Weird that comics are not a bigger deal across the world?

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Don't people across the world want visual depictions of their specific stories originating from their culture? Outside of the US, Western Europe, Australia, Japan and pockets of continental Asia people don't have a lot of home made movies and tv series besides the art house stuff. Why wouldn't people latch onto comics more considering how much cheaper are compared to moves and neat looking tv series?



-KhaN-'s Avatar
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Outside of the US, Western Europe, Australia, Japan and pockets of continental Asia people don't have a lot of home made movies and tv series besides the art house stuff.
What do you mean? People outside of mentioned regions don't have a lot of movies that were made in their country? If that is what you are saying, it's really inaccurate, Serbia and all of ex-Yugoslavia countries have always been busy on movie making.


Why wouldn't people latch onto comics more considering how much cheaper are compared to moves and neat looking tv series?
Well, here in Balkans we have Italian comics (so there you go with a new market already), they were really popular back in the day, legendary comics like: Dylan Dog, Zagor, Martin Mystery and so on. Just because USA comics do not have a following, dose not mean there is no comic book following in general.
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Not sure what the state of comics is globally, but I do know that the comic book is a purely American creation.
Of course there was art, illustrated stories, cartoons (editorial & otherwise) in other countries before comic books, but the media of sequential visual storytelling & putting it into periodical form was an American invention.
The concept of the superhero (which became comic books' reigning genre) was also conceived in America - of course much of it was inspired by lots of ancient mythology and classic literature from all over the world.



Not sure what the state of comics is globally, but I do know that the comic book is a purely American creation.
Of course there was art, illustrated stories, cartoons (editorial & otherwise) in other countries before comic books, but the media of sequential visual storytelling & putting it into periodical form was an American invention.
The concept of the superhero (which became comic books' reigning genre) was also conceived in America - of course much of it was inspired by lots of ancient mythology and classic literature from all over the world.
None of this was conceived in America, jesus. The US, has created their own version of comic books and superheroes which are without a doubt the most popular and influential, but no just no to the US inventing comics and Superheroes haha.

Fudging Action Comics or whatever was the first comic book apparently and Superman was the first superhero haha, jesus. How can you say America had the first Superheroes seriously that is the funniest thing i have heard all day. So no other cultures in the what 2000 + years before the US existed. had the idea for a person with abilities no human could ever have? Was it not the same because apparently the US invented the comic book, even though cultures used to show their fictional heroes through writing pretty much as far back as the written word.

haha. Superman: 1930 the first time humans decided to record the adventures of a fictional personal with superhuman abilities.



Us and Western Europe do not have a lot of comics either.

Comics only developed to a very significant extent in Japan, where they became the backbone of the nation's culture. In Japan the per capita consumption of comics is about 100 times that of the US or Europe*. In Japan they even adapted Dostoievski and Tolstoi into comics as well as a calculus, physics, biology textbooks used in high schools and colleges:



Why comics did not develop to a great extent in the west? In the US comics were converging to the same path as Japan did in the 1950s but government intervention destroyed the medium and comic book sales collapsed by 95% from 1954 to 1964, by the 1960s US comics became mostly focused on superheroes because they were the only titles that could pass the government promoted censorship. Government push for censorship of comics began after a psychiatrist published a book about the danger of comics corrupting the minds of young people/ teenagers with violence and sex. Maybe without the government's actions the US today would be like Japan in terms of comics and animation.

I guess other Western countries did not develop comics because:
1 - US cultural influence
2 - Photographic culture: western culture is hostile to stylized representation such as those found in manga, it favors photographic realism for serious drama, comics are mostly relegated to newspapers cartoon sections.

Animation developed as an ofshoot of comics. What westerners call "anime" are TV adaptations of popular comics in Japan, Anime is so much bigger medium than Western animation because comics are so much bigger in Japan. But if you are serious about Japanese culture, comics are where the best stuff is, not anime.

Chinese comics are developing fast as well as Korean comics. Korean comics are very popular as well with their so called "Webtoons" penetrating wide sections of society (gatsby told me he reads Webtoons). Overall though they are not as developed as in Japan, yet, butI think that in a few decades Chinese comic industry will be more developed than Japan's given the country's massive population.

Chinese comic:


Korean comic:


Brazilian comics are also not very popular, most popular comics in Brazil are Monica's gang, which I read a lot when I was a child's. Adult Brazilian comics are mostly comedic like Angeli's.

Brazilian comic:


Angeli's comics:



*sources: manga sales in Japan are 2 billion magazines/books, each usually around 500 pages long, so that's 1,000 billion pages of comics or 8,000 pages of comics per person per year. In the US comic sales are 120 million books, each 200 pages long thats 24 billion pages or 80 pages per person per year.



