Most Popular Character in Comics Today

[badMike]

far and away the most popular character in comics in America today is a hotheaded and literally alienated kid who nonetheless doggedly clings to a belief in his own self-worth and tries to overcome prejudice, loneliness and presumptions about his nature by treating people honestly, sticking to his principles, defending others and never giving up.Who did you mean? Naruto?

[sehthan]

I read that as Naruto, too.

[sgt pepper]

Scott Pilgrim?

[badMike]

Scott Pilgrim?That's a good guess, but I think Naruto's more popular, especially among kids. I've tried watching a few episodes with my nephew, who absolutely loves it, but I can't follow the dang thing whatsoever.

[Paul McEnery]

Who did you mean? Naruto?

It's Invader Zim, isn't it.

[bartl]

That's a good guess, but I think Naruto's more popular, especially among kids. I've tried watching a few episodes with my nephew, who absolutely loves it, but I can't follow the dang thing whatsoever.
I find that, for this sort of thing, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naruto)is an excellent tool.

[Steven Grant]

Naruto.

- Grant

[badMike]

I find that, for this sort of thing, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naruto)is an excellent tool.Thanks, that's good advice. The only problem is that I don't care that much.

[mattx110]

Naruto.

- Grant

isn't that the one with the underage naked chicks?

[sehthan]

isn't that the one with the underage naked chicks?

No, that's the other one.

[Steven Grant]

isn't that the one with the underage naked chicks?

Generally that's only Naruto himself who's an underage naked chick in the series.

Though they're fairly common in manga, but...

Oddly enough, despite delusions to the contrary, naked chicks don't really affect comics sales anywhere, with the occasional exception... unless they're naked chicks telling their significant others not to spend money on comics...

- Grant

[mattx110]

Generally that's only Naruto himself who's an underage naked chick in the series.

Though they're fairly common in manga, but...

Oddly enough, despite delusions to the contrary, naked chicks don't really affect comics sales anywhere, with the occasional exception... unless they're naked chicks telling their significant others not to spend money on comics...

- Grant

well, thanks for dignifying me with a response.
and i know i've been turned off from buying manga because of the big eyed bikinied girls. so that's "minus one" on the sales effect side, so far. i know they're hurting.
either way, i think it's smart to wait 5 years before buying anything translated from japanese because there's a 95% chance it's not very good, but if it is, it's name'll start getting around, and people will still care about it in 5 years.

[Steven Grant]

well, thanks for dignifying me with a response.
and i know i've been turned off from buying manga because of the big eyed bikinied girls. so that's "minus one" on the sales effect side, so far. i know they're hurting.
either way, i think it's smart to wait 5 years before buying anything translated from japanese because there's a 95% chance it's not very good, but if it is, it's name'll start getting around, and people will still care about it in 5 years.

Not really. It's pretty much like American comics. There are very good manga that pretty much no one pays attention to, and there are crappy manga that continue to be hugely popular. Also, a lot of manga is closed-ended, so it doesn't keep pumping out story after story year after year, so the popularity peaks at a certain point. Frankly, the "big-eyed bikini girls" obsession tends to be strongest in American manga aficionados who do their own "manga." Japanese manga has a very wide variety of styles and obsessions...

- Grant

[zuludelta]

I wonder if the finite nature of the series in manga correlates in any significant way with the relatively robust sales of comics in Japan. I can't remember the last time DC or Marvel were wringing their hands because their top book was selling "only" 3.5 million copies, as anthology title Shonen Jump was selling in 2005 (from a high of nearly 7 million during the mid-1990s).


far and away the most popular character in comics in America today is a hotheaded and literally alienated kid who nonetheless doggedly clings to a belief in his own self-worth and tries to overcome prejudice, loneliness and presumptions about his nature by treating people honestly, sticking to his principles, defending others and never giving up.

I always take lamentations about how "kids aren't reading comics anymore" with a grain of salt. Kids in North America are still reading comics these days, they just happen to be made in Japan (the comics, not the kids). It just seems that Marvel and DC have shifted the focus of their stories in the last decade or so to cater to the Direct Market crowd (the 18-35 male demographic, for the most part), for better or for worse.

I haven't given the Naruto series more than a superficial read (from "online samples" and forays into the manga section of the comic book shop), but without going too deep into an analysis of it, I think it actually has more in common thematically with early Spider-Man (with which it shares a particular kind of young reader appeal) than any of the current Spider-Man books out there (outside maybe of the All-Ages Spidey book, which basically just retells 1960s and early 1970s Spider-Man stories anyway).

[Dennis]

I wonder if the finite nature of the series in manga correlates in any significant way with the relatively robust sales of comics in Japan.

I remember this funny amazon review by an American teacher in Japan where he says that he's only seen 2 people in Japan reading a real book, they only read comics.

I was wondering if there was any manga that doesn't include, what I would call Weird Japanese Cuteness. Or perverted fetishes. It seem even serious mangaka like the super cute characters...like, you know how when a character gets really mad, their huge eyes turn into slits and their mouths turn into a gigantic O and they're jumping up and down and there's action lines showing how mad they are. I've seen really adult, intelligent stories include this whimsical comic relief. I guess I haven't been exposed to the serious manga.

but it's strange that comics fans think American culture is broken in some way because comics aren't popular. maybe the cultures that worship comics are the ones that are kinda weird. I mean, groping schoolgirls on the subway is a normal thing over there.

