r/ImageComics • u/Konradleijon • Mar 30 '26
Comic Any of you hate how the “comics vs Manga” debate only mentions Big Two superhero
They seem to act like manga start with volume one is unique when it’s true of most western comics.
“Has a singular creative vision” that’s true of most indie books. Who typically have a single creative team of writer, line artist, colorist, and letterer,
Want to read The Walking Dead. You start at volume one.
“Diverse genres” while the DM doesn’t have much room for non-genre fiction. The scholastic release many slice of life books for kids.
It seems like they never heard of any comic that isn’t mainstream marvel/DC. Even DC published Vertigo.
Non-superhero comics that received adaptions, Outcast, the Beauty, resident Alien, Paper Girls, Y, the Last Man, heck the freaking walking dead. All received adaptions.
Most of them know nothing of manga hence thinking “Shonen” means battle series about an excitable young protagonist, a power system, and battles.
With Seinen meaning “dark and mature series” when it means targeted to eighteen year old and up.
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u/scruffye Mar 30 '26
Yeah, there are a lot of people who have myopic views of what 'comics' means in the US, which is due in part to the market being fractured in ways manga isn't. I do think the criticisms of why the Big Two are hard for new readers to get into are valid, but conversations very rarely have the nuance needed to get into the topic.
My personal beef is that people don't understand that only a fraction of the manga market really takes off in the US, and what does hit from the shonen market hedges a lot closer to US tastes than may be immediately obvious.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 30 '26
It’s always a bit amusing to see people who only read battle shonen get snobby about manga v “comics,” haha.
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u/Konradleijon Mar 30 '26
Shonen doesn’t meant fighting series. There are many romance Shonen
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u/scruffye Mar 30 '26
Please name several of these romances series from the shonen category, I would like to know what you have in mind.
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u/Konradleijon Mar 30 '26
We never learn, you lie in April
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u/scruffye Mar 30 '26
Fair enough. That said, I think you can agree that those series haven't hit nearly the same heights in America that Bleach, Naruto, One Piece or even the action heavy shojo series of the 90's and 2000's like Inuyasha, Sailor Moon, and Card Captor Sakura accomplished. There are genres and audiences that manga are serving that American comics don't, but the mainstream titles are still very similar to genres America already favors.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 31 '26
Spy X Family and Frieren are shonen, too (the former’s in WSJ, no less!)…and Fruits Basket isn’t exactly action heavy, as shojo go.
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u/SnooDingos7489 Apr 01 '26
This is my jam.
Kaguya-sama Love is War, Komi Can't Communicate, Ranma 1/2, Quintessential Quintuplets, Toradora, Nagatoro etc
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u/PerceptionTiny6385 Mar 30 '26
Yeah, I always want to tell them that there’s plenty of comics that have a beginning, middle, and end just like how manga does. And there’s many different types of stories.
But it’s like you said, they don’t know anything about indie comics, which is unfortunate because I feel like they could find a lot of ones that they’d like.
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u/Mark4_ Mar 30 '26
Feels like a big group of comic readers are just big two readers. For me it’s all sequential art and read both comics and manga. Albeit way more comics than manga
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u/These_Refrigerator75 Mar 30 '26
I will say, while I know there’s a rich tapestry of independent comics coming out all the time…you have to already be “in the know” to bring them up. To a lot of people, Marvel and DC ARE American Comics, and sales-wise they dwarf every other publisher in a way that manga didn’t suffer from. Sure, Shonen Jump is the big one, but they don’t have such a dominance over the industry that other publishers disappear
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u/Konradleijon Mar 30 '26
Actually scholastic sells the most comics
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u/Wolfman1099 Mar 30 '26
I believe it. A lot of books for kids are in comic form now. It’s a bit of a challenge to get them away from pictures and into novels
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u/Slowandserious Apr 01 '26
Yeah but people who do discussions of “comis vs manga” are not the target age for scholastic
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u/BiDiTi Apr 01 '26
16 year olds claiming to be 20 and 20 year olds with the emotional maturity of 16 year olds?
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u/These_Refrigerator75 Mar 30 '26
Do they really?
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u/Wonderful_Formal_274 Mar 30 '26
Dog Man, Captain Underpants, and Smile sell millions of each volume. Honestly they do numbers marvel and dc could only dream of.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 30 '26
I feel like the Hitotsubashi Group are pretty damn dominant, with Kodansha/Kadokawa in that Image level and Gangan a bit below that
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u/xZOMBIETAGx Mar 30 '26
I hate the argument altogether. Comics are comics. Why do we have to put them against each other?
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u/xzerozeroninex Mar 30 '26
The problem is for example if you go to the comic book sub reddit,90% of post and discussions are about the big 2,they could rename the sub Marvel and DC comics and nothing would had changed.Same with comic book groups in Facebook,majority of discussions are about big 2 comics,unless it’s a group specific to a publisher.
