How can X-men comics do 2 sell like manga?

[emfrst]

Manga has no colorings, but they sell like hot cake. What improvement can there b? One Piece & Fairy Tail has been ongoing 4 a while, but they still attract readers more

[Doom'nGloom]

The only manga series I've ever read are Barefoot Gen (terrific series though may not be for everyone because of subject matter) and Shaman King so I'm not some expert but for X-men or any other comic to sell like manga comic book industry itself should change. There is too much continuity to keep track of in comics while usually in manga each series has an eventual end and the whole thing is written by a single guy so there is consistency. This is without getting into the fact that you give 4-5 dollars for what you can read in 5 minutes and be done with it.

[Nicoclaws]

Overwork their creator to publish around 20 pages a week. Build a culture around a weekly cheap magazine with tons of stories made by overworked creators, for diversity, hoping some stick. TONS of merchandising. Make a cartoon. MORE merchandising.

[Nicoclaws]

Also, no shared universe at first. The spinoffs. With merchandising.

[Doom'nGloom]

Overwork their creator to publish around 20 pages a week. Build a culture around a weekly cheap magazine with tons of stories made by overworked creators, for diversity, hoping some stick. TONS of merchandising. Make a cartoon. MORE merchandising.

These work too but isn't comics also notorious for screwing with creators or is that a thing of the past?

[Devaishwarya]

They have been basically experimenting with shorter runs/LS that have a beginning-middle-end written by one writer. Those have actually become more prevalent over the years...just look at the X-line for the FoX. LaValle's Sabretooth and the Exiles, X-Men Legends. Apart from your perennial "money makers" Most runs now are being kept to 12-20-something issues before they're "rebooted". Over which there have been major push-back and outcries...by said fans.

You are paying more because the artist/colourists/inkers/word balloon creators are not churning out "generic" art at a rapid pace to meet a specific overly high demand.

The vast and deep Continuity is not an issue. It's some...some...readers' inability to let go of continuity for something new or a bit different that's the issue. A character's past written history will always exist it's what a writer does with it in the present and future that is important. Most readers understand and accept that: different era, different writers, different editorial, different intentions mean that continuity will either be malleable or ignored because it's not something that's decidedly set in stone and can be (sometimes need to be) tweaked and changed. And has been tweaked and changed (Moira X, for example).

Thing is...and this is the bottom line with the whole Manga vs debates...X-Men/Western Comics don't sell as much for a whole slew of reasons that has nothing to do with the "manga model". It's almost a guarantee that if they did shift to the manga production models their sales still wouldn't be as high. And yes, the industry model as it is now has to change but we all know that THAT is never going to happen...at least not to the extent it becomes something completely unrecogniseable. And even if it does...fans will still find a problem with it and not buy as much.

[Nicoclaws]

I think the "short arc into TPs" was done to follow the market success of "graphic novels" and the european model. I could be wrong though.

I don't think continuity is a bother. It's more that the shared universe forces the story to stagnate. If you have too many stories in the same wordl it doesn't quite work. I think.

[Nicoclaws]

These work too but isn't comics also notorious for screwing with creators or it that a thing of the past?

Ah probably. Capitalism.

[salarta]

Manga are in a better place than comic books for a lot of different reasons.

Most of the time, they're offering creative works that aren't more than 30 years old. Usually past decade. Plenty of manga was made older than that but they don't make that old stuff into their premiere focus.

When they're doing a long-lived franchise, e.g. Gundam, it's approached in a way where it can stand alone. You don't have to know a lot of history. It's almost all new characters, and if old ones show up, they're more like easter eggs where it's not essential to have read what they were in before. Any important details from the past will be referenced and used in a smart way where the reader isn't left feeling like they're deficient for not having read issue 131yu95y1456 from 1946.

Perhaps most important, the franchises and characters they emphasize are mostly being worked on by the person or people who actually created them. This is important because there's no risk of the stories and characters going off on wild tangents that come off at best out of touch and at worst insulting and disrespectful. That doesn't mean actions of the creator(s) will always be good. It's always possible for them to make incredibly sexist or racist work that causes blowback. But as a general rule, the creator(s) for manga properties care too deeply about their creations to treat them like trash the way comic book editors and writers will do to 50+ year old characters they grew up hating because some random dude 30 years ago decided a character's better off cleaning the dishes and having nonstop wet dreams about a guy than headlining a core book and engaging in things that matter.

If something bad happens to a character in manga, the creator(s) usually address its impact and let it mean something. Compared to comics where a single editor not respecting a character is considered sufficient reason to ignore what happened to them. Readers don't read manga or watch anime exclusively for flashy fight scenes. The characters and their development and struggles actually matter there. Unlike the X-Men comics.

Until that's dealt with, nothing's going to change. Long-time hardcore comic book fans will balk at that statement or take it personally as an attack on their fandom and everything it means to them. Doesn't change that it's accurate. People don't enjoy reading comics where characters they come to connect with are routinely treated like their struggles don't matter and nobody should like them compared to some other golden boy character they've never cared about. Trying to kill something people actually want in an effort to promote something they don't want has the opposite effect.

Manga is also more widely available than comic books, but truthfully that's small potatoes compared to everything else.

[Malachi]

They have been basically experimenting with shorter runs/LS that have a beginning-middle-end written by one writer. Those have actually become more prevalent over the years...just look at the X-line for the FoX. LaValle's Sabretooth and the Exiles, X-Men Legends. Apart from your perennial "money makers" Most runs now are being kept to 12-20-something issues before they're "rebooted". Over which there have been major push-back and outcries...by said fans.

You are paying more because the artist/colourists/inkers/word balloon creators are not churning out "generic" art at a rapid pace to meet a specific overly high demand.

