Comics from Japan have become very popular in the U.S. in recent years. This has led established American comics companies to imitate the Japanese style in some of their work, such as Marvel Comics' "Marvel Mangaverse", a manga-ized version of the Marvel universe. However, rather than simply imitate the style, U.S. comics could stand to learn a lot more from the Japanese comics industry--and some of those lessons could make the difference between whether the U.S. industry lives or dies.

"Sock! Pow!"

Several problems have kept the U.S. comic book industry (as opposed to newspaper strips) very much a niche market. The most obvious is its concentration on the superhero genre. Superheroes, as a concept, appeal to only a segment of the market, traditionally teenage boys, although these days there seem to be at least as many older men, some of whom have been reading Marvel and/or DC for thirty or forty years, as there are new, younger readers. No matter how much more mature the stories are now than they used to be--and I see a noticible change over what was being done twenty years ago--superheroes are still superheroes, and the perception of what that means--"Sock! Pow! 'Holy fisticuffs, Batman!'"-- will keep a majority of people from ever picking them up.

Furthermore, the serialized nature of the stories and the percentage of readers who expect, say, the Fantastic Four to honor its continuity dating back to 1961, keeps the comics-reading community rather inbred. Many of today's creators have been fans for decades, which may seem an obvious develoment, but it's a change from the characters' original creators, such as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who largely created the genre.

The format could also be considered an impediment, for two reasons. First, non-readers associate the monthly "pamphlet" format with reading aimed at kids. Any adult seen reading a comic book is subject to a fair amount of ridicule, for reading what is assumed to be children's reading, simply because it is in the comics medium, and because of the format of the publication.

Secondly, prices have increased at far faster than the rate of inflation. From ten cents in 1970 to 40 cents in 1980, comics now average over two dollars per copy. That'll use up the ol' allowance in a hurry; no wonder more of their readers are adults! I'm not sure what all the reasons are for this price increase, but surely they would include such things as new printing technology (a thousand percent better than twenty years ago), a shrinking reader base, distribution costs, and insistence on printing comics in color.

Meanwhile, in Japan...

None of these problems exist in the Japanese market. Though there are certainly comics "otaku"--guys who eat, sleep, and breathe comics non-stop, venturing outside only for the purpose of buying more--comics magazines are read by a much wider audience in Japan, and even middle-aged businessmen aren't embarrassed to be seen reading comics on the train.

Japanese comic books have a number of contrasts with their U.S. counterparts. While American comics are color, thin, and sometimes published on ridiculously nice paper, "manga" are published in black and white on low-grade paper, in a thick "phone book" format that contains installments in perhaps a dozen different series, from different genres, some of which don't even exist in the U.S.: sports, comedy, fantasy, sci fi, and many more. This maximizes their audience, since anyone interested in any of those series has to buy the same magazine.

(That's not to say it's a total mixing of genres. Different magazines do have different demographic target audiences--teenage girls, teenage boys, business people, and of course the porno market--but it's not necessarily the case that every reader will be interested in every story. Comics readers on the trains have been observed to thumb past some stories, then settle in and read more carefully a story that appears to be more interesting.)

The price is a few hundred yen, about the same as what American readers pay for a slick color comic containing only one story.

What've we learned today, kids?

In recent years, Marvel has been making various efforts to attract new readers. These have consisted of starting a number of series over with issue #1 (but with all past continuity intact), reprinting old stories, and otherwise trying to provide good "jumping-on points" for new readers. In other words, they are inviting new readers to jump into Marvel on Marvel's terms. (Even Marvel's new "mature" line, Max, takes place in the Marvel Universe, and inevitably seems to cross paths with long underwear heroes.)

In the short run this may make sense--Marvel has made some failed attempts at non-superhero comics, and boosting sales of the existing product is easier than developing a whole new product--but in the long term, I don't have much hope for this approach in terms of widening the appeal of the comics medium.

To survive, if not thrive, American comics need to:

1. reduce prices

2. overcome the stigma of the medium as "for kids"

3. attract a wider audience by producing other kinds of stories besides superheroes

I think all three of these could be accomplished by learning from the Japanese comics industry, and also by capitalizing on the relative lack of "for kids" stigma attached to newspaper comics.

Imagine a monthly (some Japanese series are weekly, but let's not ask for the moon here), thick black-and-white magazine, printed on newsprint, with a cover featuring Dilbert. Doonesbury. A new Burke Breathed strip. Something for which there is a large, proven adult audience. The book would, of course, include a few pages of the strip in question--ideally new material, but perhaps reprints from the newspaper--but also various kinds of stories from lesser-known talents. Not out-there Heavy Metal stuff, but something with mass appeal. Adventure stories, comedy stories, whatever else, serialized or not. Perhaps they would get more sexual or violent than newspaper strips can--editors are scared to death of a comic strip offending any readers--but no more than an average night of prime-time TV.

This would have to be carried out by a major media company such as AOL Time Warner, perhaps in cooperation with a syndicate that supplies comics to newspapers. Accompany the release with a savvy ad campaign that would make it clear this was NOT a kids' magazine.

It's so crazy, it just might work.

Tim Young