
Yes, because the industry is very large, but the ones you know and think "work too much" are wealthy.
Most *writers* do not reach that level of wealth. Mangaka earn royalties per book, so their success/failure is tied completely to book sales.
The lady who wrote Demon Slayer saw her net worth rise to 8 figures in the span of 4 years.
that's not the point. the point is the system is different and it's easier for mangaka to make money off of it after their shit gets published.
>the point is the system is different and it's easier for mangaka to make money off of it
Not disagreeing with you, but it's worth pointing out that mangaka are paid the same way the entirety of the publishing industry all over the world is paid, *except* western comic books. It's really comics that are the anomaly, because so much of it is work for hire.
Nor do they deserve to.
Every single homosexual who draws a super hero doesn't deserve to be rich.
you only deserve wealth if people see value in your work.
sure you can get to a point of getting rich, but the chances are close to null. the ammount of manga titles that exist is pretty much unfathomable and new ones are trying too. some are even embracing digital publishing nowadays too.
like one of those thousands will get to a decent place in their lives and a handful of those will manage to get rich. the odds are really, really slim.
the rest will suffer in poverty and will have to grind not to end up in the street.
and even if you manage to get rich, chances are the hardcore mangaka lifestyle will make you pay its toll down the line, see: Miura and Toriyama.
>sure you can get to a point of getting rich, but the chances are close to null.
Bro that's true for literally everything ever.
Everyone has to grind and work hard and sacrifice their health except trust fund kiddies who inherited their wealth.
Welcome to the real world.
>Welcome to the real world
doesn't mean you have to live in absolute misery unless you are like top 1% in your area of expertise. not saying they should be rich for free or have it easy but asking not to be grinded to death sure is reasonable, right?
>but asking not to be grinded to death sure is reasonable, right?
You can ask all you want, but it's never going to happen.
95% of humanity's existence is being constantly ground to death, but artists are the ones who b***h about it the most and think it only happens to them.
>you have to live in absolute misery unless you are like top 1% in your area of expertise
This is your own deluded imagination creating scenarios that you want to push to make a point.
Bro Toriyama hadn't been doing manga for 30 years. You want to push the narrative that he died from overworking but in this case it's just hilarious. It's false in terms of Miura too but with Toriyama you just look like a clown.
that's why i said down the line. overworking yourself can still affect you later.
>dood the stress of working will give you a brain tumor and make you die of brain bleed following surgery
I will now be a NEET.
You are such a moron.
Your body pays a tax for what you do in your youth. It's why rockstars will seem healthy in their 50's and 60's and still drop dead because their body was strained and burned out it's ability to self-repair ages ago. Toriyama had a history of head surgeries since he was a little kid, overworking like he did for years is very likely to have strained his body.
>body pays a tax for what you do in your youth
This is a weirdly puritan way of viewing health. It also doesn't seem to be born out by reality - Ozzy is 75 years old, Keith Richards is 80, Pete Townshend is 78. The truth is that the body can heal. To put it in religious terms, your body will forgive you.
Toriyama didn't die from overworking, you dumbass.
dude, i'm not even trying to say which system is better. i just meant it just perfectly makes sense that western comic creators are normally paid more by the publisher since they normally don't own their creations as much as mangaka.
you can always try to argue japan is way worse or way better with limited knowledges. i don't see the point. people are so biased to jump conclusions here, it's embarrassing. there's no evidence toriyama and miura died due to their overwork that they did when they were young.
>i just meant it just perfectly makes sense that western comic creators are normally paid more by the publisher since they normally don't own their creations as much as mangaka.
And they usually aren't even paid more once you account for cost of living. Tokyo is stupidly cheap to live in *compared to major western cities*, and that's assuming you live in Tokyo instead of a surrounding suburb or outside Kanto.
>western comic creators are normally paid more by the publisher
This is ridiculous. For the vast majority of the history of comics, western creators are paid a page rate. Mangaka are paid a wage rate *plus* royalties.
Even if we consider only page rates, your assertion is not necessarily true. The base page rate for a new mangaka is roughly $100 per interior, 300 per cover illust. It's been around that number for 3 decades, because Japanese inflation is extremely low. And contrary to what Cinemaphile thinks, most mangaka work alone, especially at the start of their careers. So one could say $100 is the per page budget for pencils+inks+writing. What's the per page budget at Marvel, DC, or IDW for newbies? It's not going to be that far off, once you take away the writer and the colorist cut.
250+ at DC and 200+ at Marvel.
>sure you can get to a point of getting rich, but the chances are close to null.
I don't know what your point is. Let me repeat, royalties is how the entirety of the publishing business works. Not just print, music too. Artists do not work for a wage. Most artists do not become millionaires, period. Not in comics, not in music, not in prose, and not in manga. But in manga and prose and music, if you do get that best seller, if you do get that triple platinum record, you are set for life. You are set for multiple lifetimes.
>the hardcore mangaka lifestyle will make you pay its toll down the line, see: Miura and Toriyama.
You're talking about an entire country of overworked people.
Toriyama died of complications related to an earlier brain surgery to remove a tumor. Miura suffered aortic dissection from a lifetime of heavy smoking. Do we really want to play that game of naming every comic artist and writer who died before 60 due to heart problems?
Creators outside the big two working in indies can also own their creation and make money off it. I'm not even just talking about the movie pitch comics people meme about, but movies that get optioned for movies or TV series years after the initial release.
The thing is a lot of these projects don't actually get realized. Matt Wagner talked about the Netflix Grendel series being all filmed and ready and just being vaulted. The creators get the money(and sometimes they get a flow of money every few years from the option being reupped) but because so few projects get off the ground it's not the same level as the higher tier in Japan.
They don't?
I thought mangaka were better known for that in comparison to western arbreaststs
who cares about higher grade paper etc. if the content on it is fricking garbage not worth reading?
>higher grade paper
Oh shut the frick up, I stopped reading there.
>Color printing
OH BOY you're telling me I can pay MORE MONEY for UGLIER PICTURES?? WHATA DEAL!!
It's only like what? $1.00 USD more?
I'm not paying one cent more for a worse product
They're adding colour, not downgrading the resolution...
Not him but bad coloring can butcher the art, I've seen it happen with tons of drawings
The digital coloring in some 2000s comics particularly looks ugly to me.
Yeah other anon conveyed my feelings, just look at how many manga start off with a few color pages that look like dogshit. Coloring can be better than bw if you sink a ton of time into rendering and want to release a chapter every 50 years
Pricing is not equal across the board, because value is subjective. Industries charge what they believe the market can bear while maximizing revenue.
To give a simplified example, if a comic publisher cut prices in half, they'd need to double their readership to earn the same net profit. So if halving the price does not bring in twice the readers, then there's no reason to do that.
Manga is $10 and you get 100+ pages.
But not necessarily any more story
If it's an episodic adventure with 1 story per chapter then yes, you get 200 pages of more story.
If nothing happens in those hundreds of pages then what's the point?
But how can nothing happen when I've defined it as an episodic action/adventure story. Things have to happen or else it would be another genre.
Most popular translated manga isn’t episodic.
I grabbed three random volumes from my shelf and here's the contents from each
>Kaiji vol. 1,
Covers the first half of the Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors arc which covers roughly 4-5/9 episodes of the anime
>JJBA Stardust Crusaders Vol. 4
Covers the Justice, Lovers, and Sun fights, adapted into 5 episodes from the anime
>Mobile Suit Gundam The Origin Vol. 2
A loose adaptation of the original anime, but it covers the contents of episodes 6-10 (From the point where the White Base completes reentry to Garma's death)
Though to be fair these are slightly higher quality manga volumes (Jojo's and Gundam both having Hardcovers and Gundam having several color pages) so they ask a slightly higher $20 pricetag than most manga but it's still a lot more story than what you get out of the same pricetag for a $20 tpb with 5-6 issues.
Yeah but this shows
that manga pages may have 2-4 panels and a sentence or two
Comics and manga are a visual storytelling medium. More words doesn't mean more story.
Think about how many Bendis comic pages exist where it's literally the same image, often not even altered, copy pasted into 3-6 panels, with WORDS WORDS WORDS exposition dumps.
Berserk alone has had wordless two page spreads with more artistic and storytelling value than Tom King's entire Batman run.
Plus American comics just never feel like they're building up to anything. Imagine how apeshit the internet is going to go when Oda finally reveals what The One Piece is in the next couple of years. That single revelation in a single manga series will have more world wide cultural relevance than the last decade of all American comic books combined. I can't even think of a single truly significant, ground breaking western comic book storyline or event in the last decade, let alone multiple examples.