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u/youllmeltmorefan Mar 30 '26
Some people think that comic book is a genre, and that genre is super heroes.
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u/snowlock27 Mar 31 '26
I don't remember which forum this was on, but I once saw some idiot argue that ALL comic books should be super hero stories. Want a western? It should be super heroes in the old west. Want horror? Guess what? It was just weird to see someone double down on something so stupid.
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u/lazyorganizer Apr 01 '26
That would be kinda interesting as a one shot. Like Pagemaster but Superman instead of Macaulay Culkin.
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u/Raskuja46 Mar 30 '26
There's a reason my pull list doesn't include a single title from DC or Marvel. Once you leave that ecosystem you get a lot of what makes manga appealing.
In an effort to break the misconception of "comics = DC and Marvel superheroes", I've taken to handing out completed series I've finished reading to my colleagues at work. I think there's just a severe lack of advertising/awareness about the American comic industry outside of the super hero space. People just don't know that stuff like Run Love Kill or Autumn Lands exists. Awareness is at zero and because comics refuse to embrace digital or just good business sense on any level, there's almost no physical copies available for anyone who does find out about a cool series.
Manga by contrast has oodles of printings and a fairly stable digital presence, though I think some of that was made necessary by the piracy scene. They've just got their entire distribution game on point while comics are often hard to hunt down even if you know what you're trying to purchase.
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Mar 31 '26
Manga are comics. Who debates this? I never see it.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 31 '26
20 year olds who think Attack on Titan is aimed at adults vs 20 year olds who think Invincible is aimed at adults.
Whoever wins, we lose!
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u/SomeOkieDude Apr 01 '26
It annoys me sometimes.
I get more pissed off when people whine and moan about the industry dying because of SJWs and the like. It makes me wonder if any of these troglodytes have read anything outside of Marvel and DC.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me some superheroes. But I think publishers like Image are putting out truly excellent comics that shouldn’t be ignored.
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u/comatoseduck Mar 30 '26
Its tough, because superheroes do just make up so much of the market overall. Marvel and DC account for like 60%+ of the American comics industry sales-wise at any given time. And then indie superheroes like Invincible and licensed works like Transformers and Power rangers probably make up a good chunk of the rest. The comics industry of people making completely original non superhero stories is very small, readership and sales wise. Which is a shame.
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u/Konradleijon Mar 30 '26
The Walking Dead was one of the highest selling comics and one of the biggest tv shows.
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u/comatoseduck Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
It was just one comic though. Even at Walking dead’s peak, Image comics as a whole only accounted for like 8% of the market.
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u/xzerozeroninex Mar 30 '26
There was a month in the 90’s that Image was the 2nd best selling publisher in the US,beating DC in sales.
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u/comatoseduck Mar 30 '26
I meant that’s what image was at Walking dead’s peak. but what books were driving that in the 90s? Probably mostly superhero comics.
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u/Wonderful_Formal_274 Mar 30 '26
It’s about 12% at the moment. And that’s just the direct market. They have a bigger share of the book store market.
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u/comatoseduck Mar 30 '26
Yeah, I think we are starting to see the comics industry diversify and get away from superheroes more and more, but the industry is still dominated by superheroes and so is the perception of what comic books are to the general public.
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u/HanginOn9114 Mar 30 '26
I think ultimately its just a point of education y'know? People who regularly read comic books are definitely a small part of the population in relation to those who watch comic book adaptations or those who watch/read anime/manga. And those who read stuff like Image are an even smaller percentage. I can understand how people would be incredulous when all they know about comic books is "Superman has been running for nearly 100 years" and someone tells them that plenty of independent, short run comics exist with unique storylines that don't involve superheroes
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u/avburns Mar 30 '26
I wish the concept of “runs” were more common. True, reading the Big Two can be more complicated than starting with Volume 1 of a manga or independent comic but when you can read Volume 1 of Daredevil by Frank Miller or Volume 1 of Green Lantern by Geoff Johns is it that much more complicated? And yes, constant reboots has made “volumes” unnecessarily complex; but using the internet or asking for help (online or in person at a LCS, for example) as a comic newbie should be expected; not feared.
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u/Wolfman1099 Mar 30 '26
That’s a good point. Jason Aaron’s Thor run was awesome. They just basically reset the whole thing when Donny Cates came in
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u/Long_Spell6281 Mar 30 '26
U know what? I literally hate this “comic vs manga” debate, so i don’t give af about it if they only mention the big two.
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u/Livio_TheDoubleFang Mar 31 '26
Comics vs manga is dumb, that said, I have found a lot more manga i am interested in than American comics, and American adult comics then to be overly edgy almost always having explicit sex and lots of nudity when there is a lot of adult manga that isn't hung up on sex, tbf i find the sexualizaton in the big 2 to be more obnoxious than lots of mangas fan service.