Comics only developed to a very significant extent in Japan,
Saw that coming a mile away.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Photographic culture: western culture is hostile to stylized representation such as those found in manga, it favors photographic realism for serious drama, comics are mostly relegated to newspapers cartoon sections.
I don't think I'd call it "photographic realism".


Anyway, Japan's a nice example of how popular comics CAN become, but let's not forget that it has it's own stigma in that country as well. It's not unheard of for them to be banned in schools and popular opinion often denigrates them as relatively "childish" material compared to standard novels. Evidently this mindset is significantly stronger outside of the country, even in the US, although the recent billion dollar industry upswing into superhero movies is casting them in a better light. The popularity of Japanese comics outside of Japan arguably help just as well.
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There are many museums in Japan dedicated to comics as well as many university courses dedicated to the study comics. There are ad well, even a profession of Manga critics who deeply analyse Manga itself. And no, Manga was not respected in Japan in the 1950s but in the subsequent decades the medium attained greater and grater degrees of proeminence. In Japan today being a Manga artist is a profession as respected as being a writer or a film director. Although Manga artists can make more money then either because the industry is larger: in 1994 Manga sales were 550 billion yen, movie gross was 180 billion yen, of which only 60 billion yen were Japanese live action films. Sales of novels are also smaller than manga, top selling novels in Japan usually sell tens of millions of copies, top selling Manga sells hundreds of millions.

This article gives a good explanation why comics did not develop to the same degree in the US:

http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html

These books give a good overview of the Japanese view of comics:




By the way, the biggest manga magazines like Shounen Jump are read by people aged 7 to 70. Stuff like Dragon Ball and One Piece are like Star Wars and Harry Potter movies: pan demographic cultural products. In fact, Shounen Jump is read by more old people than strict adult magazines, who attract mostly young people around the age of 30.

This is the distribution of ages of readers of the world's most popular comic book, One Piece:



It is officially a children's Manga but 88% of its readers are adults, mostly around the ages of 20 to 50.



I don't think I'd call it "photographic realism".
You didn't understand me. My point is that western culture is photographic, they NEED realistic representations for serious drama (like live action footage). Japanese culture is more accepting of stylized representation such as those found in Manga (although there are very realistic looking Manga) for portrayal of drama.

Anyway, Japan's a nice example of how popular comics CAN become, but let's not forget that it has it's own stigma in that country as well. It's not unheard of for them to be banned in schools and popular opinion often denigrates them as relatively "childish" material compared to standard novels.
Not really. According to the academic works that I have read comics attained a high degree of social respect in Japan over the past 60 years. Tezuka is considered a national icon, he is more idolized and respected than Kurosawa, for example.

What happened is that some amateur manga writers and fans, called "otaku" are the ones who suffer from social stigma. This happened after a mass murder incident in 1989 where a Manga fan killed and mutilated 4 young girls. However, by 1993 this incident was mostly forgotten.

Japanese culture is also very stigmatized of people who don't conform to social norms. That means that if you have an obsessive interest with manga you are stigmatized but it's the same with obsessive interest for movies or books or with fat people.



None of this was conceived in America, jesus. The US, has created their own version of comic books and superheroes which are without a doubt the most popular and influential, but no just no to the US inventing comics and Superheroes haha.

Fudging Action Comics or whatever was the first comic book apparently and Superman was the first superhero haha, jesus. How can you say America had the first Superheroes seriously that is the funniest thing i have heard all day. So no other cultures in the what 2000 + years before the US existed. had the idea for a person with abilities no human could ever have? Was it not the same because apparently the US invented the comic book, even though cultures used to show their fictional heroes through writing pretty much as far back as the written word.

haha. Superman: 1930 the first time humans decided to record the adventures of a fictional personal with superhuman abilities.
Camo, did you miss the part where I said that, of course, art, illustrated stories and cartoons existed in various countries long before comic books? Or the part where I said that, of course, the concept of superheroes were inspired by ancient mythology & classic literature from all over the world? I did acknowledge all that, didn't I?

But the unique form of sequential art placed in a regular periodical was not a global concept before the 1930's.

It wasn't a concept anywhere before that time...
Now, obviously, illustrations used as a form of storytelling dates back to the earliest cave drawings. Hieroglyphics, sequential drawings on scrolls, picture Bibles, wood cuts & illustrations accompanying text all date back to the earliest hand-printed documents.

But the precursors to comic books were newspaper editorial cartoons (which date back to the early 18th century), then the newspaper comic strips.
The first compendium where newspaper comic strips were collected together in magazine form (i.e. the first "comic book") occurred in the USA.
Quickly the idea of printing new material in the magazines (rather than just collecting newspaper strips) such as pulp-inspired crime & detective stories, westerns, adventure heroes, masked vigilantes and stories about fantastic characters with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men soon caught on.

