Are teenagers not reading X-Men as much as they used to?

[ZephyrSurf]

You really don't know very much about manga, do you? A good deal of that stuff is harder to follow than anything ever put out by DC or Marvel, especially when you're dealing with really obscure volumes of material that has never been translated into English, and a good deal of the longer running titles is full of stuff that never been and will never be officially or unofficially translated (basically because of it's nature.)

You argument is basically a straw one.

This argument is pretty null. Unless you're going for more obscure sources. Most of the major manga have full translations. We're talking bout manga, not light novels or Visual Novels.

You're not going to have a problem finding full series from Shounen Jump, Shounen Weekly, Ultra Jump, Cheese! or Shojo Beat. Add they're generally collected and unless you're talking about some esoteric series like Shaman King (Which had to jump between 7 different publishers), basically all the relevant material is packaged together.


The way you're talking, I'd think you were talking about a series from Type Moon or Nitro Plus, which aren't manga products. And not manga like one piece or Dragon Ball which are comically easy to pick up and go through

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

This argument is pretty null. Unless you're going for more obscure sources. Most of the major manga have full translations. We're talking bout manga, not light novels or Visual Novels.

You're not going to have a problem finding full series from Shounen Jump, Shounen Weekly, Ultra Jump, Cheese! or Shojo Beat. Add they're generally collected and unless you're talking about some esoteric series like Shaman King (Which had to jump between 7 different publishers), basically all the relevant material is packaged together.


The way you're talking, I'd think you were talking about a series from Type Moon or Nitro Plus, which aren't manga products. And not manga like one piece or Dragon Ball which are comically easy to pick up and go through

I don't know about the manga but the show looks hard to get into...has like two million one hundred fifty trillion episodes lol

[Grunty]

I don't know about the manga but the show looks hard to get into...has like two million one hundred fifty trillion episodes lol

Try Gundam i dare you (i jest).

Sure one can just jump into the newest stand alone alternate universe show and take it for what it is, but if one wants to get the in jokes, references, character archetypes or even try out the fabled "original" universe with it's multiple sequel and tons of spin off material there is a lot to unpack.

This is where dedicated websites like MAHQ are/were a god send for people interested, before wikis stepped in and made it even easier to get infos.

And fitting enough X-men has just that aswell in form of the uncannyxmen fan site, which has practically every issue summarized and many detailed character biographies.

I don't know about other famous Marvel franchises, but in those cases there are likely extensive and omni-present wikis to look into for answers and detailed backstories aswell.

So yeah where there is a way to become a fan there is a will, may it be Gundam, Dragon Ball, One Piece, or X-men.

Which once again means it all boils down to the form of product and accessibility.

And the american super hero comics are seemingly too expensive, too difficult to obtain and/or too unrewarding/repulsing (constant artist, writer and story changes plus relaunches and stories too different from the movies/cartoons that might get them into the franchise) to follow currently, which is why Marvel movies are top (cheap to access and consume, omni-present to find, stories that are super heroic) and Marvel comics are not.

Which is also another reason i find cartoons so important, because they could bank much more on newly made fans than the comics could, thanks to the accessibility and stand alone nature.

[Habis]

You really don't know very much about manga, do you? A good deal of that stuff is harder to follow than anything ever put out by DC or Marvel, especially when you're dealing with really obscure volumes of material that has never been translated into English, and a good deal of the longer running titles is full of stuff that never been and will never be officially or unofficially translated (basically because of it's nature.)

You argument is basically a straw one.

Naruto has a beginning and an end. Dragon Ball has a beginning and an end. Ranma 1/2 has a beginning and an end. They may have been published during 10-15 years, but you can buy it all, from beginning to end, and you don't need to buy other books to have the whole story, just a single tittle.

[GMikey]

FUNNY you all are talking about this topic.

My buddy has actually created an interactive project to engage younger audiences even more so with the MCU. However, her project incorporates way more characters from the comic roster than the MCU has, that including the X-Men. Her approach mixes certain styles from manga and anime (as someone here also mentioned how teens gravitate more too manga/anime) with this fan collab Marvel project.

She was supposed to have debuted it this past New Year's, but for reasons a bit unknown, she's not made it public just yet. But I think her new ideas, and engaging teen (and other) audiences would bring in the kind of life that the MU as a whole might be missing, and eventually get kids reading comics again.

Some have said to her before that she should pitch her narrative to Marvel Comics directly as, if she's properly allowed, she'd bring a lot to the comics AND draw in renewed interest. The X-Men/Mutants have been one of the main group she's worked on with her own fan series, and (overall) everyone's really been excited to see her bring the Mutants to life. She said she rather focus on her fan series, so she can compose everyone's collaborative narrative as she sees fit, before even dreaming of actually pitching this as an idea.

