In the comments, Katherine Farmar asks:
What, you don’t like “mangaïsme”? I mentioned it in the roundtable you link there — Paul Gravett coined it by analogy to “Japonisme”. I think it’s better, partly because it’s specifically manga that “global manga” artists are responding to, not Japanese visual culture as a whole.
On the other hand, it’s harder to spell, what with the umlaut and everything. Hey, we can just call it “mangaisme” unless there are French people reading…
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The French already have a term for it, Nouvelle Manga — and the -isme chunk isn’t French, but rather the same -ism that French and English both borrowed from Ancient Greek. Might just as well call it mangaism (for the style; mangaist comics, to be a shade more precise, for the works themselves) without the extra ‘e’
—but of course that extra e is all-important because it ties the new word back to the established art term. My thought (and no offense to Gravett, who certainly knows more on the subject than I do) is why bother to coin a new art term when Japonisme seems to fit the bill just fine, thanks.
As to the second point, in my opinion manga cannot be removed from Japanese visual culture as a whole.
If we want to talk about 40 and 30 and 20 year old comics and how manga has developed over time as an art and as an expression, as a narrative form, or even as an ongoing public conversation between and among the various creators and their readers — OK, sure, we can talk about manga as a self contained unit. And even though it is possible to isolate the form from the content it’s like talking about decades of American comics without mentioning Superheroes or how the movie and TV adaptations are key for minting new fans of the properties in each generation.
In fact, it might be impossible to discuss the emergence of American comics without also discussing the parallel development of movie serials during the same time period (30s-50s) — many of the tropes and forms have their origin in the serial (or in dime novels and pulps, from which both comics and serials derive) and so comic books are as much a part of ‘American visual culture’ as manga is of its Japanese counterpart.
And OEL or mangaisme or whatever we want to call it is just the most recent expression of a larger, two-way conversation that started when Matthew Perry rolled up into Uraga Harbor looking for some sushi.
Taking the ‘long view’ on historical development of the form and an inclusive nature that embraces all forms of both art and culture, rather than adopting a strict Linnaean system where everything gets it’s own name and pocket and there is no blending between species, I’d just as soon call it *all* either comics or art, or use adjectives (i.e. Japonisme) to describe the comic rather than come up with a slew of new nouns for a bunch of ephemeral, arbitrary categories. Heck, we can call ‘em Manga Comics, which is either wrong or redundant or both, but even my Grandma would likely know what that meant.
And now,
From 11 Dec 2006
SO, what is manga?
“Manga” is just another world for comics, folks. Hate to burst your bubble, but that’s all it is. It’s a Japanese word, I’ll give you that, but there is no extra weight that can really be applied past the country of origin.There is a sentiment among some American fans of Japanese comics to invest “manga” with almost mythical status, that manga is somehow more pure of an art form, an expression that has deeper historic roots and a greater creative gravitas.
As to history, well, modern-style manga dates to 1945 and Dr. Osamu Tezuka. (Bats and Supe are from the 30s. I’m just sayin’.) And if you think of manga as being something noble and pure… well, maybe you aren’t reading the same books I am.
A lot of this elitism derives from the need for each new generation to stake out something of its own, something new. They put a label on it, like (to pull in a musical analogy) Rock, or Punk, or Metal, or Grunge, or Trip-hop, or whatever it is the emo kids are listening to nowadays. The point isn’t so often the music itself, but the label that differentiates ‘ours’ from ‘yours’.
Let me cite my favourite Duke Ellington quote: “If it sounds good and feels good, then it is good.” Music is music, Comics are comics, and if you like it then it doesn’t matter what we call it.
From 18 Dec 2006
As counterpoint, and more relevant to the current discussion, I’d like to pull in Batman – The Animated Series from Bruce Timm & Paul Dini. These episodes are not only better by far than at least two-thirds of the Batman films, they also managed to be better for a half-hour each week for over four years.
This is par for the course in Japan (I say in a gross generalization): anime adaptations of manga will be more like Timm/Dini-style Bats than just about anything else. I’m not saying it’s all golden. It’s just that they do things right a hell of a lot more often than Hollywood can manage.
And the joy in watching good cartoons often translates into a joy in reading the same in printed form. If nothing else, it’s nice that the two formats feed into each other. I don’t know if the film versions of Fantastic Four and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen happened to do anything for their respective print properties.
I watch anime. I read manga. It’s all part of the same obsession. From my perspective, it can occasionally be hard to separate the two. If, in future reviews, I happen to mention the anime version of a particular property, I hope you will forgive me. It’s not that I feel that print comics are somehow lacking, I’m just bringing up another important aspect of the same expression, another part of the overall visual culture.
From 5 February 2007
A lot of us talk about “manga” as being this singular thing, especially in the context of manga vs. comics. Well, make that Japanese manga vs. American superhero comics, because that’s what quite a few of us really mean when we talk about the supposed conflict.
That’s what I mean, anyway. Other commentators can clarify their own statements.
