From: hades@coos.dartmouth.edu (Hades)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: rec.arts.comics.manga is anomalous and misleading.
Date: 15 Apr 92 14:50:56 GMT
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

dcb@wdl1.wdl.loral.com (David C Blume) writes:

>hades@coos.dartmouth.edu (Hades) writes:
>>   ... I'm still waiting for someone to explain what this difference
>>is. I personally, have read manga, namely the Akira series and a good
>>number of the Viz series, and it certainly seemed as though I was
>>reading a comic book. How are they so different?

>[Note: I am not defending either rec.arts.comics.manga nor rec.arts.manga]
>[I just happen to respect Hades (vs. Lazlo), so I'll try to answer...]

    Thanks.

>Some supporter of rec.arts.comics.manga suggested that rec.arts.comics
>did not belong under *.book.* because there was a difference between comics
>and books.  In this vein, a difference between manga and *western* comics
>is that manga usually are books.

    Ok, granted. But I wasn't talking about *western* comics. I was
talking about comic books as a literary genre, which is what I have been
calling thm since my first post on this debate.

>the most common size is *about* 1 cm x 10 cm x 20 cm.  Manga come in
>a number of different forms, but they almost always have a substantial
>spine, and are collections of the equivalent of around 10 comic books.

    Fine, Let's take a few examples... If I take the compilation of
Silent Mobius, an X-Men compilation and a Cerebus phonebook and open
them all on a table to examine, not for reading but for presentation
what you will probably find is this: the X-Men compilation stands out as
being vastly different, if only in the art style and the color. It is a
very typical *western* comic. But if you take just the Cerebus and the
manga and look at them you will find that they are practically identical
in look. The style of the art might be different in the way people and
figures are drawn, but this is due mostly to how a caricature is drawn,
and the fact that westeneras and easteners have different features. But
you look at them, and they are both comic books. And there is no way
that you can say they aren't. If one is a comic book then so is the
other, if one is manga then so is the other.

>Manga is also distinguished from comics by its *particular* mastery of
>zip-o-tone (sp?) usage, dependence on visual effects (2 page spreads of a
>single "panal" with little to no dialog are common), the fact that
>it is predominately black-and-white, and goofy caricatures of the
>characters sometimes interspersed throughout the story. 

    These kinds of stylistic differences don't change the fact that
manga are still presented as comic books. I understand that there are
some serious stylistic conventions within manga, but that is mostly due
to the releative age of manga, and the way it has developed in Japan, as
opposed to the development of the comic book industry in this hemisphere
which is a lot younger.

>The things you see in comic book stores, are *adaptations* of manga.  The
>stuff we (alt.manga subscribers) usually refer to are the books that can
>commonly be found at a Yaohan, or Kinokuniya bookstore.  If you care,
>go there and pick up something like Silent Mobius or Orion.  (IMHO,
>Viz's Silent Mobius adaptation sucks rocks.  It does not do the manga
>justice.)

    Actually, the comic shop that I belong to does carry original
manga's as well as translations. In fact this is true of many of the
comic shops that I have been in over the last few years. Of course all
of them were here in the East Coast, so I can't say about other shops.

>Lazlo will want to (F)ollow up and say that some comics can be found that
>satisfy some of these requirements [excluding the "book" one], and some may
>satisfy all.  Fine.  My point is that these requirements are *typical* of
>manga.  I was defending no one.  I was answering a question.

    Well, I do thank you for the explanation, but I knew all of this.
Actually I thought somone would answer with something along these lines.
And when you look at all of the differences that people have been
talking about for the last couple of weeks, it still doesn't change the
fact that manga are comic books. They are done a little differently, and
have different origins and conventions, but they are still comic books.
Even if the term manga predates the term comic book, which I believe it
does, by a few years ;->. 
    If you are talking about newsgroups and namespace hierarchies for
discussion one already exists that is devoted to the literary genre that
has come to be known as comic books, or just comics. You might not like
the name, you may even want to read negative connotations into the name
so that your dislike seems more valid. When you look at all of these
factors, the name for this group can be nothing but rec.arts.comics.manga. 

    Thanks David for taking the time to respond to my question, and,
just for the record, the you in the above paragraph is not you
specifically.

--
-Hades  (Brian V. Hughes)   | 
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