>These are numbers so I'm right
Manga appeals to an audience with ironically lower expectations and that's fine but every moron who comes here with the JUST DO THINGS LIKE THE JAPS plan has to be sat down and the cultural/economic differences spelled out, over and over.
Who the frick has had high expectations for anything capeshit related for the past 20+ years?
Most of those claimed economic and cultural differences claimed though are usually just coping bullshit that have been proven wrong repeatedly though. Like either by basic understandings of marketing 101 type shit like "your audience needs to know your product exists and have a low effort/cost point of access to buy it or have the consumer base grow efficiently" or just from basic observation when you have shit like eastern Europe having proportionally better sales in places like Poland than the US purely because they put comic kiosks in toy aisles where kids and their parents can just grab them on impulse or track them down easier for a birthday gift or whatever.
>Most of those claimed economic and cultural differences claimed though are usually just coping bullshit that have been proven wrong repeatedly though.
I dunno. America being bigger and more spread out geographically is just a fact, and that will invariably impact shipping and distribution costs.
Similarly, America has surprisingly low literacy rate for a global superpower. That matters when the product is a book.
Combine those two points into point three; Japan has proportionately more/better mass transit in its railways than we do in the US. Which means newsstands were more viable for longer.
Those aren't copes.
>America has surprisingly low literacy rate for a global superpower. That matters when the product is a book.
It really shouldn't when it comes to comics. The reason manga is so popular is that it's closer to the Japanese traveling storytellers than it is western comics. The comic format is just a matter of convenience to them, the plot beats and structure are closer to kamishibai than western comics, even when we were literally teaching them art in the MacArthur era.
As such manga requires very basic literacy for a good chunk of it, and even text heavy moments are largely aided with visuals to make it more digestible.
It's still a meme, magazine distribution has the same issue but does fricking fine. Megachains like Walmart that actively undercut costs in the name of strangling small time competition exist.
I can walk into any dollar store in American and find racks of magazines, new issues every week, biweekly, or month, and new local and national newspapers every single day, and you're telling me that comics with their notoriously lazy modern production rates somehow can't shuffle a case of new Batman issues in every month? Frick off. I can get the latest volumes of fricking Dragonball at Walmart every week so long as they aren't sold out and these frickers can't do anything more than blind bagged random 3-4 issue packs stuffed in a corner?
Full stop it's always been a cope from an industry content to die wallowing in it's own shit because pretending to be helpless and that bad sales are because of poor, unsolvable distribution and cultural realities rather than their shitty writing and the toxic, lazy, and entitled industry culture they cultivated in the late 80s through the 90s.
>It's still a meme, magazine distribution has the same issue but does fricking fine
Dude what? Magazines are shuttering left and right. Sports Illustrated is on its deathbed.
>Magazines are shuttering left and right.
Yes, because all the ad revenue moved to the Internet. Not because of problems with distribution that Anons were discussing.
In terms of distribution? Yeah, Mags are working. They're losing due to a combination of ad revenue like
said+ the product being an instant access thing with a five second google, but the conversation is about these supposed distribution issues that comics cannot possibly solve that manga, magazines, and national news papers somehow have no problems with despite it apparently being an insurmountable logistical issue.
You might argue sales wouldn't work out still to which I say
"Manga sells anyway+Write better/stop using fricking gloss you homosexuals". Piracy access to Manga does dickfrickall to their sales, and most of them don't even fricking have ads in them except maybe on the inside of the back cover or an extra page from the publisher, MAYBE, so that's clearly not an issue with narrative media like it is magazines.
>magazine distribution has the same issue but does fricking fine
It's really not. Magazines look like they're doing better because they had more to lose but they're dying. A bunch of them have been ceasing publication or switching to bimonthly over the last 10 years. Yeah they're stocked, but that doesn't mean they're selling well or a healthy industry.
What kind of sick frick buys Dragon Ball Super
I said I could, not that I did.
Magazines are also dying.
>t comics with their notoriously lazy modern production rates somehow can't shuffle a case of new Batman issues in every month?
besides everything else, I don't think most comics could even support more than a single issue a month at the cost they're at.
Imagine typing all this with the pretense that magazines are doing fine.
>magazines doing fine
So you haven’t clocked the steady shrinkage of every magazine section in every store over the last decade? Even a BN in my area halved the magazine area after a remodel. My grocery store went from an entire aisle of magazines to one little shelf unit. Magazines are fricked.
I’m old enough to remember Borders and Bibelot and their comparatively enormous magazine areas.
Hell they relegated the comic section to a small corner by the vinyl pits in barnes and noble locations near me. It's so dead there.
The comic section at my nearest B&N is like two shelves near the back wall that's shared with all the D&D crap. The non-capeshit selection is really bad too just a bunch of gay tumblr graphic novels.
Same, and it's all Batman shit.
>Manga is $10 and you get 100+ pages.
And Mangaka get paid peanuts, dont get vacation and die early from stress even with multiple assistants to handle grunt work.
And comic creators get bullied into suicide while people celebrate.
>One guy compared to thousands of mangaka.
Brilliant point anon.
Are you implying only one comic creator has ever been bullied into suicide while people celebrated?
I'm saying it's not comparable to the manga industry. There's been what, a dozen suicides on the western side? That's barely anything.
That's mainly because the American comic industry is much smaller than the manga industry.
It's also much more insular, so you have the comic creators and editors engaging in embarrassing fanboy-tier behavior like dogpiling and cancellation tactics because they don't like some other comic creator.
That's part of why it's such a dead industry.
Ed Piskor's a pretty special case. Hell he even had a Red Room story or two that basically predicted how he was going to do it and why. It was less he got bullied and more something set him off when he was ready to do it.
>And comic creators get bullied into suicide while people celebrate.
You act like shitty "fans" are an exclusively western thing.
>fans
No, I'm talking about being bullied by other comic creators and industry professionals, who then celebrate when said creator commits suicide.
You know that that's not a western phenomenon right? Asians love pushing each other to the brink of suicide they're just far less whiny about it.
I'm pretty sure some dude committed arson and hurt people over how they mishandled his waifu.
>And comic creators get bullied into suicide while people celebrate.
All pedos and sex pests deserve this whatever career they have. And if you're weak enough to have a nice day that's on you. It usually means you did shit you know you can't come back from so you shouldn't have done that shit in the first place.
In Japan people are bullied into suicide quite often.
Yeah like the time that mean ol' bully Akechi Mitsuhide bullied Nobunaga so much he offed himself.
Not to mention the royalties issues for these creators has to fricked. I wonder how much money even the credited creators is making off of foreign language reprints. It can't be much.
Mangaka famously basically make nothing/live in debt unless they're one of the five people who make a global mega smash like One Piece. Even relatively big hits or fotm series like Frieren or SpyXFamily don't make anywhere near what you think they do. And even then they don't have time to spend any money anyway.
Imagine telling an American to work like this
Japs are just built different.
No breaks
Start and finish the night before if necessary, for better or worse
Average daily sleep seems to be 6 hours with 42 total during the week. And eating is done for 11 hours as opposed to 14 if you skip one meal a day or 21 if you don't. So little free time, too.
Not easy to be a mangaka.
I wonder if there's a way to combine east and west work styles to make something better?
Efficient but not monstrous.
1 mangaka + 2 assistants + 1 inker + 1 letterer
Nowadays we're getting more like
1 lineartist
1 colourist
1 letterer
1 editor
for the western stuff. Since digital made pencillers and inkers sort of redundant. It would be great to have a similar thing to manga where the main artist draws all the people and action and the assistants do all the boring shit like backgrounds. Otherwise you get artists min/maxing by just dumping a bunch of 3d models onto a page and running a filter over it like the current Flash run has been doing and it's just embarrassing looking. Who the frick would pay for pic related? If there was a dedicated background system with people doing cities and landscapes like how animated movies have environment designers things would look a lot better and books would be made a lot faster. Which could bring prices down or at least stop the inexorable rise of cost to the consumer.
>1 letterer
1. Press text button in Photoshop.
2. Move cursor to the speech bubble.
3. Select the right font.
4. Type in what the writer wrote down.
This is literally a full job in the American comic book industry.
>This is literally a full job in the American comic book industry.
Yes, because they letter like 20-100 books a month. I don't see why this wouldn't be a full time job?
>They do 0.8 - 4 books a day you know...
You could breeze through that in less than an hour. Give me a fricking break.
>They also do sound effects, which can be way more involved than just copying from the script.
Oh no, they have to edit some text a bit. It takes 5 minutes.
It's a joke....
Letter's don't just do dialogue, you know? They also do sound effects, which can be way more involved than just copying from the script.