Comic books, as a form of regularly mass-produced entertainment media did indeed originate in America.



-KhaN-'s Avatar
I work for Keyser Soze. He feels you owe him.
Just a mention: Dylan Dog sells around 350.000 comics each month in Italy, and if I remember correctly, that would make it one of best selling comics in USA, in Italy it's in second place as Tex sells even more.




Originally Posted by Guaporense
You didn't understand me.
I actually reread it and yeah, you're right. I misinterpreted your phrasing.

Originally Posted by Guaporense
Not really. According to the academic works that I have read comics attained a high degree of social respect in Japan over the past 60 years.
They have, but settings like school are also matters of the older generation lording over the newer generation. This isn't unique to Japan either, video games are still considered a childish medium by some critics even though they've long since risen above Pong and Pac-man to become capable of telling narrative epics and exercising our minds psychologically in the same ways as books or movies. There'll be no shortage of mindless shoot-em-ups in video games the same way there'll still be pornographic comics, but the medium is still capable of engaging us on a deeper level unparalleled by any other in ways that some people just don't get.


I've agreed with some things Gavin McInnes has said in the past, but this video he made just spits in the face of the multi-billion dollar industry that writers, artists, and programmers have slaved to create lifelong memorable experiences from.

The same has and still is said of comics, albeit from an ever-decreasing minority. The ongoing assumption is that "you don't need pictures to understand a message" which ties an absence of imagery to intelligence.

It's not just that some people still hold unflattering perspectives on comics, but it just doesn't click for them that images can serve to enrich a message, rather than distract from it.


Originally Posted by Guaporense
What happened is that some amateur manga writers and fans, called "otaku" are the ones who suffer from social stigma. This happened after a mass murder incident in 1989 where a Manga fan killed and mutilated 4 young girls. However, by 1993 this incident was mostly forgotten.
Reminds me of how rock music was demonized and video games are STILL lampooned for being linked to violent crimes.



Kibyoshi published during the 18th Century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiby%C5%8Dshi

Kibyōshi (黄表紙?) is a genre of Japanese picture book kusazōshi (草双紙) produced during the middle of the Edo period, from 1775 to the early 19th century. Physically identifiable by their yellow-backed covers, kibyōshi were typically printed in 10 page volumes, many spanning two to three volumes in length, with the average number of total pages being 30.[1] Considered to be the first purely adult comicbook in Japanese literature, a large picture spans each page, with descriptive prose and dialogue filling the blank spaces in the image.



Newspaper strips developed to a pretty "significant" extent in the US (and if I had to guess I would say probably elsewhere as well), they've just since atrophied to the point where it's hard to imagine they were ever a large, diverse and "serious" popular medium. Now they're just about culturally irrelevant. I agree with a lot of Guap's first post (aside from various quibbles) but think it's important to point out that there's an eb and flow to these things and a medium can "develop" and then later "undevelop" for a complex of reasons including competition from other media, technological change and its impact on consumption habits, impact of individual artists, cultural trends, ideology and politics.

With regard to that last one it's worth noting that this cuts both ways. In the US the comics industry was pressured into self-censoring and no longer publishing "adult" (really just sex and gore) material for mass consumption. Other countries have gone further. Famous left-wing comic-writer Hector Oesterheld was killed by the Argentine military dictatorship in the 1970s. On the other hand the Japanese government definitely played a part in the development and promotion of manga, with an eye to its international reputation (this is one of points made in the Sharon Kinsella book Guap mentioned). So I guess my point is there's probably not a mono-causal explanation for why some countries have more comics than others. In any given case it could be a different combination of any number of factors.



Kibyoshi published during the 18th Century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiby%C5%8Dshi

Kibyōshi (黄表紙?) is a genre of Japanese picture book kusazōshi (草双紙) produced during the middle of the Edo period, from 1775 to the early 19th century. Physically identifiable by their yellow-backed covers, kibyōshi were typically printed in 10 page volumes, many spanning two to three volumes in length, with the average number of total pages being 30.[1] Considered to be the first purely adult comicbook in Japanese literature, a large picture spans each page, with descriptive prose and dialogue filling the blank spaces in the image.
I'm aware of the controversy over where did comic books originate: Japan or America. And the controversy will remain as a matter of opinion.

But I lean toward the side that says the illustrated story books produced in Japan before WWII were not what the world would typically think of as a comic book and those specific books were something culturally isolated to Japan. (As acknowledged before, most countries & cultures had some form of illustrated story telling.)
Whereas American comics were a unique outgrowth of the newspaper comic strip - they quickly went international and became known throughout the world, and even Japan was so influenced by the new American medium, that they exploded with their own versions of these "comic books."