There dose seam to be a lack of historical epics in comics.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 31 '26
What are these “adult manga” that don’t care about sex, haha?
I guess Medalist…
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u/Livio_TheDoubleFang Apr 03 '26
Blame,trigun:maximum, vinland saga,pluto, 20th century boys,billy bat,monster,kingdom,steel ball run, tokyo Ghoul, planet's, Real,Land of the lustreous Usogui, scipio to handbal,asadora,dogsred,abara,blue giant,gunnm, holyland,nasuka,takopi,uzumaki, akira.
All off the top of my head, they are seinen, the Japanese equivalent of DC black label, marvel MAX, or vertigo, and hale little to no sex/sexulizaton
- means they have sex but its about once per 100 issues
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u/BiDiTi Apr 03 '26
Vinland Saga, haha?
The literal linchpin of the manga’s maxi-arc centers on sex!
That said, I’ll completely grant your point that Japanese stories largely don’t treat sex as a normal part of adult life.
Mystery wrapped in an enigma as to what’s driving their population crisis.
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u/Livio_TheDoubleFang Apr 03 '26
Idk wich arc the "maxi" arc is, but not sex is shown over 220 chapters and is only one implied sex scene (no sex just nudity)
My point is not that I prefer the subject matter to be avoided, just i hate when it is graphic on screen,
Do you by chance mean the "maximus" sub arc about askilads backstory? Or that it is implied ketel is sleeping with ahrned (butchered all those names lol)
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u/BiDiTi Apr 03 '26
Maxi-Arc refers to the arc of the series as a whole - and Arnheid’s status as Ketil’s sex slave and her murder form a clear turning point.
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u/DanYellDraws Mar 31 '26
Ping Pong and 20th Century Boys to name just two.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 31 '26
Hah, fair enough!
I don’t particularly mind sex or nudity in my comics aimed at adults, because both of those are a fairly regular occurrence in my own lived experience.
Leaving aside the likes of Fence, Garth Ennis’s war comics tend to be fairly buttoned down; same with Rucka’s Whiteout and Queen and Country.
But I would very much differentiate between comics that show adults having sex and a sleeping dragon fellating himself in Saga!
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u/TetsuyaFriendo Mar 31 '26
That would require the people involved in “manga vs comics” debates to actually read something instead of just seeing panels on Twitter.
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u/TamatoaZ03h1ny Apr 01 '26
Yeah, either they believe all western comics are superheroes or they know there’s at least some other things but they call all non-superhero comics kids stuff or generically European imports so it’s closer to Manga anyway.
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u/MagnumMiracles Apr 01 '26
I can't really blame them. Non-DC/Marvel comics aren't too heavily marketed, and usually require a recc from someone pretty deep into the medium. Just like most non-shonen manga aren't heavily marketed, and usually require a recc from someone who is pretty deep into the medium.
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u/blackdarrren Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
DM=?
This acronym escapes me
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u/reindeercurt Mar 30 '26
"Direct Market", as in specialty comic book shops that order monthly single issues from distributors
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u/VarunRasputin6 Mar 30 '26
Yeah. There's a lot of equivicating US comics with just the big two, leading to criticism of them hitting all US comics, despite how unfitting it is.
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u/beginendbegin Mar 30 '26
70% of the marketshare or more is taken up by Marvel/DC comics, so this is unsurprising.
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u/pliable-paladin Mar 30 '26
I’ll never understand how people think this is some accident, either. It’s not due to masses of people being led astray. It’s not people being unaware of other options. People like superheroes and we can either live with it and read in peace or we can be mad forever.
Manga communities deal with the same problem - people believing Shonen is the entire manga market.
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u/Wonderful_Formal_274 Mar 30 '26
Absolutely. It’s also a bit disingenuous because the argument usually goes that manga is easier because it’s a self contained story and you just start at vol 1. What they don’t mention is there’s 100 volumes of it! Compared to the standalone graphic novel, the idea of committing (money, space, time) to multiple books can be quite off putting.
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u/lazyorganizer Apr 01 '26
Plenty of standalones and short 2-4 volume mangas as well. There’s actually only 37 that has made it to 100 volumes.
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u/pliable-paladin Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Manga fans are currently being berated by people who read novels. That’s why they’re punching down at comics atm (I read manga, I’m not shitting on manga).
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u/Bored_at_Work27 Apr 01 '26
The "comics vs. manga" debate never made sense because Manga is just another form of comic.
Judging from my own LCS, it seems like the teens who read manga are also reading image and other indies. Whereas the Marvel section is mostly middle aged men.