You are talking like you best buddies to those mangakas(not to mention that most of them have easier schedules than the few weekly/bi weekly publications)
>You are talking like you best buddies to those mangakas
No I'm just basically informed about the conversation topic we're talking about. Sorry if it seems like I have insider knowledge because I've read on the topic and you're generalizing out your ass. And the mangaka that have easier schedules make less money because they're not successful enough to have that demand on them.
>No I'm just basically informed about the conversation topic we're talking about.
Not really.
Like most of Cinemaphile, you're not very knowledgeable on much of anything, comics OR manga.
>Like most of Cinemaphile, you're not very knowledgeable on much of anything, comics OR manga.
Then why did you say I was talking as if I knew the people in the industry? Make up your fricking mind.
>No I'm just basically informed about the conversation topic we're talking about.
Cool so why do you care about the lives of these mangaka? What are they to you?
>Sorry if it seems like I have insider knowledge because I've read on the topic and you're generalizing out your ass
Huh?
>And the mangaka that have easier schedules make less money because they're not successful enough to have that demand on them.
A lot of them do it as a second job anyways or are women that already have a husband that earns money. Anyways why should I care about it? Is making more money=quality or something? I am asking again are you a friend of those mangaka?
>Cool so why do you care about the lives of these mangaka? What are they to you?
It's called having empathy for other human beings anon. I'm not a sociopath. When the topic is cost, I explain the reason why manga is cheap is because the people who make manga are not paid very well. Much like most consumer industries the products being cheap means the labor making them is undervalued. I do my due diligence when buying shit and I won't support companies that frick over their workers so it's literally my business to know what my money is supporting. And half these companies rip people off when it comes to what they make so why support them? If anything I tell them I won't support them till they pay their workers fairly and if enough people do that guess what happens? They might actually fricking pay people better.
> Is making more money=quality or something? I am asking again are you a friend of those mangaka?
Why are you only looking at this from the side of money to product? There are people making those things, those stories you like are made by people. More money doesn't mean a better product but I will pay for shit made by humans paid fairly and I will not pay for shit if they don't. I'll pirate the shit out of the manga and pay them directly via stores or donations or shit so they can continue to live while making less than they deserve at whatever publishing megacorp they work for to get their work out to reach people like me.
I don't get why wanting creators to be fairly paid so they can survive is such a hard topic to grasp.
>It's called having empathy for other human beings anon
Bro, let's not kid ourselves, you're not doing this for any empathetic reasons, you just think it's a gotcha.
>Bro, let's not kid ourselves, you're not doing this for any empathetic reasons, you just think it's a gotcha.
I'm sorry you're a sociopath anon. I'm not trying to gotcha, I'm genuinely just not a c**t. I give a shit about people. I've seen too many artists burn out, I've seen too many companies collapse, I've read too many shitty books and I'm currently watching AI melt the creative marketplace. I want more books made by higher paid people. There's too many hands in the manga and comics system leeching money. in this day and age where everyone should just be making indie books and selling them directly to the consumer instead of working in these monolithic companies with jurassic systems like Work for Hire. How many silver age artists have you seen literally begging for money on gofundme to pay for medical bills when they created characters that have made billions for their companies? Shit's fricked anon. And the only way to change it is with us. At the ground level, the customers.
We buy shit, we support shitty practices, we enable the shitty treatment of people. I'm just asking you to think about it. I don't care if you think this is some epic chance to 'own' you. Just think about it the next time someone drops dead at their drawing table because they need to work more to pay for basic ass living expenses. And don't say comics are a luxury so people making them don't deserve a living wage. Everyone deserves to be able to fricking survive if they're spending 40-60+ hours a week working at something. Even if it's a "fun" job like comics.
>I've read too many shitty books and I'm currently watching AI melt the creative marketplace.
I can't believe a fricking advanced photoshop is causing such a mass hysteria, no thi shit will not replace artists, no you don't need to ban it. It's just a shitty tool people will use to make memes.
>no thi shit will not replace artists, no you don't need to ban it. It's just a shitty tool people will use to make memes.
It's already costing artists jobs anon. Industry owners are using it to weed out entry level jobs, grifters are kickstarting kids books and getting paid making it harder for indie illustrators to get their projects funded. And image generators are only getting better as they get fed more and more work and get tagged better and more comprehensively. The more art that gets made the better they get and the harder it is to tell real from fake.
You're only seeing the bare basic impact generators are having, and it's only going to get more pervasive. Even DC have been caught using them in recent bat titles. You really think they won't use them to generate all backgrounds or panels if they can get away with it? get real. As soon as they can input every batbook from the past 60 years into it they can generate their own books based on the art they own and nobody can stop them. People will still buy that shit. I'm not a doomsayer but you have to be blind to think this shit is just going to die out like any other fad.
I paid 5 dollars for real art in my comic and got Andrea Sorentino’s shitty AI Joker you bet your ass I’m worried
>I've seen too many artists burn out
Yeah... in the american comic book industry.
If you ignore all the japs and the euros yeah. I forgot this board thinks capeshit is the only comics market on the planet.
>all the japs and the euros
Name them.
>It's called having empathy for other human
If you are serious and I mean 100% serious than I can accept it. Do you have empathy for me as well?
That was not my post you responded to, btw.
>Do you have empathy for me as well?
For what?
For making that spelling mistake. Now everyone thinks I am a clown.
>Do you have empathy for me as well?
Sure, that's why I'm not cussing you out for having a differing opinion. We're all just people and life is hard enough, why make it harder on each other. If people can get on an anonymous image board and give each other shit I don't see why can't be civil and nice. The fact that you didn't reply with vitriol and just call me names and shit means you're probably pretty rational so you can probably see where I'm coming from. I'm tired of getting in pointless fights with anons online over dumb shit we can't change. I mean we can barely make a dent in comics but not buying trash but at least it's some kind of effect, however minimal. But if enough of us take a stand or support good shit then hopefully good shit will survive or even thrive and we'll all get better shit in the long run.
I just want fun entertaining comics made by people who aren't killing themselves to get noticed or make a living. I'm tired of being cynical, I'm tired of being attacked for having a rational stance. I mean doesn't it ruin shit if you buy a book and find out the guy making it had a shit time or has to stop halfway through a run because it's not a liveable wage or something equally miserable happens to them like an injury that fricks them up because they're working too many hours and get RSI or some shit because hustle culture caused a race to the bottom?
We're all just people.
Fine, then I can accept your initial post.
Frick those two gays replying to you. They want to pretend something isn't wrong with how mangaka are ultimately treated.
America is just mean girls circle jerk over the same decades old properties, cutting off any chances of some talented people bring something new...
Oops, forgot an image.
Good for them.
That graph is bandied about as orthodoxy, but has little to no bearing on factual reality.
It has plenty of bearing, its simply that many companies have a business model that just fails at all price points, or would rather choose to sell nothing than actually take their correct value which is less than they assume.
Supply/demand is real and the graph is legit. The problem for most people who don't get it is that they just refuse to accept reality on where the effective supply and effective demand lines sit IRL.
E.g. they think their personal demand somehow equates to the demand of an entire nation and that suppliers are crazy to not risk their entire business to collect $500 from their biggest superfan paypig. Collecting just $5 from a million different filthy casuals instead? That's bad business!
Found the True Believers.
Yes
The graph is econ 101. It's just never that easy to figure out what the values on that graph are for every business.
This is why one cannot say comics in their current form will perform better if they simply lowered price like manga. Sure, manga has a great business model, and comics should learn from them. But comics and manga are not commodities. They are not interchangeable. Marvel can offer every Magdalene Visaggio book at 20 cents each, and I doubt they would see a significant increase in readership.
Yeah, on the other side if the readers are cut in half you need to double what you charge them right?
Because that works right?
Because that won't result in even more readers leaving right?
No need to be snarky, friend. I'm just explaining why they do what they do. Even though that equilibrium is where all businesses seek to be, the reality is far more complex. We don't know how economy of scale would affect costs. We don't know how products like manga or video games have shifted people's perception of value. Most of all, we don't know the theoretical maximum audience reach comics has.
All of this is like Drake's equation for alien life. The answers you get vary greatly based on your assumptions for each variable.
That said, you also can't just look at one variable. You can't look at manga and say "aha, if comics were priced like manga, they would be just as profitable!" Frankly, pricing isn't in my personal top 3 comic problems. Much like limited distribution options, it's a symptom more than it is a cause.
to be fair, that is how it works. Just look at commissions.
One person would pay like 1000 dollars for his own personal 10 page comic. And some people do that, because their interest are not covered by the market.
