The Eastern Edge

Okay, no magazine means no resumption of Inoue article translation, which also means the first samples of the Pepita go up today.

This 1st one is a concept sketch of young Antoni Gaudi watching his father, who was a craftsman, at work.

This page is drawings of a 95 year old man named Joaquim that Inoue talked to in Barcelona during his trip (I'll write/translate more about this guy and Inoue's trip another time).

And below is a sketch I absolutely love Antoni Gaudi in his later years beside a pic of Takehiko Inoue in Barcelona.

Please stay tuned for either the continuation of the Petita article translation (if I find the magazine, of course) or more Pepita samples coming some time before Christmas. Next time I'll add some translations of related text from the book and/or more annotation so you know more about what the images are of (Sorry about not writing much about these ones. I'm really pressed for time right now...!).

I still can't find the magazine with the Inoue article I was in the middle of translating. I'm really sorry, Inoue fans!
I was on track to have my translation finished before the actual book that is the subject of the article came out, but the magazine got lost in a massive Tasmanian devil-like whirlwind clean up a few weeks back.

However, now that I have the actual "Pepita" book (bought today, in fact!) I will start posting excerpts from it starting tomorrow, and continue to do so every couple days until I find that damn magazine!

Please note, however, that I will be posting shitty iPhone4 pics and not high quality scans, and I will not post anywhere near the whole thing.
If I never find that magazine I'll come up with something else to translate before I've posted too much of the book. I'm here to be a volunteer pimp for the stuff I like, not a pirate!
If you like what you see please buy the book.

Anyway, I'll put up the first Pepita post tomorrow.

I've found myself at odds with Alan Moore's opinions more often than not, but this one hits the nail on the head!

The following is a excerpt from part 2 of a recent interview with Moore at the Honest Publishing website.

...I read a couple of books on economics to see if I could get my head around the facts of the situation. I was astonished when I found out the value of derivative bonds, in 2008. These are bonds that have a value in themselves that were once connected to a real thing, there might have been a bond made for the sale of a herd of sheep, but that can be sold on and they gain in value. The notional value of the world’s derivative bonds was in the region of sixty trillion. Exactly ten times the economic output of the entire planet, which is around six trillion. That means that the gap between what economists and what the world’s economic forces and the banks thought they had to play with and what actually existed was fifty-four trillion. That would seem to me the depth of the hole we are in.

Right on!

This is how speculators are destroying the world because when they gamble with money that doesn't exist and they lose, someone actually has to pay up!

Just a thought I wanted to post while I work on my latest translation (which is going to be slightly delayed because I can't find the magazine after doing some "cleaning-up" last weekend. Sorry! I'll try and find the magazine and get the translation done as close to when I said I would as possible).

Takehiko Inoue talks about what he's been up to and his latest project in Nikkei Entertainment this month.

The project, a book and DVD called "Pepita: Inoue Takehiko meets Gaudi." is due out December 12th.

Although I have little time and will be posting this translation in bite sized pieces, I will have it all done and posted before the book release.

Note that I skipped the opening paragraph that provides the obligatory "This guy's a superstar manga artist and creator of Slam Dunk, Vagabond and Real, and has sold blah blah blah..." intro.
If you are reading this I assume you know who Inoue is.

Enjoy!

Originally, this was not something I started on my own. I began this project after being made an offer. When I first reviewed the request, the first thing that came to mind was, "Why me?". I'm a complete outsider when it comes to architecture. Detailed knowledge I had of Gaudi was zero. Taking the trip and the time it would to create away from comics was a serious worry. Vagabond is currently on hiatus, and work in general isn't progressing well, so part of me wondered if I really should take on this kind of job right now.
However, I'd been doing things that are a little different from what comic creators usually do. The Last Manga Exhibition was different, and so was the work on the Shinran murals for the Higashi Honganji.
I felt that this coverage in Spain was like a continuation that flows right into line following those other things. I felt that through Gaudi I would gain the opportunity to realize various things, and be guided to answers that were right there in front of me but I couldn't see.

The meaning in work being done now is understood later.

I've always been a person that takes on work without a plan or blue print and goes on instinct, but this time it's even more so because it's Gaudi, and that was an important point for me.
With comics, if you burn them they are gone or if they go out of print they'll eventually be lost. Buildings stay around for a very long time, don't they? I may not seem so, but I'm bashful and wonder if it would be embarrassing to have something you made stand out in the middle of a city (laughs). I wonder what people who leave things like that in the world are like, and what Gaudi, who made that building that looks as if it's a living thing, is like. I found Gaudi compelling.

