Whoa! How’d I miss this? A blog post of mine on the importance of the manga format (as opposed to manga-style content) to the future of comics led Mr. Dave McKenna to start this TCJ.com messboard thread on the topic. If everything magically stops being completely awful at some point soon, maybe I’ll chime in once again, but there’s nothin’ stoppin’ you guys.
Actually, you know what? Here goes (to an extent):
I’ll dive into this at length as soon as I can muster the energy, but I really do think that the manga format is strong enough that the manga content cultists can be convinced or seduced into wandering into American comics presented in that format. I think certain comics would make a better bridge than others–Ultimate Spider-Man and Sandman are my picks for the big companies to try out, though Colleen Doran’s A Distant Soil, which someone in the thread brought up, is a good idea, too–but ultimately manga-format comics just look more like books, not these weird not-quite-magazines not-quite-books odd-sized pamphlets and TPBs the mainstream comics companies rely on. As proof of this I offer the Barnes & Noble in Consohoken, PA, which shelves shoujo manga right there with the Francine Pascal young adult novels, and believe me, you can’t tell the difference from the trade dress of the spine without flipping them open to see that some have pictures and some don’t.