Comics are books, they have a longer lifespan that other collectibles. People prefer comics or mangas if have lots of pages in 20 years they can sell or donate to a library
I same guy, I forget put a screenshot of Graphic Novels with similar themes of mangas and the only difference is they are in color
These are all Scholastic books designed for actual little kids and not manchildren.
>Why the holy frick are comics so overpriced?
because they pandered to collectors who wanted high quality glossy paper.
Price to produce the pages themselves is cheaper in Japan. Due to a variety of factors, most importantly they sell so much they can afford to sell it cheap. They make their investment many times over.
Even then, when we import them we charge much more than the cost of them in Japan. Like hell, WSJ was what, about $3 USD in the 2000's? And when we printed it here we charged $10 for a smaller magazine. and it's still cheaper than US comics.
But the way American comic pages and Japanese comic pages isn't exactly comparable either. No one would bat an eye on a manga having multiple pages with like 3 panels and maybe 10 words on a page because it's a100 page volume for $7.at $5 for a 22 page comic people, would call that little amount of pages/panels a rip off.
Honestly if you took each page of an average American comic and made it two black and white pages, you could easily double the value and make it cheaper.
WSJ also had regional printers across the country as far back as the 80s which substantially cut distribution costs. They were doing things digitally ahead of the game.
Funny enough when Manga got printed as single issue comics in the west they still charged $3 an issue for a black and white comic when the entire collected book was $10-15. And this was in the 90s.
They were also flipping and editing the art as well, so it cost more to produce them. Arguably the translations were better, or at least more considerate of adapting it to cultural changes(granted that's a can or worms since a lot of people do hate trying to localize like that- I don't mean 4kids stuff, I mean more like Southern accents for Kansai). But basically they were paying more for the people adapting it at the time.
Tokyo Pop was a huge shift because they started cranking out manga in volumes, I don't remember if they were the first to do it unflipped, but they were using cheaper/less skilled translators and were able to produce much more than they could in the 90's. This made some older anime experts like Toren Smith seethe because it saw it as more careless- but ultimately it made it much cheaper and available.
>Southern accents for kansai
Man, that's so standardized nowadays it's difficult to remember that somebody had to be the first to do it.
You know for the novelty and shit during the time what image was doing was totally robbery. Plus all the heavy censorship but I mean getting manga was hard as frick.
Floppy western manga is cool. But god damn it should have been like 1$-1.50$ TOPSSSS they paid fricking pennies to get the licences and shit
I like when you are able to get bigger pages, its annoying as frick everything is novel size and printed on 1 ply welfare toilet paper. But if you buy the whole magazine, it comes in a larger size. Qaulity of paper is even worse but man. Crushing the artwork so small is criminal standard drawing paper is rather large. Mag crushes it a bit but tanks fricking turn the art into something for ants making it 5-6 times smaller.
I want a whole series of image floppies from the 90's it would be a cool piece of weeb history. Bet it would cost an arm and a leg tho cant imagine the printrun was high.
See
For why they cost more. Censorship is shitty but it also added to the cost. They had to be translated by people who knew Japanese and also cultural aspects enough to localize. Then the 2000's came around and it turned out weebs preferred keeping the senpais and samas and chans anyway.
>Western manga
>mfw
Tanks are printed way too small, I want to see artists editions like IDW do for manga with full board size manga reprints. I want to see them at the size the authors drew them at. Not those tiny ass books they print so businessmen can read them on the train conveniently. I want a fricking desk size edition for people who don't live in shoeboxes like japs do.
western comics outside of Marvel-DC are called "Graphic Novels", the comics with superheroes are in decline, but graphic novels are popular.
Do current price hikes actually help comic book retailers in terms of higher profit margin or is it just causing the market to shrink more?
I can only speak from my own experience but I stopped buying comics once they went above like four bucks per issue iirc. I read most comics online for free and support my lcs by buying massive stacks of dollar bin comics and heroclix and battletech shit. I think the last new comic I bought was back in 2016
It is shrinking it and destroying the market as a whole. Higher profit margins are like anorexia — the body isn't made for it, so eventually it gives out.
Another thing is by the time manga gets to international consumers it's already be vetted by Japanese readers. Plus Manga creators actually have to compete to get their stuff published. American writers like Tom King, who is the son of a Warner executive, are nepobabies and most artists are outsourced.
Look at something like this, it's a pretty simple page, maybe 3 seconds you'd spend looking at it on a read through, but because there's so many other pages it doesn't matter how sparse or rough this one page is. It's main purpose is to show an impact
American big two comics will spend the same energy mangakas do on like 2-3 pages on a single page- and have much less energy to them because they become overworked illustrations instead of being in service to a whole story.
The author of the book is also the artist.
This helps too for sure, also the fact that stretching a story is actually a bonus for these creators because it gives them breathing room.
Still, there's a better economy in it's creation than I see in most American comics. And again, it's not entirely the fault of american creators, being locked into a page size, and 22 pages, it stifles things.
The Japanese way provides a better value.
The "artist" has multiple assistant slave laborers.
unnamed and uncredited slave laborers
That is something I've always thought was just a dick move.
They should be credited somewhere, at least on a page in the tankouban.
I want to be able to trace the lineage of hit stories. Like I know Oda worked on Rorouni Kenshin, but did Watasuki work for anyone before? Has some big name author today done time with One Piece?
Who are the guys keeping Berserk alive?
I remember when Toriyama made his editor the villain of Dr. Slump
>They should be credited somewhere, at least on a page in the tankouban.
they can be, I read a MHA volume that credits all of them. The trickier thing is that their roles aren't exactly detailed(which to be fair, they tend to wear many hats), so who did what isn't always said. Still it was interesting to me that MHA had like 8 assistants alone in addition to the creator. People say the Writer/Penciller/Inker/Colorist is the same thing- it's not really comparable.
Assistants really only become known when they break off and produce their own hit manga. Chainsaw Man's author Fujimoto's assistants are well known because they went on to create SpyxFamily, Dandadan, Hell's Paradise, and now Centuria.
cope
That is a real problem in today's industry. A lot of power is given to writers, when they should have the same level of authority as artists.
Manga also has plenty of people collaborating. And a lot of author/artists books are horrible.
My point is that there is no real collaboration between writers and artists nowadays, the writers are the bosses and the others obey.
Not true. It depends on the creative team. Plenty of bigger name teams for example have the writer specifically write for the artists in mind, based on thei artist’s interests. Snyde/Capullo for example is one such case.
a lot of mangakas work with writers too, guys like urasawa do it often and even matsumoto
>guys like urasawa
When?
Master Keaton which was one of his biggest hits and Billy Bat with one of the same writers.
I was under the impression Pluto too but no it's all Urasawa. I mean beyond being based on a story by Tezuka
This is also gonna be from the weekly release, the mangaka generally does fixes for the volume release where it's need.
That's like any Western comic book, and GEGE wasn't caught tracing Western comic books? But the first anon showed the real reason and there's also anime
anon you seem to think I'm shitting on Gege, I'm not. I'm using him as an example of smarter and more appealing page composition
I said there was nothing special about that page.
i think what that poster said was that in the context that page looks better. the thing is mangakas are given a bigger chance to decompress stuff as necessary to make story beats have a bigger impact.
Ever since the piskor story I’ve been trying to avoid the KYS posts but this. I’m so sick of these baiting homosexuals shitting up this board.
You are a whiny, spineless, hypocritical b***h.
$8? Are you reading that with your $5 slice of pizza and $10 cup of coffee?
The death of DC and Marvel
Because licensing is often cheaper than creating. For example Marvel comics in Europe is €4.99 for two american issues.
So Europeans get two for the price of one.
And they still don't buy it (because it's crap).
Most modern Marcel and DC? Yes.
If you could read every bédé out there vs an marvel or DC, you wouldn't them either.
I understand these are troll posts... but are the replies all by trolls too?
I'm a life long comics fan, and an unabashed cape gay at that, but I can't see any point in defending modern comics. They're dead, put a fork in 'em. I don't care about Manga either but I understand the appeal... there's nothing worth defending in Western mainstream comics. Movies suck, games suck, floppies suck... the editors and writers despise the longtime fans like me, so why would I care if they lose their jobs? The only thing getting my money is trades, hardcovers, etc.
>Everything sucks!
Including your post.
No wonder DC and Marvel are trash. They rather spend time on Cinemaphile than learn how to create good stories. Sad!
I never said "everything sucks," Anon. We're in the golden age of collected material... Omnibus, Absolute, Masterworks, Epic, the forthcoming DC copy of Epic, even those gargantuan softcover collections.
Keep living in the past. Very healthy behaviour.
It's escapist entertainment, friend. Comics are intended to be enjoyed as fantasy and pulp crime.
