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September 2008
The Elements of Manga are a constant state of simple parameters that continue to change. We recognize manga usually through the speed lines or wide eyes of the characters. Certain story elements also are usually present. It is with this "status quo", but also an eye toward change that I continue to look at manga publishing in America.
Last time I looked over the initial status of manga publishing in America trying to be shoehorned into the American comic book market, viewed mostly as the unwanted red-headed step child of comic book publishing. Indeed, in the 80's and the early 90's this was manga, recognized by many fans as being manga, but viewed as some weird deviant that had no place in a comic shop. When looking back now that may be quite true . . . for manga seems to not belong in a comic book shop, but in larger book stores elbowing out its American comic book cousin . . . but I get ahead of myself.
In the late 80's and early 90's the trend was still to take existing manga material from Japan, often by great artists doing work that now is considered classic material (Oh (Ah) My Goddess!, Ghost In The Shell, Ranma ½, Gunsmith Cats, and many others), take that material, flip it (like in a mirror) so it could be read the traditional American way (left to right, not right to left like in Japan . . . though to be fair it is more left to right, up to down, and whatever way the artist decides they like!), with translated story and sound effects put in, in a monthly comic book format. This approach had problems that spelled its doom for quite awhile. First, manga, except without heavy editing, does not fit in the traditional 22 pages a month like traditional American comic books. So publishers often either put in two chapters or they would take one chapter, and cut the next chapter in half so that they didn't have to publish a whopping 40 page issue! Gasp! 8 more pages, with little or no advertisements! The crime! The horror! (The fact I need to not continue this "fake astonishment" joke . . . ) Next, the artwork was flipped, not a practice the original manga artists liked, because it made certain "mistakes" in the artwork more apparent. Third, the comics were always in black and white, a practice that most publishes consider to be the "kiss of death" for a comic book. Also, great liberties with names and some dialogue to make it more American . . . something most fans lost their minds over. This was common place for Viz and Dark Horse who by the 90's became the two major American manga publishers. DC and Marvel still considered manga beneath them and it wasn't until Tokyopop took the stage to publish manga that things started to change . . .
While Viz and Dark Horse's efforts are truly the lights that Manga alive in the early 90's in America they both drew large criticism for how they approached manga. Die had fans (fanatics might be more the term and otaku would probably work too . . . ) had huge issues with these changes and Tokyopop's entrance onto the field changed . . . none of that. Tokyopop entered the field with some note publishing Sailor Moon, a series many fans had wanted for years. However, the manga translations kept much of the bad taste the DIC translated version of the anime had, by not using the original names and not having much of original content faithfully translated. Yet not all was lost, and the efforts of Tokyopop to copy the efforts of Japan yield some interesting results. They put together a manga anthology (years before Shonen Jump) that was magazine sized and had several titles in it, plus articles and news (in reflection it's approach and look had much in common with Shojo Beat). What was unique about this approach was that it was reasonably priced, with a new chapter each month (not weekly like many Japanese manga publications) and was printed on cheaper paper, not standard comic book paper. This allowed the price to stay lower and it made it feel more authentic.
The main change though in how manga went main stream came from one big change in publishing in the late 1990's. Dark Horse, Viz, and all other manga publishers of the time reprinted and collected their manga material into trades in one of two ways. They either did it large comic book sized, so that they could be sold next to the normal comic book graphic novels and trade paperbacks. Dark Horse in particular kept almost all their trades at this size. Viz tried a different approach . . . they actually did tokuban "type" trades. The Viz manga collections were taller and wider then normal tokubans and sometimes would be thicker. They were about 2/3rd's the size of a normal comic book trade paperback and were . . . about the same price! Despite the cheaper costs to produce Viz used a heavier stock for the paper and they established a $15 to $18 price range for their manga, often with each volume in a series being the same price no matter how many pages were in it. (Maison Ikkoku is the worse example of this with one book twice as thick as the one following it but each costing $16.95 . . . ) Either way, the books were flipped with translated sound effects.
Tokyopop followed the Viz model more, but actually shrunk some of their trades down to more of a novel size (which is smaller then the tokuban size!). Tokyopop's trades changed and some were bigger, some smaller. This was the trademark of Tokyopop at this time: experimentation. This willingness to try new things and then see if they worked, which they often didn't . . . until they started releasing material they weren't publishing in their manga anthologies. With their new material they adopted a new tokuban size, a bit bigger then the Japanese standard with a firm rigid spine. Here they changed two standards: first, they didn't translate the sound effects, they just left them as is; second, and they didn't flip the pages. Now that might sound like little things, but these changes were huge and most retailers felt that this change would drive fans away. They didn't.
The changes Tokyopop instituted allowed the price to be dropped and established a standard price: $9.99. These new manga carried an "authentic manga" stamp and fans of manga in America flocked to this standard. The grievances against past translations made these "authentic manga" trends that fans flocked to and Tokyopop abandoned monthly comic book formats and switched to this as their standard. And manga in America changed forever . . . seriously. When one considers the Elements of Manga this is how one predominately samples them today. I'll look at these changes next month with more depth and how the changes went further with an eye toward maybe what has been lost . . . Still until then sample richly of the Elements of Manga, no matter what form you find them in!
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