[zuludelta]

it's strange that comics fans think American culture is broken in some way because comics aren't popular. maybe the cultures that worship comics are the ones that are kinda weird. I mean, groping schoolgirls on the subway is a normal thing over there.

Wow. Just wow. You really have to enlighten us about how you came up with the dazzling insight of "liking comics = tendency to grope schoolgirls in the subway."

Anywho, the occasional fetishisized depiction in a number of manga is simply a culture-specific instance of the sublimated sexual content that can sometimes be found in comics (and other forms of art), regardless of country of origin. I'd think that outside of the North American/superhero comic book milieu, grown men wearing skin-tight bodysuits with their underwear on the outside and ridiculously endowed women in bikinis (as most superheroes are wont to be depicted) would come off, as you put it, "kinda weird."

But to veer slightly closer to the topic, I brought up the idea of the finite/mini series publication model because it seems like the common wisdom these days is that the mini-series (and its distant cousin, the anthology comic) is doomed to fail, at least sales-wise. It looks to be the case with most American superhero comics at least (you could almost hear fans across the continent dropping Omega Flight from their pull lists as soon as Marvel announced that it would, in fact, be a five-issue mini-series, even before the first issue shipped). But that doesn't seem to be the case with a lot of manga, where mini-series are the norm and you rarely see on-going titles that go on for more than a couple, or at most a few of years, and where most long-run books are solicited with a pre-set conclusion in mind.

I think one of the key advantages of doing a finite series (and announcing it so) is that it takes advantage of novelty. Quality aside, there's only so much a team can do with a cast's status quo before it starts getting stale for the reader. There can only be so many "things will never be the same" storylines before the reader becomes wise to the fact that in an on-going title that's geared to run for an indefinite period of time, things aren't really supposed to change, at least not in any significant manner, and while that may be what many long-time readers want (especially those who look to superhero comics for "comfort reading"), all the accumulated self-referential baggage that comes from publishing the same book featuring the same characters for years and years eventually makes the book impenetrable to the average novice reader.

[hyzmarca]

I was wondering if there was any manga that doesn't include, what I would call Weird Japanese Cuteness. Or perverted fetishes. It seem even serious mangaka like the super cute characters...like, you know how when a character gets really mad, their huge eyes turn into slits and their mouths turn into a gigantic O and they're jumping up and down and there's action lines showing how mad they are. I've seen really adult, intelligent stories include this whimsical comic relief. I guess I haven't been exposed to the serious manga.


I don't read much manga, but one of my favories of Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei.Taking place in a giant post-apocalyptic cybernetic mega-structure of unknown scale (it covers most of the Earth and reaches, at least, to the moon), it is notable for beautifully detailed panoramas of the titanic technological marvel's interiors and long scenes in which the lone protagonists walks for miles upon miles without encountering any other living creature. Killer cyborgs, energy guns powerful enough to blast giant multi-kilometer-long holes into the megastructure, and an epic quest to resurrect humanity, but no cuteness.

[mattx110]

I don't read much manga, but one of my favories of Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei.Taking place in a giant post-apocalyptic cybernetic mega-structure of unknown scale (it covers most of the Earth and reaches, at least, to the moon), it is notable for beautifully detailed panoramas of the titanic technological marvel's interiors and long scenes in which the lone protagonists walks for miles upon miles without encountering any other living creature. Killer cyborgs, energy guns powerful enough to blast giant multi-kilometer-long holes into the megastructure, and an epic quest to resurrect humanity, but no cuteness.

Wait, so it was manga... with backgrounds? Sorry, you lost me again.

[badMike]

I think one of the key advantages of doing a finite series (and announcing it so) is that it takes advantage of novelty. Quality aside, there's only so much a team can do with a cast's status quo before it starts getting stale for the reader.That's a good point, but there is also room for the "infinite" series that goes on for years and completely avoids being bogged down in continuity. Regular readers may eventually get tired and drop the book, but by keeping everything sans continuity, it allows new readers to jump on at any point without aggravation.

For example, Stan Sakai has been creating Usagi Yojimbo comics for 20+ years. I just picked up a random collection from Dark Horse out of the library. The book starts with an epilogue from the previous adventure, but it's written in such a way that I didn't feel like I had missed anything. It just felt like a story started in media res. I haven't finished it yet, so I don't know how it ends, but I doubt it will end on a major cliffhanger.

Contrast that with just about any modern superhero collection I get out of the library, which is usually a subset of some other larger crossover event and I know at least a quarter of the book will contain bad exposition explaining shit that happened 30 years ago and another quarter of the book explaining shit that happened six months ago in the series. Then it'll end on some major cliffhanger totally irrelevant to the story I just read. These books are maddening.

[hyzmarca]

Wait, so it was manga... with backgrounds? Sorry, you lost me again.

Manga with backgrounds. Big beautiful backgrounds.
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3449/blamev2042043go2.th.jpg (http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blamev2042043go2.jpg)

[mattx110]

Manga with backgrounds. Big beautiful backgrounds.
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3449/blamev2042043go2.th.jpg (http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=blamev2042043go2.jpg)

not bad, i'm not sold on the ultra-powerful guns, but everything else about it sounds good. you may have made me a convert.:D