Is it dude's fault if new comics don't appeal to him ? It was not the editorial's decision to pursue new young fresh audience ?
Yes, it is his fault.
Found one of DC's editors. Write better stories than tarnish your fans please.
There are good stories, you just have shit taste and/or you don’t read anything.
LOL SOMEONE WHO WORKS AT DC IS ON HERE SHILLING AND IT'S (YOU).
I don't think the movies always suck but yeah the comics are just garbage.
>why defend it
DC and Marvel both developed some kind of weird subculture around their comics so it will take a while for this small remaining fandom to die out, because buying those comics is a part of their identity no matter how bad their are.
When American comics were cheaper they also had more advertising but American publishers failed to justify the demographic shifts of the late 90s/early 2000s. There's an awkward period where these books are advertising children's cartoons and toys as well as R rated movies and cars. Publishers employ people to sell as space and they have to demonstrate what these demographics are in order to sell them. American publishers tried to hang on to child, teen, and adult audiences but lost all of them due to incompetence in the face of a shifting market. This coinciding with an end to print advertising for a number of different products was a disaster.
Another factor to consider is the rising cost of paper. North America has lost a lot of paper mills on the last forty years. A lot of Americans don't realize that most paper for quality print, especially coated stock, comes from Europe.
Foreign products (except for western European) are always cheaper than domestic products due to currency exchange rates and differences in cost of living and cost of business. It's why tariffs exist, and why free-trade agreements have done significant harm to American domestic industries of all kinds.
The yen is currently the weakest it's been since the bubble popped, that makes it much most profitable for companies to import manga instead of funding comics.
Who in 2024 is demanding glossy high-grade treated paper with floppies? Save that for Absolutes or Omnibus/Masterworks. I sincerely miss the old pulp paper comics... it's not even a price concern, I just prefer the look and feel of an comic book.
>Force woke shit only a small fraction of people actually care about and harass actual fans and writers.
>Is shocked when comic readers switch to Manga.
It's satisfying to see the woke shit going belly up. And it's too late to listen to the fans now. Enjoy your layoffs.
imagine trying to act superior while being a fan of shows for literal children
Would it be more reasonable to act superior for being a fan of adult entertainment? We're all just fans of media here, it's not a competition.
If its not a competition can you homosexuals frick off back to Cinemaphile instead of making constant competition threads?
As opposed to being fans of adult entertainment? This ain't no contest anon we all enjoy media regardless of who it's targeted to. Like damn.
the irony posting this on Cinemaphile where a majority of generals/porn are of characters from literal kids shows..
>woke
Go back to sleep, sheep.
Aww your little industry is crashing. Enjoy it.
I don't give a frick about capshit. Marvel and DC have been a cancer in the comic industry in NA for decades.
Marvel, yes.
>People here unironically say this then go to Cinemaphile where people still vehemently argue over whether it's okay to be horny for Yamato.
The only reason that's a question is because Twitter is moronic and doesn't know how to read or understand foreign cultures.
Trades are not too bad these days. Softcovers are like $28 for 400-500 color glossy pages if you buy online
>Softcovers are like $28 for 400-500 color glossy pages
homie I wouldn't pay $5 for a graphic novel I can just read online for free. If it was $0.50-$1 I might buy it.
For me it was consistency. I could follow a manga story for 78 chapters with no change in artist or writers.
Any time I would be enjoying a good western comic there would be 6 issues of consistent quality of story and art, then a forced crossover I dont care about, then the book reboots with new artist and/or writer and with editorial changes forcing in new characters. Team books became unreadable.
>go to my comic shop for my weekly pickup
>new crossover event
>here is your chart for all the books you need to order
I stopped buying individual comics 14 years ago and figured anything worth reading would be re-released as a single volume TPB of the relevant story arc (ideally with both the writer and artist intact for that volume). I quit before DEI really reared its ugly head and I can only imagine the editorial tampering from "upstairs" got worse.
>consistency
Yeah I love consistently every manga being about high school with the same tropes regurgitated in slightly different ways
sometimes the main character has slightly different black hair.
The event focused structure of capeshit that ends with a return to status quo is that same "consistency" only with an extra step to put people in denial about it.
Death of Superman would've been that but since deaths never stick it just became a joke. It did end up culturally relevant though, in that it was a signal to anyone that thought the stories in capeshit mattered, informing them that the stories didn't matter.
The point about consistency was "same writer and artist for 100 volumes", not genre tropes.
I know, but anon complaining about black haired high school student moved the goalpost to make it about genre tropes. Which is why I wanted to point out that capeshit ain't any better on that front either.
Exactly, this is why I said in the last decade.
In my view the last truly significant comic event was One More Day, for all the wrong reasons.
There's just something about Spider-Man, arguably the single most popular super hero on the planet, making a selfish deal with the devil and throwing his life away, that truly felt like something irrecoverable was lost. Something the media would not ever recover from. That nothing that ever happened in an American comic book truly mattered when even the metaphorical best of us was denied any kind of permanent character growth.
>I want permanent character growth from a serialised fiction.
This is like demanding Sherlock Holmes or James Bond to change.
Are you being sarcastic or something because you picked two examples where they did.
It's explicitly examples where they didn't. By and large any changes on those characters come from reboots and reinventions, not a linear evolution in them in their original stories.
So the changes happened but the changes don't count for arbitrary reasons which also apply to capeshit?
Would you count Tom Holland's Peter Parker having Aunt May die in the latest Sony Spider-Man movie as being "character growth" to the Spider-Man that went through One More Day?
What is your definition of a reboot because I'm counting all those fake #1s.
That's a good point and, sadly, very true of the unrecoverable nature of the change. Spider-man, more than ANY other mainstream western comic, experienced real growth and progression from a narrative sense. He started as a high school outcast, grew and matured, entered college, found love, lost love, graduated from college, was a swingin' bachelor, worked hard, found new love, got married... then everything was tossed out and he was made to perpetually repeat his early 20's. I guess because the writers and editors went from professionals interested in telling the story of a man's life to a bunch of man-babies that wanted to relive their own lives through Spider-man... or worse they just wanted to cling to the Peter Parker that THEY knew.
Growth in comics has always been a pipe dream. Bruce Wayne can't retire, Steve Rogers can't put the shield down for long, Clark Kent can't even get a different job! ...but Peter was unique in that he grew with the audience, until he didn't. Western comics are more akin to folk tales than anything else, endless told and retold but never changing like mythological Hercules or Johnny Appleseed. Peter Parker won't grow up.
Why the frick would I want Bruce Wayne or Steve Rogers to grow or retire?
I never said you should or that I wanted said changes. I merely pointed out that Western Comics are not a vehicle for progression and change, they are more like a curated mythology. New storytellers arrive, spin a few tall tales, and then return the character to the start. I was highlighting that Spider-Man was different from the norm, not advocating for change to be implemented across the board.
Yes, folk tales and myth have endings but that has never stopped new bards from taking up the baton and adding new tales of adventure. Hercules fights new foes, Sherlock Holmes solves a new crime, Bond returns again and again. Don't be obtuse.
Bro... I'm 40 and, sadly, the rot had set in long before OMD. Peter didn't age in real time but to call the first 3 decades of the comic "the first few years" is equally disingenuous. Peter in the 60's was a teenager, in the 70's he was a college man, in the 80's he was young adult, at the very tail end of the 80's he married and began a new chapter... that basically scared the shit out of Marvel. They spent as much time as they could undoing it in various ways before settling on OMD. You and I were too late to see any meaningful progression but you can't deny the previous 300~350 issue (not to mention Spec, Web, etc) where shit was cooking.
Yep. Claremont was doing great things with UXM, very much in the same vein as ASM... the 70's and 80's still had a few titles experiencing growth and change... but the shift to catering to diva artists in the 90's pretty much killed creativity.
isn't that why we got the clone saga, to replace Peter in order to deage him??
Yep. One of the many nonsensical ideas Marvel had to "undue" the progression they had implemented with Peter.
I wonder if it's also why Miles was brought over into 616. Which also backfired because now his character development has gone stagnant, too(nowhere near as badly as Peter's, but it definitely shows in places)
Miles was absolutely brought in to provide a convenient de-aged Spider-Man.
Clones, sidekicks, killing MJ, deals with the devil, ultimate ports (he'll, the entire premise of Ultimate universe was to de-age everybody), reboots, etc. Marvel will do whatever it takes to make sure Peter doesn't age any further. They've even gone so far as to create elseworld-esque minis and sidestory "what ifs" where Peter is married and has kids... just to placate the diehards. They know what the existing fans want but they are ABSOLUTELY certain that a new untapped fan base is right over the horizon, they just need another decade!