As much as I enjoy superhero comics, I am a little resentful at how the genre has dominated the medium, at least culturally. It makes me worry about the future of the artform. When I look at my daughters, I am not sure if they're still going to care about superheroes in 20-30 years. We've taken for granted that this genre is multi-generational, but that is not a guarantee.
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u/Nightwing24yuna Apr 02 '26
Here is the thing if it's a complete series then it makes sense like the walking dead and invincible
But if you want to read and DC and marvel comics then good luck?
Where would you start? After 100years(not really but where getting close) and like a bunch of resets and retcons where is the appropriate starting place for characters like nightwing or batman, superman, robin etc
Like do I start with dick's run as robin back in the 40's in order to enjoy his tenure as Nightwing or do I jump into the new teen titans issue #45(idk the actual number) where nightwing first appeared? There is just so much factors for long running series like marvel and DC I think even dark horse, image and valiant comics as well
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u/VanAce89 Apr 03 '26
That's because the debate is usually started by anime "influencers" who primarily read Shonen Jump stuff.
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u/reindeercurt Mar 30 '26
I hate how even when people know that theres more out there beyond superhero comics and know that indie comics have the things they claim to want, they wont give any of it the time of day, for idek what reason. Pride? Sheer spiteful laziness? Western comics are not failing the audience, the audience is failing western comics.
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u/Raskuja46 Mar 30 '26
Western comics are not failing the audience, the audience is failing western comics.
Nah, the customer doesn't owe you shit.
Western comics need to step up their game. Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of what Image and other non-cape publishers are putting out is enticing, but they do a horrendous job of actually communicating their existence to that potential audience. There's a zero discoverability problem in the American comic industry and so much of its troubles are downstream from that.
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u/reindeercurt Mar 30 '26
They can be as discoverable as they want and it won't matter if people aren't willing to give them a chance because they're convinced they already know what all western comics are based on the MCU and a few half-remembered memes. Talk to any anime fan and they're not ignorant of this stuff, they're dismissive of it entirely
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u/Raskuja46 Mar 30 '26
You do realize that they think it's all MCU stuff because they've never discovered anything beyond that exists, right? You're describing the discoverability issue while waving your hands and saying it doesn't exist.
Talk to any anime fan and
Hi, it's me. You're wrong.
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u/reindeercurt Mar 30 '26
I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but discoverability is not a solvable problem until the cultural perception of what western comics are radically changes.
There have been moments when western indie comics made waves in general pop culture; the underground comix movement and boom in self-publishing, 2012 when a combination of The Walking Dead, Saga and several comics targeting women and children caught fire. Individual books have become genuine staples of western literature like Maus. None of that has mattered to what people think comics are. None of that moved the needle, because we're in the exact same space of "Comics are those things they make superhero movies out of. If you're over 30 you probably read the clone saga in high school". Those popular outliers get folded into the ideoform of "books", because they're closer to that than "comics". That doesn't make logical sense, but it is how people broadly think about this stuff. That's not even getting into the sheer amount of culture war grifters using this perception of what comics are to push narratives of western decline and progressivism ruining America. We live in a post-comicsgate world, a world after a whole generation of women and queer creators were pushed out of the direct market space and migrated to book market graphic novels, a world where young aspiring creators in America *call their own comics manga* because the entire concept of "comics" is so poisoned. It is so, so much bigger and more self-perpetuating than anything that could be fixed by a few tv spots or better social media marketing.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 30 '26
I mean, the “discovery” problem starts with the shift to the direct market, thus taking comics off of magazine racks.
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u/HebrewSanta Mar 30 '26
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot and I appreciate how well you wrote this. The public consciousness is so poisoned that I once got corrected by someone (who doesn’t read comics or have any investment in the medium) that Watchmen was a graphic novel and not a comic. I literally have no idea how to elevate people’s literary imaginations, but things like Absolute Batman are giving me hope. People just need to be exposed to the medium more, and we gotta stop being afraid to call things comics.
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u/BiDiTi Mar 31 '26
See, I actually would characterize Watchmen as a graphic novel…whereas Swamp Thing and Preacher and Sandman and Saga are goddamn comics, haha
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u/HebrewSanta Apr 04 '26
I mean… DC marketed it as a graphic novel for sure! But it was released as a serialized comic book before it was collected. So I dunno man. I think Watchman is endemic to the situation we find ourselves in. It’s allowed to be an outlier in the public consciousness as a thing separate from the rest. But it speaks to the very medium as any other comic.
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u/Raskuja46 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I never suggested that it was a simple problem to solve, as you suggest it's quite the hurdle to overcome. However I do believe that it is the challenge to overcome if American comics are to be more than just the two pre-eminent stables of super heroes in the public consciousness.
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u/Difficult-Formal-633 Mar 30 '26
A lot of non-comic readers are completely unaware that there are significantly more publishers than the big 2