[ARkadelphia]

Not this clown again

[9th.]

They're barely reading comic books period and comic books are super expensive for no reason.

[Lukmendes]

I don't know about the manga but the show looks hard to get into...has like two million one hundred fifty trillion episodes lol

Yeah but One Piece is the exception and not the rule of the sheer amount of pointless content lol.

Even then, if you want to get the overall story of it, it's better to read the manga, since OP probably has filler seasons.

Either way, I think One Piece has over 1000 episodes, that's over 20000 minutes, so yeah, watching everything would take a while lol.

[9th.]

I don't know about the manga but the show looks hard to get into...has like two million one hundred fifty trillion episodes lol

It's hard to get over the mental hurdle to watch a 1000+ plus episodes but it becomes much easier once you settle into it. The episodes are like 15 minutes long once you cut out the recap, OP, and ED.

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

Try Gundam i dare you (i jest).

Sure one can just jump into the newest stand alone alternate universe show and take it for what it is, but if one wants to get the in jokes, references, character archetypes or even try out the fabled "original" universe with it's multiple sequel and tons of spin off material there is a lot to unpack.

This is where dedicated websites like MAHQ are/were a god send for people interested, before wikis stepped in and made it even easier to get infos.

And fitting enough X-men has just that aswell in form of the uncannyxmen fan site, which has practically every issue summarized and many detailed character biographies.

I don't know about other famous Marvel franchises, but in those cases there are likely extensive and omni-present wikis to look into for answers and detailed backstories aswell.

So yeah where there is a way to become a fan there is a will, may it be Gundam, Dragon Ball, One Piece, or X-men.

Which once again means it all boils down to the form of product and accessibility.

And the american super hero comics are seemingly too expensive, too difficult to obtain and/or too unrewarding/repulsing (constant artist, writer and story changes plus relaunches and stories too different from the movies/cartoons that might get them into the franchise) to follow currently, which is why Marvel movies are top (cheap to access and consume, omni-present to find, stories that are super heroic) and Marvel comics are not.

Which is also another reason i find cartoons so important, because they could bank much more on newly made fans than the comics could, thanks to the accessibility and stand alone nature.

Gundam is on my list of things to get into.

They're barely reading comic books period and comic books are super expensive for no reason.

Just not enough bang for the buck in the most typical American comics. The art is very pretty, but you don't get much story per dollar. As someone predisposed to reading X-Men in particular, I don't swipe to the end of an issue in ComiXology and go, "man this narrative is really engrossing, I need to know what happens next right this second" very often, so I can imagine even the most big-name Big 2 comics not totally capturing new readers.

I definitely think the books need to up their game a bit, speaking specifically to X-Men.

It's a tall task, but especially in the hopes of hooking people who aren't already emotionally attached to the characters, every issue should feel like a HoxPox issue. That's the only way an issue is really worth $5.

[BobbysWorld]

I remember back when the original Runaways comic was ongoing and BKV talked about how he'd gotten Marvel to try releasing the TPB collections in volumes similar to most manga volumes, and they were hugely successful in that format. Never made sense to me that Marvel never even tried releasing other of their younger-starring titles in similar fashion, like the New X-Men or Avengers Academy, etc.

[OopsIdiditagain]

If we're ignoring the elephant in the room that starts with a p and ends with a g. Most teens are reading webcomics on sites like tapas or webtoon because they are free and legal. If they do buy something it's YA graphic novels, manga, or print versions of webtoons. X-men comics are expensive when compared to other options.

[jwatson]

comics imo are not expensive but they do cheapen themselves with the ads. If you think about it from a numbers stand point manga is usually between 18-20 pages but some come in at 15 depending but let's say 18 on average. If i go just by digital where you can go more ala cart they usually sell those for like .99cent so if it releases every week like some of the bigger ones that is what 3.96 cent that you spent for about 72 pages of black and white art. On the flip side with comics your getting once a month with a usually bigger creative team and full color, digitally the average comic is about 3.99 but the page count here is where it becomes expensive and you lose money because those ad pages in print which bring your pages from 32 to 22 really can't be justified here but if you were getting the full 32 pages it is actually a pretty reasonable price.

[Foon4000]

There's a far greater diversity of soap-opera/action/wierdoschool/sci-fi mash-ups in manga at the moment, particularly for girls and LGBT+ teens. If I was a teen today I'd probably be into Yuri on Ice and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure over the X-titles. Marvel need to learn more from the Japanese industry.

[shooshoomanjoe]

American comics have a long back history but you don't have to know all of it to understand what's going on. That's why they have jumping on points for new readers.