>Bro... I'm 40 and, sadly, the rot had set in long before OMD. Peter didn't age in real time but to call the first 3 decades of the comic "the first few years" is equally disingenuous.
I decided to actually google it and crunch the numbers it. It was 12 and a half years. Peter graduates from college in 1978's ASM #135. (So, yeah, 7 years before I was born). It wasn't really the first three decades. In the decompressed time of capeshit storytelling, 12 years is still pretty much a "few".
Not counting Amazing Fantasy, ASM #1 came out 1963. It's 2024 now. That's 61 years. Minus the 12 Peter where he was a student, that's still 49 hears.
Peter was out of college and then there's over 80% of his stories after.
I absolutely think he should be allowed to grow, change, and maybe even die. I think Life Story was probably the best Spider-man comic of this past decade specifically because of that. And I agree that Marvel is terrified of doing anything permanent with him. I'm just saying that the status quo if him being a post collegiate bum kind of is what it is. It SUCKS, but that's the reality and a systemic problem of the genre that Peter isn't exempt from. It just took him slightly longer to get to his status quo than most.
Why do you consider graduation to be the end of his growth? He was still experiencing growth and change well into the 80's. He didn't just graduate and then sit unchanged under the mighty status quo. He had multiple loves, and eventually made the life changing choice to marry the love of his life. He then experienced the change of married life, having a committed partner at home that knew his secret identity. Even silly stuff like evictions, new jobs, etc.
You keep trying to put a hard cap on the progression that was routinely being unfurled to the readers in order to make a point... a point that doesn't even necessarily disagree with my original point, just seemingly because you want to add a pointless caveat.
Peter Parker grew as a character for 300+ issues until it was made to stagnate. Do whatever math you want but that run is FAR more than most titles, and is commendable of all the talent involved from Ditko & Lee to Stern and Michelinie.
>He had multiple loves, and eventually made the life changing choice to marry the love of his life. He then experienced the change of married life, having a committed partner at home that knew his secret identity. Even silly stuff like evictions, new jobs, etc.
Because that stuff didn't stick. If it's a cycle on repeat then it doesn't really count IMO.
...that was my exact point. Holy shit.
My entire fricking point is that Spider-Man was unique in that he experienced growth and change for years before Marvel Creative decided to do everything they could to reverse the marriage and revert him back to the 80's status quo.
...and your point is that the character is still in the 80's single guy limbo?
No fricking shit, you dumb dumb.
So we're agreeing and have agreed since the start but you just wanna argue with me because it's Cinemaphile?
Fair enough.
I don't even know what your objection is anymore. You responded to me, friend. I was just making a statement... but I think it's fun arguing with other comic fans (or lapsed fans), reminds me of debating capes in moldy old comic shops back in the 90's.
Having different girlfriends isn’t growth. Even marriage is basically just dating someone longer. That’s not really growth, especially when Peter hasn’t run away from committing to relationships.
Even folk tales let the characters grow older and die so the next generation of folk heroes have tales told of them. Let Bruce Wayne sleep in a mountain if they can't think of anything else.
>but Peter was unique in that he grew with the audience, until he didn't.
So I'm almost 40 and Peter has been out of college and an adult for pretty much my entire life. I don't think what you're saying is wrong but I think focusing on his first few years when he was in high school and college and not the multiple decades after with him spinning his wheels like every other superhero is kind of disingenuous.
>That's a good point and, sadly, very true of the unrecoverable nature of the change. Spider-man, more than ANY other mainstream western comic, experienced real growth and progression from a narrative sense. He started as a high school outcast, grew and matured, entered college, found love, lost love, graduated from college, was a swingin' bachelor, worked hard, found new love, got married... then everything was tossed out and he was made to perpetually repeat his early 20's. I guess because the writers and editors went from professionals interested in telling the story of a man's life to a bunch of man-babies that wanted to relive their own lives through Spider-man... or worse they just wanted to cling to the Peter Parker that THEY knew.
This is also how Jim Lee got into conflicts with Claremont who wanted to progress with the X-Men but Lee wanted to go back to the mid-70s era of X-Men... which Claremont wrote.
X-men is perhaps the best and worst example of the status quo problems in comics because it results in them constantly introducing new teams of mutants that really only exist to be cannon fodder for when they need to kill a bunch of mutants for drama. Meanwhile the popular mutants will never stay dead.
This is like the weakest retort ever. There are plenty of other that you could have used that made sense in the context.
Manga had more variety than western comic books, as the culture surrounded western comic books puts too heavy of an emphasis on capeshit and the big two while other titles languish. It's very rare for a non-capeshit western comic to take off. The only big example I can think of in recent memory is The Walking Dead, and even thay banked on Kirkman's popularity from writing a gory capeshit story.
Meanwhile the most popular manga stories a varied.
In fact if you look at the top 20 best selling manga series of all time, almost none of them are focused on high school.
>In fact if you look at the top 20 best selling manga series of all time, almost none of them are focused on high school.
Most of them are shonen, aka the capeshit genre of manga lmao
Shonen is a demographic, not a genre. Case Closed is detective stories. Slam Dunk is sports. Tokyo Beat Cops is a police comedy. All of them are "shonen."
>Shonen is a demographic, not a genre.
homie it's marketed to ten year old boys, that shit is slop.
White people typing like they're black is cringe, stop it.
Well since the thread is about manga outselling comics, I guess that means comics companies should put out more varied stories of multiple genres aimed at ten year olds.
And capeshit isn’t all western comics but let’s stop pretending as if anyone here cares about anything else except capeshit and shounen shit.
>Capeshit isn't all of western comics
It might as well be. The largest other party of the industry is mostly just eurotrash funny books.
>Muh Donald duck comics
Has always been a cope.
NTA but I think the point is that even when you consider "shonen" as a genre, there's still more diversity. Like, you can have a cooking manga shonen. Or sports shonen. So they still have the over the top action and tournament arcs but the resolutions are solved by being really good at using ketchup or volleyball or whatever.
Whereas capeshit is just capeshit. And it's got a stranglehold over the medium in the US.
Some western comics are comparable to manga's consistency of art/story.
Erik larsons savage dragon run is very comparable to a long running hit manga. It's rare in the west for a writer/author to carry his own project that long. This is what Image comics was founded for, but sadly so many other founders got distracted by greed, cocaine and boredom of their creations.
>It's rare in the west for a writer/author to carry his own project that long
It's rare for a manga to go on that long. For all of Cinemaphile's b***hing that manga is never ending, Bleach only ran for 15 years, Naruto 16 years, Slam Dunk 7 years, Yuyu Hakusho 5 years, 20th Century Boys 7 years, Punpun 6 years, and a long one Blade of The immortal at 19. Can you say Savage Dragon, Spawn, Grendel, Stray Bullets have run for less? How long as Saga been running at this point?
Mcfarlane came and went on spawn as sometimes writer, sometimes artist.
Mcfarlane as artist:
>Spawn #1–15, 21–24 (full art); #26–34, 50 (along with Greg Capullo)
As writer
>Spawn #1–7, 12–15, 21–150, then resumed writing it at 185.
That's avoiding the answer.
Not at all, some of the examples you gave had artists who did 20 issue runs, then handed it off. In the case of stray bullets it began in 1995 and its 40th issue was released in 2005 with infrequent releases that image was famous for. That's nothing compared to what Larsen did with savage dragon year after year.
Western examples like Gold Digger, Usagi Yojimbo , and Cerberus would have been better examples of long running books that didn't shuffle artists or writers and reached well into the triple digits of releases.
As for manga, they are pumping out weekly releases oftentimes, and there are manga with chapter counts well into the 4 digits with over 100 tankoubons released. All with the same creator start to finish. Its not the number of years they run for, its the consistent output year after year that is rare in the west. There are exceptions (berserk boat memes) but generally their workload and output vastly exceeds that of western creators.
Underground/creator-owned stuff, sure. But mainstream DC/Marvel capeshit? The majority of the heroes were created by focus groups with the intent of leading a media franchise.
Manga outsells Marvel/DC comics in the US. The only cultural difference is the culture of the people running the businesses.
It was Funimation, because they're based out of Texas. For a while there was as many anime that adapted it as a New York accent (Molly in Sailor Moon, for example).
Nobody buys that garbage. They're utterly reliant on publishers having contracts with public libraries and schools to stock a certain amount of their books, which they then use to offload unsold stock.
>Nobody buys that garbage
Scholastic's comics for kids outsell cape comics. Check the circulation numbers, there's no way they'd print that much if most of it just went to school libraries.
