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  1. #1
    Astonishing Member mathew101281's Avatar
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    Default European comics vs manga vs American comics

    I feel Manga is more geared towards mainstream mass produced stuff. 20 or 30 titles published weekly in large magazines. The focus is on quantity rather then quality. Though their is good manga out there, their general ethos seems to be publish as much stuff as possible for as cheaply as possible and the good stuff will rise above the trash.

    European comics are more artsy. More focused on putting out a smaller but more “high art,” product. Some the most detailed mind blowing art I’ve ever seen has come out of comics from places like France and Belgium. They tend to collect their comics into 48 page hard cover books rather then manga’s 200 page takebons or US comics trade paperbacks. In short quality over quantity.

    American comics seem to be at a crossroads to me. They are to expensive to possess the role of disposable entertainment that it once had. But I don’t feel the level of art is quite at the level of European comics(their are some exceptions of course). In short I’m not sure what American comics are trying to be right now.
    Last edited by mathew101281; 08-23-2020 at 05:43 PM.

  2. #2
    BANNED Starter Set's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    I feel Manga is more geared towards mainstream mass produced stuff. 20 or 30 titles published weekly in large magazines. The focus is on quantity rather then quality. Though their is good manga out there, their general ethos seems to be publish as much stuff as possible for as cheaply as possible and the good stuff will rise above the trash.
    Actually, that is already quite a tough competition to get published in books like the shonen jump. The "trash", as you put it, doesn't even make it to those books. The focus is not at all on quantity as in the end few titles are in those books. And there is truly nothing mainstream about 90% of existing mangas. And i'm not even talking about porn stuff but you can find mangas about any possible theme or subject.

    You seem to judge the whole thing by watching just through the very small prism of shonen manga.

    European comics are short very simply cause they don't need to be long. Those suckers are expensive. It's like 10 euros for something like 40 pages. And an author is going to release what? One 45 pages album per year? Two years? They are treated quite well lol.

  3. #3
    Extraordinary Member kjn's Avatar
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    First, the European comics market isn't one market. It's like 30. Different languages, different distribution systems, different styles.

    I can't speak much of the distribution system in most of Europe, but Sweden (and I think the rest of the Nordic countries) still has a functioning mass market distribution for comics. In my own little town (pop 10k or so) comic magazines can be found in the two supermarkets, the tobacco shop equivalent, and the two gas stations. They might not have the best selection, but they carry stuff like The Phantom, Donald Duck, Beetle Bailey, and also various (mostly) domestically produced magazines and kids-oriented stuff. It's a low-margin and shrinking market compared to when I was a teen, but still functional. Donald Duck and a couple of other titles are also published in paperback-sized editions with very high page counts (like 300+) in the mass market.

    Then we have the album market, which is dominated by comics translated from French. Stuff like Asterix, Lucky Luke, or Valerian, but also some domestic material. These albums usually run between 48 and 64 pages in large format. These are usually bought in book stores, but some titles have seen wider distribution (I remember buying Elfquest in Swedish translation in a local supermarket a long time ago).

    Some titles also see a more typical graphic novel format (smaller size but page counts of 100+ pages) and also high-quality hardcovers. Generally, the production quality has increased, but apart from the hardcover market most comics are mass-market products and at best you get "affordable quality" when it comes to paper and printing.

    And that's only on the distribution and production side. Most comic magazines here are still in an anthology format, with at least two stories per book and some editorial material as well.
    «Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out» (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History [4.56.1])

  4. #4
    Incredible Member Gotham citizen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    […]
    European comics are more artsy. More focused on putting out a smaller but more “high art,” product. Some the most detailed mind blowing art I’ve ever seen has come out of comics from places like France and Belgium. They tend to collect their comics into 48 page hard cover books rather then manga’s 200 page takebons or US comics trade paperbacks. In short quality over quantity.
    […]
    Actually only the "French-Belgian school of the graphic novels" adopt such format, while for other countries and for other tipe of comics are used different formats. For example the "school of the Italian popular comics" uses 96 pages long books printed in black and white; the price is 3.9 € (4.6 $ circa).
    One of the principal characteristics of this format are the stories: they are almost always self contained and when they are part of a story arc, every book contains all the information to understand what is happening and why, even if the reader didn't read the previous stories. We can say the writer's approach to the Italian popular comics is more similar to the one of TV shows of the seventies/eighties like Starsky & Hutch, A-Team, Miami Vice, than the one of the US comics. This is due to the fact the Italian readers don't want "be slave of their comics": they want be able to drop or restart to read a title in any moment, they don't want have to buy three or for different titles to read a story, they don't want events or retcons that upset the status quo of the title… For those reasons in the "Italian popular comics" the crossover are very rare, they are published in special books and the continuity isn't very important: because there aren't retcons and the status quo is almost immutable, you can read the books in almost any order without problems.

  5. #5
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    In short I’m not sure what American comics are trying to be right now.
    I have the impression that the US comics have been influenced by the mangas: less elliptical, dense storytelling… And in the same time, there are many more details than in the past in the execution that gives it much more flashiness…
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  6. #6
    Astonishing Member Korath's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Starter Set View Post
    Actually, that is already quite a tough competition to get published in books like the shonen jump. The "trash", as you put it, doesn't even make it to those books. The focus is not at all on quantity as in the end few titles are in those books. And there is truly nothing mainstream about 90% of existing mangas. And i'm not even talking about porn stuff but you can find mangas about any possible theme or subject.

    You seem to judge the whole thing by watching just through the very small prism of shonen manga.

    European comics are short very simply cause they don't need to be long. Those suckers are expensive. It's like 10 euros for something like 40 pages. And an author is going to release what? One 45 pages album per year? Two years? They are treated quite well lol.
    Don't know where you buy yours, but I'll take 10 euros for my B.D. any day ! Those things are quite expensive, and there is too much for anyone to keep up with more than a few series, really. I need to delve back into those, by the way, I want to branch out a little from manga and comics XD !

  7. #7
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Starter Set View Post
    European comics are short very simply cause they don't need to be long. Those suckers are expensive. It's like 10 euros for something like 40 pages. And an author is going to release what? One 45 pages album per year? Two years? They are treated quite well lol.
    I don’t know the current state but, when I was a child, there was some much text in these 46 pages that I could spend more than half a hour reading a BD.

    Comics are not anymore cheap like they were in the past and they are so quickly read now…
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

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