Gaudi's architecture and other work is widely known, but what kind of person he was, and what it was in his roots (that made him that way) isn't.
I thought that if I could learn his story, there'd be something I would be able to feel in his work.
So, I accepted the job thinking that if I could covey through me what I obtain from doing this to other people, especially young people, it would give it real significance.

Next part coming soon...

First it was Kojiro...

Now, years later it is Tomomi Nomiya gracing an Inoue comic cover and desperately grasping for something while either falling or floating in mid-air.

This just came to mind when I saw the cover of Real vol. 11 today, as I too desperately grasp for something to blog about while continuing to work on the Takehiko Inoue interview for later this week.

I wonder if Vagabond being volume 20 and Real being volume 11 was deliberate and represents "2011"? Maybe Inoue intended to somehow link the two titles! Maybe there are other links in his work that are all part of the Inoue Code and lead to something amazing!!

Or maybe I'm just spectacularly bored right now...

Takehiko Inoue's latest project is a book with a companion DVD called "Pepita: Inoue Takehiko meets Gaudi."

For those who don't know (which would have included myself until an hour ago!), Gaudi refers to Antoni Gaudi, a famous Spanish Catalan architect and craftsman who lived from 1852 to 1926, and is best known for the UNESCO heritage site Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

This is a trailer for the book and DVD, which is to be released on December 12th.

There is also an interview about this project and more in the current issue of Nikkei Entertainment, which I have already begun translating. Depending on how much progress I make, I plan to post a third to half of my translation a little later this week.

Stay tuned!

Today Takehiko Inoue announced on his website that he has resumed work on Vagabond, which has been on hiatus for over a year.

He says he's still discussing the how and when of Vagabond's return to print in Morning, but he'll provide more detail as soon as he can.

Here's the announcement in Japanese

Not much for me to say except, "I hope it doesn't take too long to get into my eager, waiting hands." and "WOOHOO!!!"

("Sono toki o matsu" indeed!! :-) )

This website, and this blog in particular, may have appeared mostly abandoned over the last year or so. However, if you could see behind the public face it has actually come to look at lot like a digital snapshot of whatever part of my brain stores all the junk I never finish thinking or doing anything about. The server is littered with all kinds of half done things, unfinished writing, and a hand full of things I barely remember at all.

I've begun house cleaning, however, and after managing to make the front entrance presentable (my main portal page), I find myself here, where I will stop and procrastinate for a while and then get to work on doing something.

In the meantime, I am currently training for the Tokyo Yamathon. My team plans a high pace walk-run, after which I suspect I may have trouble walking at all for a day or two. I should be able to put the final touches on something to post then, and I hope that will get the ball rolling and this blog going again.

See you soon...

A massive earthquake, thousands of aftershocks, nuclear meltdown, radiation fallout, food, water and power shortages, and finally a heat wave just to make everything perfect.
In an odd twist, however, the big typhoon that rolled through here a couple days ago was a good thing because it gave us some relief from the heat.

Yes, living in eastern Japan on the eastern edge of Tokyo hasn't been fun for the last 4 months or so.

On the bright side, shortly after the big earthquake when I put this blog on hiatus, I began the first of a handful of cool comic book and game related projects. Unfortunately, I am at liberty to blog about none of them. So, while I was actually doing a lot that relates to the things I usually write about here, I wasn't able to.

There were a few things I could have worked on to blog, like some of the translations I was working on before the quake. However, every time I tried to resume one of them I ended up realizing that for some reason I no longer cared about them.

Even another Takehiko Inoue/Vagabond related translation - which I still do care about - I just did't feel like doing. I probably won't until Inoue gets around to working on the comic again. Unfortunately that may be a while off. I have a feeling that Vagabond was a contributing factor to his illness last year and I don't think he is anywhere near ready to ramp it up again. I think it was a mistake for him to talk publicly about ending Vagabond before even he knew how to do it. He said himself that Vagabond is an extremely emotionally draining thing to create that takes a lot out of him, so he should never have put pressure on himself to end it before he was ready - or at least not talk about it so he could back away from the idea without anyone being the wiser.
Since he's been able to keep busy with a number of other successful projects lately, it seems quite apparent that Vagabond is the one thing he just isn't ready to even try and throw back into the mix yet. I think it'll be a while before he's recharged and in a situation to have the inspiration he needs to end it like it deserves to be ended.

Anyway, all of these things were keeping this blog on post-quake hiatus.

I'm no longer interested in ranting about the woes of the industry, adding my two cents to things other people are talking about, or trying to fabricate food for thought in hopes that I'll be able to scavenge a full meal of an article out of what would essentially be table scrap ideas just for the sake of pumping out regular content.

Luckily, I found this today!