It was the American invention of comic books that caused other countries to import them, translate them, adopt them, and soon start making their own, not the other way around.



This topic implies that comic books are a big deal in America, which is untrue. 1 comic book has sold 1 million copies in this decade. 2 movies sold over a million tickets in the last week, Adele sold over a million albums in one day, the Super Bowl is watched by 100 million people, and last year's highest selling novel had over 5 million copies purchased. Comic books are a very tiny share (less than .5%) of the entertainment market in America. Less than .5% of Sweden's, or Brazil's, or South Korea's entertainment market would be invisible.



This topic implies that comic books are a big deal in America, which is untrue. 1 comic book has sold 1 million copies in this decade. 2 movies sold over a million tickets in the last week, Adele sold over a million albums in one day, the Super Bowl is watched by 100 million people, and last year's highest selling novel had over 5 million copies purchased. Comic books are a very tiny share (less than .5%) of the entertainment market in America. Less than .5% of Sweden's, or Brazil's, or South Korea's entertainment market would be invisible.
It's true, comics aren't what they used to be.
I attribute most of that to the expansion of electronic media.

Comic books have a weird history of ups & downs - they began as a very low class form of entertainment medium (many creators used pseudonyms because they were ashamed of their profession).
They grew in popularity during the war, both with soldiers overseas and with kids & teens on the home front until Wertham & the Congressional investigation dealt them a nearly fatal blow in 1954.
They lingered, lackadaisically, with comedy, romance, western & monster tales.
The resurgence came with the dawn of the Silver Age and the return of the all-but-forgotten "superheroes" as comics began to gradually appeal to an older audience - the college crowd.
Then the Bronze & Modern Ages ushered in the age of speculation, when comics began to be identified as collectibles & something of value. The speculation itself along with overprinting ended up devaluing comics of the Modern Age. Which brings us up to the age of the Internet. Comic books may only be hanging on now due to the current popularity of comic-based movies.



This topic implies that comic books are a big deal in America, which is untrue. 1 comic book has sold 1 million copies in this decade. 2 movies sold over a million tickets in the last week, Adele sold over a million albums in one day, the Super Bowl is watched by 100 million people, and last year's highest selling novel had over 5 million copies purchased. Comic books are a very tiny share (less than .5%) of the entertainment market in America. Less than .5% of Sweden's, or Brazil's, or South Korea's entertainment market would be invisible.
Brazil is a pretty large market though.

You should compare comic book sales with other media in the US and in Japan:

USA (2010 unless otherwise stated) millions of dollars

Comic books - 430
Movie tickets - 10,500
Videogames - 22,500 (2007)
Novels -------- 7,600

Japan (1995 unless otherwise stated), billions of yen

Comic books - 550
Movie tickets - 170
Videogames - 670 (2007)
Novels -------- ca. 220

The size of the novel market in Japan I estimated from the size of the non-manga book market, of 730 billion yen. In the US book market is 25 billion dollars and novels are 30% of that, 30% of 730 billion yen is 220 billion.

If US comic book sales were as large as Japan's compared to movies or novels then in 2010 they would be around 20 billion dollars.

But notice that in Japan, movies, novels and videogames are still very large, comic books exist as only one of several mediums. In the US, comics exist as a marginal medium that only comic book nerds consume or newspaper comic strips.



1) Japan has literally nothing to do with what I said. I stated that America consumes virtually no comic books, and using that as a baseline for other countries makes it easy to see why Americans don't acknowledge the comic industry in other nations. I wasn't asking for a better baseline, just using the one that makes the most sense (America is the most populated country in the world that regularly gives their pop culture a presence in other countries). I know that Japan consumes comics. I don't care. I was referring to Europe and media powers outside of Europe.

2) Even in this short of a period, those statistics are outdated to the point of irrelevancy. 2015 was the most sucessful year ever for film, and the video game market has grown drastically since 2007, while print media (novels and comics) has been stagnant since then. That comic number has gotten even smaller in the last half decade.



The videogame industry in the US hasn't grown a lot sine 2007, in fact the PC game industry has contracted since 2001 or so, thanks to piracy. Movie gross hasn't changed a lot since 2010, in fact it might have decreased if you correct it through inflation.

Anyway I am not disagreeing with you here. Though I would also think that comic book sales are similarly small in other countries that are not Japan. In Brazil the comic book market is tiny as well.

US videogame market:



Movie Forums Stage-Hand
you need a certain sense of humor to understand any comic depiction. I have seen people failing to make sense out of comics, and the reason is their lack of experience of facing comical situations in life. On the other hand, stories influence people more. It is much easier because they can relate to stories from their own life.