>Nobody buys that garbage.
they're like consistently amongst the best seller comics most of the time tied with manga and capeshit always beneath them.
maybe libraries bump them up a bit but they're still selling greatly.
Saga was also big for a while, and there's scott Pilgrim too, despite being 20 years old. Outside of the Big Two, though, it's more likely a non-superhero title gets popular than a superhero one. Granted it's not necessarily a huge deal but it's still more discussion than most indie superhero titles tend to get.
Now that you mention it... Could you guys recommend some indie superhero comics???? Some that come to my mind are Buzzkill, Jupiter Jet, and Black Hammer (if you can count the last as indie), and I want to read more
Astro City.
Seconding Astro City. It will make you remember what it's like to enjoy Superhero stories.
I still enjoy some modern comics (like Ultimate Spider-man, or GwenPool). But thanks anyway
Thirding it. It got me back into reading comics.
>Yeah I love consistently every manga being about high school
You are mixing up season broadcast anime and "isekai of the month" LNs with relevant popular manga.
Based Dorohedoro enjoyer. Bought the Artbook recently. It’s fantastic. Favorite manga of all time.
i love how grimy q hayashida's art is. she's one of the best but i also love how the tone of her work is way weirder and sillier than you'd expect with that kind of art.
>every manga being about high school
This isn't even remotely true.
My favorite manga are the ones where high school girls fall for older men. They appeal to me on an almost visceral level for some reason.
How dare you not accept my generalisations!
Not true and even it was at least that series has one artist/one writer combo from start to finish.
>the manga is terrible because of one author working on it
Cool.
Even Shonen Jump, the prime manga magazine for school kids that deals in brainrot like Naruto, has more variety of genres than DC and Marvel combined. Looking at the contents of today's issue, aside from the usual fantasy fighting stuff, they have a series about a girl trying to make a name for herself doing boomer comedy, a gag series about a fat robot maid, a romance series about figure skating, a comedy series about a fat retired hitman, and a sports series about golf of all things.
Oh look an ignorant moron.
>Comics suck lol here’s a list of highly skewed, full of bias and largely inaccurate generalisations I believe in. I will also refuse to acknowledge anything opposite of them because I said so
>WAIT WHAY NOOOOOOO YOU CAN’T MAKE EXACTLY THE SAME KIND OF GENERALISATIONS ABOUT MUH MANGA!!!!! THIS IS SO UNFAIR!!! THIS IS TROLLING !!!!
DC’s “adult content” is so poorly done that I can only enjoy their IP’s if it’s aimed towards kids.
We fricked ourselves in the early 90s moving everything to coated bleached paper stock, assuming the price of paper would not shoot through the roof exactly as it did not long after.
Prior to that they used a slightly higher grade of newsprint which was completely unsuitable to digital coloring (you don't want to see what happened when they tried), but it was cheap enough to print that those tiny thumbnail ads could subsidize production. Going "pretty" meant having to court full-page ads from fortune 500 companies who were rightly skeptical of direct sales figures.
This was an industry that always lived on a margin and the collectors/direct sales changes created a bubble that could not last indefinitely. If DC and Marvel hadn't been subsumed into media ziggurats turning them into IP farms for other media, they would be still struggling or consolidated by now.
Yes yes manga is better comics suck blah blah blah blah wtf do you people exactly want to achieve from just recycling the same opinions over and over again? You hate everything so why don’t you just go enjoy your life in Cinemaphile already? Crying how everything is too woke for you on an anonymous board makes you just a whiny c**t. It doesn’t change anything.
It's extremely petty isn't it?
But when I first came to this board it was entirely dominated by cape shills so I'm going to keep enjoying this
They're probably trying to make this a culture wars thread about the perils of diversity and wokeness. Problem is, they framed this as a pricing issue, and anti-woke indie comics tend to have a even worse page count to dollar ratio.
WHAT? You want me to read CAPESHIT and not only that, but the newest TRASH? You want me to read about my HERO getting BLACKED? And that will be the CANON recognized by everyone? You are telling me that at the next COMICON I will have to get BLACKED myself while COSPLAYING MY HERO? Just to keep the comics CONTINUITY canon? What can I say other than yabba dabba doo, I love american comics!
Finally, a Cinemaphile yabba post.
I have two choices:
A) I read something where I've wanted to see the main character get a non-specified treasure since 1999 and a ton of stuff happens at the side.
B) The Joker once again, but this time canonically, clones himself a billion times and there's like a Joker zombie apocalypse going on, also Joker has some tragic backstory with his dad added to the canon.
HM! I wonder what I should read.
This is literally every product produced in western countries vs. products produced in eastern ones. It used to be balanced out by better wages, but the west is now mostly about stealing the time and money of the youth and then wondering why teens with no mony are reading my hero academia instead of supertroony for their fix.
Seriously for all the gaybaiting that exists in manga only american comics are like "superboy is gay now eat shit" making things uncomfortable for everyone.
Exaggeration weakens your argument. DC and Marvel are generally $5 for 22-30 pages. $8 comics are almost always at least 80 pages.
>$5 for 22-30 pages
Yeah, bro, that's so much better...
Wait, burger comics are 8 dollaridoos? I thought it was something like 3-5 bucks at most.
I've never seen one for 8 bucks. Maybe some cardstock covers or DC Black Labels or something are 8?
I think 5-6 is common though.
because manga are a century behind the comic book industry
I feel like Archie gets this with their Digest reprint books they sell at grocery stores. Smaller size and cheaper paper than floppies, but contains a good amount of material for a decent price.
Archie has a robust buyback program (which is actually killing them).
And they’re entirely reprints of old material repackaged.
Those are pretty good. They did the same with Archie Sonic. I own a few of those reprints and the cheaper paper has held up *better* than most of what I own that's on glossy paper. The covers don't crease as easily, that's for sure.
Marvel actually used to have this for specifically the first dozen issues of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers IIRC, same mini-trade, Digest format. I randomly found them one day as a kid rifling through my stepdad's room because I was bored. If they were commonly in the fricking check out aisle I'd have picked those over a candybar or soda almost every fricking time.
Do they still use newsprint on these? My copies feel like a step up from newsprint.
Why are all pf you discussing fricking manga on Cinemaphile?? Don't have the weebs that cesspole called Cinemaphile to talk about their weeb shit????
New to Cinemaphile? We have daily East vs West threads on Cinemaphile
As soon as this one is deleted, or more likely, hits the bump limit, a new one will be made.
It's extremely tiresome and nothing will ever be done about it.
Actually been lurking for a while, but looking up for the threads that interested me. So I didn't checked out the weeb shit ones.
And yeah, it's a useless debate. Specially with weebs saying "cape shit" while consmuming weeb shit kek
"Cape shit" was coined by euro comic connoisseurs.
>It's extremely tiresome and nothing will ever be done about it.
Just like the comic biz itself kek
i genuinely think the one of the biggest barriers to entry for comics beyond the legacy shit is the fact that the publication schedules feel inconsistent and like they take forever. id say try experimenting with weekly/bi weekly stuff, but then theres the whole issue of color and other shit that would have to be cut out
We actually used to have that, in color, because newsprint made it piss easy, but writers and artists whined and b***hed and screamed about being made to actually work more than an hour a week and having to actually meet a deadline until Marvel fired the guy who turned out to have been single handedly stopping the industry from shitting itself uncontrollably, promptly did all the stuff he wouldn't let them do, started massively sliding on deadlines, and DC played follow the leader because Marvel was the Big Dog of the industry at the time so obviously anything they were doing would make good money.
It facilitated the speculator boom right as they raised production costs and fricked with their distribution networks in an unsustainable way, and then the bubble popped right as the last of the good will from the last 20~+ years of decent quality finally dried up and the entire market crashed and contracted so fricking hard you'd think the big two had their dicks chopped off, and they might as well have.
Now the people actually in the industry refuse to change back because they're used to barely putting out an issue on time biweekly at the absolute fastest, more often monthly, while constantly trading off with other writers/artists, and getting to do almost anything they want so long as it doesn't go against the pet projects and favorite toys of the current, modern editors who only care about getting to play with the action figures they like and don't give a damn about anything else. So the industry stays in its current decrepit state where the cancellation numbers of the bronze age are the modern day's biggest hits.
I mean there are writers who pump out multiple titles a month, the bottleneck is artists.
It also doesn't help that costumes (and comics in general) went from ultra simplistic to needing more and more details to make it more "realistic"
Reminder no one cares about glossy full-cover pages or variant cover shit other than elitiest collectorhomosexual speculators who should just stick to beanie babies and crypto scams.
And the investors and shareholders making the decisions in the first place.