It’d be more precise to argue the point as books vs. magazines, because manga isn’t a single faceless mass of seething anti-comics out to destroy the industry. “Manga” isn’t even a genre, it’s just one type of graphic novel. (A type and format of graphic novel I happen to like, but no different in basic concept from most comics.)
Deeper storytelling and characterization are a function of length, typically, so a trade paperback is going to read more like other novels than a floppy will. There just isn’t time or space for more in only 20 pages. As Bob has pointed out in I ♥ Comics: Maintaining Control there are a number (dozens?) of publishers putting out graphic novels that feature the work of American artists –- and these are excellent; the best of these are perhaps the very top examples of both art & storytelling in the comic form. Anything good that I might say about manga — longer, deeper, more fully realized, the result of a single creative vision as opposed to heroics-by-committee — can be applied equally and equally well to most “indy” graphic novels, if not more so.
from 5 March 07
Part of the appeal of comics (and manga is just another word for comics) is that it is a new artform— though yes, comics do draw inspiration from the past, and in fact we’ve been scrawling things down on every available surface ever since some prehistoric Frenchman just had to brag to everyone about how badass a mammoth hunter he was, so there’s a lot of past to draw on.
But the comic book and it’s Japanese cousin are recent innovations (the dates I’m picking are 1933 and 1947, respectively, you can go to wikipedia or the reference of your choice and decide on your own) and while they’ve drawn from many artistic and literary sources, I’d say they’re related most closely to the other new visual media of the 20th century, the twin visual arts of cinema and television.
One twist to the debate that should also be considered is that comics are a consumer product, mass produced and marketed just like pea soup and laundry detergent. If you don’t think this has had a large influence on comics as art, then you need to go find a few internet forums where folks are (even as you read this) vehemently arguing the relative merits of fan service.
and from 6 April 2008 (just as shade before I launched RocketBomber, and though I have the old comicsnob post I’ve not ported it over yet; even without the link here’s the quote):
Like art, I know “manga” when I see it. (Or I’m willing to concede something is manga-ish enough to warrant a place on the chart.) Manga can be hard to describe though. Do you include Manhwa? Or Manhua? Or Komiks? (if you can find them). How about OEL or ‘Global’ manga? Books about manga? Books on how to draw manga? Where does Scott Pilgrim fall on your continuum, or Babymouse, or Cine-manga, or Japanese in Mangaland, or Light Novels, or heavy novels for that matter if they happen to be aimed at a teen market and translated from the Japanese?
Oooo… that last one is a good topic: why the prose output of Tokyopop & Seven Seas (& Viz, they’ve done a few) but not the works of Haruki Murakami, Natsuo Kirino, or Eiji Yoshikawa? Or even the Tale of Genji? ‘Aimed at teens’ is the keyword there, and I should come back to this issue, but not this week.
While I have my post de-railed, another aside:
OEL is fine and all, but why not ELM, then? “English Language Manga.” Too simple, perhaps.
- English Manga would be even better, but that might be construed as exclusively the manga output of that specific UK constituent country so we have to have the word ‘language’ in there.
- Amerimanga just sucks. Don’t go there.
- Most descriptive: ELCiMS. English Language Comics in Manga Style. (Pronounced ‘el-SEEMS’ in a vaguely foreign accent. Obviously. …what? no?)
- I’ve been leaning toward GOLEM. Not that the acronym is better–Global (original language: english) Manga–it’s just cooler. Golems.
- One could also take exception to the ‘O’ in OEL; how about GNOMiE: Global, nominally original, Manga in English. After all, what’s really original about 98% of all manga — foreign or domestic?
- “Eigo Manga” might be an apt term, except of course someone else thought of that, registered the domain name and started a limited liability company (what do you need for that, a pulse, some paperwork and a paralegal?) (for the domain name all you need is a credit card)
- Hell, how about コミック — if we’re going to use the English transliteration of 漫画(まんが) to describe manga sold in the US, why not use the katakana for “comics” (pronounced komikku, I think) to describe American comics trying to be manga? Or is this too freakin’ geeky?
I like geeky. I can cut and paste コミック all day, too, I don’t even need to remember the kana for it. Of course, if your browser isn’t set up for Japanese characters then all you’re seeing is □□□□ or a string of question marks and other angry characters, but hey- if you can’t set up Firefox for the proper unicode stuff then I feel no pity. (and even less if you’re still using IE) I guess it comes down to GOLEMs vs GNOMiEs vs ELCiMS. Or, manga. Even better is just comics. For the whole world-wide lot of it: Russian original script in the Filipino Komik style done by a work-for-hire Indonesian freelance company for a Franco-Belgian bande dessinée publisher (printed in Quebec) intended for the….
What kind of market would buy that? Well, I might, if only for novelty’s sake. Translate it into Latin or Attic Greek just for kicks and get that Comic out to me, thanks.
…and we’ll revisit this issue again in about 10 months. Thanks, internets, this tied up 5 hours this afternoon and, once again, you don’t get the charts. I’ll see what I can do before tomorrow morning.