The vast and deep Continuity is not an issue. It's some...some...readers' inability to let go of continuity for something new or a bit different that's the issue. A character's past written history will always exist it's what a writer does with it in the present and future that is important. Most readers understand and accept that: different era, different writers, different editorial, different intentions mean that continuity will either be malleable or ignored because it's not something that's decidedly set in stone and can be (sometimes need to be) tweaked and changed. And has been tweaked and changed (Moira X, for example).

Thing is...and this is the bottom line with the whole Manga vs debates...X-Men/Western Comics don't sell as much for a whole slew of reasons that has nothing to do with the "manga model". It's almost a guarantee that if they did shift to the manga production models their sales still wouldn't be as high. And yes, the industry model as it is now has to change but we all know that THAT is never going to happen...at least not to the extent it becomes something completely unrecogniseable. And even if it does...fans will still find a problem with it and not buy as much.

Manga has progress. Comics has… not so much. Even juggernauts like One Piece has progress even though it is much more diluted compared to other mangas. So you have 2 different costumers in that sense. When I buy a marvel comic it’s just to hang out in that world with that character. Sometimes you get a good story too. In manga I don’t just hang out, I am there for the ride too since we have a destination.

[Force de Phenix]

These work too but isn't comics also notorious for screwing with creators or it that a thing of the past?

Yes. It still exists today, and if having Bob Iger in charge of the company isn't a good sign if he treats his workers in other media like ****.

[Grunty]

There is arguably no quick and easy to apply solution that would allow american super hero comics to gain the same amount of success and readership numbers that japanese comics are currently experiencing world wide.

Likewise there are notable differences between how the western comicbook and animation industries are structured (both US american and european alike) compared to the japanese ones which have to be taken into account when thinking about possible solutions to the niche existence of the american super hero comic.

However, at this point only a very fundamental paradigm shift in how these comics are produced, priced, released, accessed, written, structured and most damning how their continuity is handled seem like the way for success to be (re)gained.

This might include removing the physical 20 page floppy release as the primary form of publishing stories and getting rid of the perpetualy maintained singular continuity, including cutting off a huge chunk of current continuity at an ideal point to create a "definitive" edition of the X-men story that people can read from start to finish (including producing new series with predestined and fixed end points even at a loss).

Everything allready produced or produced afterwards can then still be (re)released as spin-offs, follow ups or alternate continuities. But they would not longer be considered "canon" to the "definitive" version of their story.

All of this means taking risks of course and could end up backfiring, but the current system of publishing and the perpetual aimless continuity does not look like it will be suited to get the X-men comics anywhere out of their niche existence.

[Doom'nGloom]

They have been basically experimenting with shorter runs/LS that have a beginning-middle-end written by one writer. Those have actually become more prevalent over the years...just look at the X-line for the FoX. LaValle's Sabretooth and the Exiles, X-Men Legends. Apart from your perennial "money makers" Most runs now are being kept to 12-20-something issues before they're "rebooted". Over which there have been major push-back and outcries...by said fans.

You are paying more because the artist/colourists/inkers/word balloon creators are not churning out "generic" art at a rapid pace to meet a specific overly high demand.

The vast and deep Continuity is not an issue. It's some...some...readers' inability to let go of continuity for something new or a bit different that's the issue. A character's past written history will always exist it's what a writer does with it in the present and future that is important. Most readers understand and accept that: different era, different writers, different editorial, different intentions mean that continuity will either be malleable or ignored because it's not something that's decidedly set in stone and can be (sometimes need to be) tweaked and changed. And has been tweaked and changed (Moira X, for example).

Thing is...and this is the bottom line with the whole Manga vs debates...X-Men/Western Comics don't sell as much for a whole slew of reasons that has nothing to do with the "manga model". It's almost a guarantee that if they did shift to the manga production models their sales still wouldn't be as high. And yes, the industry model as it is now has to change but we all know that THAT is never going to happen...at least not to the extent it becomes something completely unrecogniseable. And even if it does...fans will still find a problem with it and not buy as much.

Continuity dictates how characters act or at least it should when it's not contradicting itself. Silver age Magneto was a mustache twirling villain while since Claremont he is a sympathetic Holocaust surviver who still doesn't mind his hands getting dirty. The two are not compatible. Fortunately the new version was a clear upgrade so fans embraced it without much fuss. Let's do a thought experiment. Pick any fan favorite mutant, Scott/Jean/Ororo etc, and say marvel publishes a story revealing that the character was never a mutant but instead a genetically engineered human spying on mutants on behalf of world governments. It might contradict what was already established but screw it, who cares about continuity right? How would the fans react to this? I guess it would be much harsher compared to the case with Moira.

[Outburstz]

It's a cultural difference

In the West despite what most want to believe most people still view comics and animation for kids while in Japan it is accepted as just another form of media for all ages.

All you have to do in order to see that difference is ask yourself when is the last time you saw an animated tv show that was made for adults that wasn't a comedy or a super hero show

[Ra-El]

Manga has progress. Comics has… not so much. Even juggernauts like One Piece has progress even though it is much more diluted compared to other mangas. So you have 2 different costumers in that sense. When I buy a marvel comic it’s just to hang out in that world with that character. Sometimes you get a good story too. In manga I don’t just hang out, I am there for the ride too since we have a destination.

Agree.

The 2 best superhero runs, imo, are Starman by James Robinson and Hitman by Garth Ennis. The common factor between the 2, is that both stories had a clear ending.
We followed the main characters in their adventures until they were done, them we saw them riding into the sunset, more or less.
Every choice Jack or Tommy made counted in the end, they didn't had other creative teams making them unlearn lessons or repeating the same mistakes.

That's pretty much what most mangas offer. A journey where we see the character grown. Different from comics where Thor becomes unworthy every 5 years.