I guarantee that the shareholders in WBD and Disney do not give a FRICK about Marvel/DC print publishing; that would not even be in the top dozen divisions which they would be depending their shit on.
If anything the shareholders would probably like those divisions to be shut down to stop losing the parent companies money, but the resulting "SUPERMAN IS FINALLY CLOSING UP SHOP" boomer USA Today articles would freak people out and make people panic sell the stock.
nobody in this thread will ever be japanese
not an argument, redditor.
Someone please get rid of DC and Marvel. I want all these writers out of a job so they can rot.
Go through - and hire help if needed - the E N T I R E T Y of Spider-Man's publication history in every book he has ever appeared in and filter out all non-serialized, episodic, or otherwise unimportant issues.
If it isn't part of a larger story, is not referenced later on, or doesn't introduce a person/place/thing/concept etc. then ignore it.
Take all those issues and start collecting them in a manga style ('tankobon'?), digest, format. 220 pages, 6 by 9 or smaller. The MIGHTY MARVEL MASTERWORKS series is doing something similar right now.
The appendix/index of these books do not list pages by issues, but simply by chapters. The actual issues can be listed elsewhere or near the chapter numbers.
Any issues or stories that retcon something that is considered better, done well, or doesn't ruin a twist or spoils something later on is included instead of the original it retcons.
Start releasing these digests in as many outlets as possible and, for the love of God, start advertising. It should be the first thing you see at Marvel.com
Present it as a flagship product. Not some fancy collector's bullshit, but as a cheap, disposable option for regular people. Present as THE definitive story and history of Spider-Man
Go slow. One volume a month or so. If sales are good, release one every two weeks instead. Start releasing in other languages, too.
Call it something like 'Absolute Spider-Man'. A single word adjective that is memorable, short, not too clunky and works in those other languages.
Go to Japan or Korea or wherever the proper studio for this would be, take this book series, and make an anime/animated series.
Just like how manga is adapted as an anime, do the same here.
In Japan, an anime can be an advertisement for a manga and vice versa. People get into one, and then decide to look into the other.
I'm seeing the same thing happen with Invincible right now. Simple logic.
If it works, start doing the same thing with other Marvel teams and characters.
>Why are full-color comics printed on glossy paper more expensive than black-and-white comics printed on napkin paper?
It's a real head-scratcher, anon.
>this thread again
Reject East vs. West brainrot, just read comics you like.
You're moronic.
Pattern recognition is the opposite of brainrot.
And in the US they get bullied into shooting each other.
>Pattern recognition is the opposite of brainrot.
Cope and seethe, dumbass.
>Outsells
>45%
Thats not how math works
This is nonsense and it ignores both complete sales numbers and actual economics of both industries.
>and it ignores both complete sales numbers
It's based on Bookscan numbers, which are the only actual sales numbers we get in America.
They don't even do estimates for comic store sales anymore, they stopped that like 2 years ago.
Does price matter when the majority pirate it anyway?
is there anything western comics have besides superhero stuff
Western comics is very broad. Europe has a huge bédé scene, from Astérix and Tintin to Lou and Donjon. But most of that hasn't been translated into English.
I think you mean NA comics. In which case, you have a huge amount of indie or semi-indie comics - Elfquest, Cerebus, Bone, Scott Pilgrim, Ghost world, Love and Rockets, Sisters and Wings of Fire.
>muh cost per page
This is as stupid as when Cinemaphile argues that games should be priced per hour.
MANGA FANS ARE ALL PEDOPHILES
Some pedophile manga have literally better character writing than most western comics.
i'd rather have them fap to mere drawings in their basements than go to private islands to rape real childrens like American elites.
And yet it's the american comic book creators that keep getting accused of being groomers and pedos and one of them even killed himself over it lmao.
why can't I post on medaka.5ch dot net/
they have this discussion constantly over there but when I try to post I get a HTTP ERROR 451
>it's colour guise XD
>meanwhile French comics
It's because the western comic industry is too mindbroken by capeshit and needs a renaissance.
I worked at a printing press and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but that's beside the point.
Colored ink is fricking expensive when compared to simply using black.
I would buy a whole lot more single issues if the prices were slightly lower. As they are now I just wait for the tpbs
Same shit, different countries.
I dropped comics because they were too inconsistent. I don’t think brain was created to withstand that much stupidity. I became more pissed off than entertained and writers are complete jerks so they won’t change their methods. It’s better off left to die.
Can inflation please kill DC off.
Can inflation please kill Marvel off?
I am kinda shocked the west doesn't have more monochromatic comics
The glut of b/w comics after the success of TMNT caused crashes in the direct market throughout the 90s. So retailers pretty much stopped buying any sort of b/w comics as a way of gatekeeping the industry from fly-by-night operations.
That really sucks, I hop[e it makes a comeback one day
It had a decent amount in the mid/late 80s to mid/late 90s, thanks to the indie boom. But even a lot of those moved away from black and white (Gold Digger, Ninja High School) or flirted with color at one point just to go back to black and white (Strangers in Paradise). I'd imagine its a bit harder to sell black and white, or at least at the time, because the expectation for success is color. I remember Wizard Magazine making a sarcastic comment in a blurb for some Antarctic Press comics, mocking how they were finally going full color in 1999.
westoids often talk like average japanese are overworking as hell and apparently they think recent mangakas' deaths are related to that issue
and yet japan basically has the longest life expectancy on earth
for me, it's pretty clear that those people are incapable of judging anything fairly when it comes to japan or maybe any non-western country
>and yet japan basically has the longest life expectancy on earth
Yes, but not among mangaka necessarily.
Can you back that up with facts?
Look at the occupations of Japanese centenarians. A good deal of them were farmers, fishers, professions that need the outdoors more than being cramped up in offices.
Not easy occupations, but ones that had fresh air, regular schedules, and all the studies that talk about what lead to a long healthy life generally point to being active and social and eating well. Which is obvious, but making it routine is important.
again, there's no evidence that deaths of toriyama and miura were related to the overwork that they had decades ago
even if their lifestyles were heavily related to their death, there would have been many factors. they had lots of money so toriyama was also like ''goof around and do whatever he wants for 3-4 days and then finish a manga within 2-3 days without sleeping'' even when he was pretty busy
>Why the holy frick are comics so overpriced? It’s what, $8 for 25-30 pages?
Greed.
how does this compare to comic industries in South Korea or say China?
Anything that’s bad in Japan will be even worse in Korea. With China, it’s a crapshoot.
Those oversized hardcover Berserk books that Dark Horse has are 50 bucks each, but you're getting a hardcover with 600+ pages of content. You can get them on sale often from bookstores too.They want to charge $5.99 for a floppy? And I have to go to a dedicated comic shop too?
lmao
Meanwhile, in Japan for $3 for pic related you get the following chapters (issues):
Jujutsu Kaisen #246 (Lead Color Page)
Sakamoto Days #149
One Piece #1102
Blue Box #131 (Color Page)
Nue's Exorcist #32
My Hero Academia #410
Kill Blue #35
Shadow Eliminators #4
Undead Unluck #189 (Color Page)
Akane-banashi #92
Green Green Greens #5
Witch Watch #138
Me and Roboco #167
Two on Ice #14 (Color Page)
The Elusive Samurai #139
Kagurabachi #15
Dr. Stone 4D Science #3 (Color Page)
Mission: Yozakura Family #208
MamaYuyu #16
Martial Master Asumi #27
Cipher Academy #54
And a single floppy like you said is more than $5.
I just want good comics.
Never going to happen.
so make Peter Parker gay?
i haven't bought comics in 15 years
do they really cost 8 dollars now
No. As I said in:
Probably but they're not the norm (yet) I think 5 dollars is the standard but if it has a ton of pages it can cost more.
Why are people so ignorant about simple economics where we have a business board?
Labor is worth different amount in different places.
Thats why Chinese knock-offs exist. Its cheaper to make the same thing even when you are able to replicate the quality as compared to American made products
Japanese artists are paid shitty wages that haven't changed in decades. The average Japanese person would be considered under the poverty line in the US
it's kind of crazy that a subscription to online manga is like $2 and gives you literally thousands of chapters of One piece not including every other manga series you get and all their chapters an not only that but you get to read every new manga chapter the day they release. https://www.viz.com/sj-offer. I'll start paying for American comics again when I can pay a subscription every month for access to every new issue on the day they release. Hell even mark it up. $15 a month? to read whatever comic is published that month? Sure, why not. It beats paying $4 for a single issue full of ads
Physical translated manga being so expensive is absurd. When people talk about it being cheap, they need to be talking about the raw, original manga.
That + piracy + soft covers.
If you get a hard cover you are paying a premium for that