East & West- The difference between American and Japanese Comics

This morning I came across this post from a blog called ” He’s Just So Stackable ” and the title to the post was Comic Books Are Good.

What caught my eye actually was the title of the post, so of course I had to take a gander at what was being written, and of course I had to leave my two cents worth of opinion which was this…

The beginning of the post started with this….

“

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading.

Of course, there are many people who wouldn’t call what I was reading real reading, because I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately. People who say comics aren’t real reading can go read the latest Danielle Steele novel or something equally productive.

Anyways, I started with the mini-series leading up to DC’s big Infinite Crisis from a couple of years back. I had read many of the spoilers for that big thing, but I found it enjoyable regardless. To be honest, I also enjoyed Zero Hour way back when, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count for much.

Generally, I find myself pretty non-critical (for the most part) when I’m reading a superhero comic. Still, I found the whole thing too serious. That’s probably why I enjoyed the Day of Vengeance lead-up so enjoyable, because Bill Willingham knows how to make a comic fun and still have high stakes (go read his Vertigo series Fables. I haven’t read it for a few years, but it was great up to issue 20, and continues that way, by all accounts). ”

And to which I had left the following comment…

” Nice title for the post.

I’ve always found ( on a general reading level ) that comics are good. I learned to read because of comics, and I also took a major interest in everything to do with art and animation ( initially ) due to reading comics. The problem ( here in the US ) has always been that we trivialize the comic, unless a major event happens and becomes newsworthy…two examples would be pertaining to ” Death ” in comics..The Death of Superman, as far as I can remember was the first time that the news media actually ran any type of reports on comics in general that was not aimed as a major witch hunt to dig out some sort of ” subversive ” issue in the comics page. And very recently the ” Death of Captain America ” was a featured article in the news, along with a post on USA Today.com ( I believe ) just the other day about the ” New Red ” Hulk, and Marvel’s trying to get some cheap publicity for the new Hulk movie due this summer movie season.

I could write a bit more here, but I might just save it for my blog and a nice comparison between East and West attitudes towards the Comic…”

Lew

So I thought that a comparison of the American Comic and the Japanese Comic ( Manga, for those of you who might not have been sure..) was in order…

The American Comic

The early format of the comic book was introduced in the 1930’s with a book called Famous Funnies, which was a compilation of Sunday comics, this was basically a collection of the Sunday funnies without the whole newspaper.

This collection of comics was to be followed up later with the release of the first actual format printed comic book, and the introduction of the first super hero, a character named Superman, introduced by two kids named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Siegel was an American writer, and Shuster was a Canadian born Artist, who were living in Cleavland Ohio at the time of their collaboration of superman.

The introduction of Superman heralded in what would be termed the Golden Age of comics, to be followed later by the Silver, Bronze and the Modern Age of comics.

Okay, so there was your little bit of comics lineage…the real thing that I want to talk about as far as the American comic is this one name…

Frederick Wertham.

Wertham wrote a book…

Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, a book published in 1954, warned that the comic book was a bad form of popular literature, and was a major cause of juvenile delinquency. The book would be at best a minor bestseller….at it’s worst, it was what galvanized parents and would later be the main cause for a US Congressional committee to be launched, and this committee would take a cold and hard look at the comics industry, and thus was the Comics Code Authority launched, voluntarily by the the comic book publishers to self censor their own titles.

I refer to this incident because of how we as Americans still look at the comic today, but before I continue I want to take a look at the Japanese comic…

The Japanese comic is called Manga.

Now I have seen at least two different meanings for the term Manga, this explanation was taken from the book I am currently reading,  Manga - Sixty Years of Japanese Comics…

” From the Oxford English Dictionary…they are Japanese comic books and cartoon films with a science fiction and fantasy theme “…this is wrong on two counts…”

Manga are not Japanese films, and they deal with a wide range of subject matter..the other explanation reads like this…

Taken from Wikepedia… “ Manga, literally translated, means “whimsical pictures”. The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works as Sant? Ky?den’s picturebook “Shiji no yukikai” (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa’s “Manga hyakujo” (1814) and the celebrated Hokusai manga containing assorted drawings from the sketchbook of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. “

From what I have read so far, the manga comic in Japan is a widespread phenomenon, and is an accepted part of their culture.

In Japan, Manga are not just for children…Men, Women, and Children ( and or teenagers, male & female ) all read Manga.

It is common place in japan for the business man to be on a train, either on the way to or from work reading a Manga magazine or book.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese have built up the manga to the point where it, the Manga Comic, is able to stand up to the dominance of film and television.

This is how rooted into their culture, the Japanese comic, the Manga is in Japan…

There are no congressional hearings into the comic in Japan…but rather in Japan, the comic is a strong, accepted, and apparently wide spread, accepted reading medium, that is accepted by all…with out the stigma or ridicule…

While here in the US, we still frown upon the comic… we still keep the comic book hidden from view…we still make fun of the adult who reads it…we still only get excited about it when it can be newsworthy…

And just maybe, because of our own cultural differences with our Japanese counterparts, those who read the Comic, or if you will the Manga, and just maybe, our own short sightedness, the American comic will always be relegated to being nothing more than a minor note in our American culture.