I'll be back with English translation of select articles soon!

The whole world knows there's a lot going down here in Japan right now. Just posting to say that I'm shutting down activities on this website for the time being. The things that I usually babble and blog about don't mean a whole lot right now.

Before I do so, however, I'd like to send my prayers to everyone in the hardest hit areas. We're all having a rough time of it, including us here in Tokyo, and we're all scared. However, although our homes may shake, at least we still have homes to go to, food to eat, water to drink, and electricity to light our rooms and keep us warm.
So many just north of here lost absolutely everything.

Prayers also for all the relief workers, firefighters (my brother in-law is a firefighter and due for deployment to the disaster area), police, self defense forces, U.S. military, and rescue teams from Japan and around the world who are out there right now trying to make a difference.
Heroes, all!

Finally, if it's true that you can see people's true colours in a crisis, then high praise for the people of Japan. All of them! No riots, fighting, or civil unrest of any kind. No one blaming the government or bitching about anything. Just people pulling together and trying to cope as best they can. Remarkable! Truly remarkable and an example to the world!

Right now, even amidst the adversity, uncertainty and fear, I'm proud to say that I live in Japan!!

This is a mini follow up to a couple of posts I've done over the years (here and here) related to the nutty Japanese obsession with mascots.

Some collective genius at the Tokyo Stock Exchange seems to think that Arrow-kun here will attract more women and young people to the world of stock trading.

Arrow-kun and the TSE have yet to offer any suggestions as to how the jobless young and shamelessly discriminated against and underpaid women are supposed to come up with the money to invest in the stock market. Arrow-kun does look a lot like a cup with feet, though, so maybe that's a hint!? Unfortunately panhandling in Japan won't snag you much coin, if any at all.

The TSE's new mascot has not, however, outdone the Tokyo Skytree's mascot in sheer WTF-ness. Below is Sorakara-chan, which means literally "from the sky."

I think the person who dreamed this up musst be from the sky, or at least have their head in the clouds, because how a character that looks like the Japanese version of the Little Prince (who, as is typical with Japanese cartoons, is made to look like a girl anyway) gene spliced with a Raggedy Ann Doll is supposed to represent the soon-to-be tallest tower in the world is beyond me.

I was getting worried that things were going a little too far off the rails with this whole mascot obsession here, until I saw the London 2012 mascots.

The London Olympic Committee thinking that one-eyed monsters are appropriate symbols for the testosterone fueled world of elite sports has somehow reassured me about some of Japan's more questionable mascot decisions.

"Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that ..."
- George Carlin

That pretty much sums things up for me lately.
I'm also training for Trailwalker Japan 2011 and the mountainous 100km trail from Odawara to Lake Yamanaka near Mt. Fuji that my team is going to do non-stop.

You just can't fake your way through 100 kilometres and I'm team leader to boot, so my non-working and family time has become my running, weightlifting, circuit training and mountain climbing time.
That doesn't leave a whole lot of extra time to translate things just for the fun of it.

So, while I am still working on translating the stuff I said I would, it'll be a little while more before I start posting them.

Until then,

アーメーマー！

I'm working on a lot of new content and translations to post in January, but I'm shutting down the Eastern Edge until then for the holidays.

I leave you with a thought that I thought last year, and find myself thinking again this year in the following repost of last year's Christmas message.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I use the above Grinch pic every year, but this year I found myself wondering why I know so little about one of my favorite cartoonists/writers from when I was a kid, Dr. Suess. Naturally, I decided to do a little checking.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that not only was he vocally anti-Japanese and fully supported the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, but that he later seemed to soften his attitude when he used one of his children's books as an allegory for the U.S. occupation of Japan, and dedicated it to a Japanese friend.

I'll never be able to look at Horton Hears a Who the same way again!

Sigh... Life was so much simpler when I didn’t know about the politics behind some of my favorite children's books.

I remember the message, too, that "even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small." I think the message is well intended - if maybe somewhat arrogant - and I don't want to judge the man. It was, after all, a much different world back then.
However, learning about that allegory while living in Japan has really made me feel even more like the elephant in the room over here!
Oh, well.

Merry Christmas from Who-ville, everyone!

After a hard week of training in my Trailwalker prep, I took a leisurely bike ride yesterday across the Edogawa river into Chiba.  About 4 or 5k into my ride, and about a minute or so after crossing the Edogawa river, I hit the brakes when out of the corner of my eye I saw this:

A cat burgler? A window washer? A suicide attempt, maybe? Someone's satellite dish installation going terribly, horribly wrong?
I wasn't sure just what I was seeing for a split second!

Much to my relief, it was only our friendly neighborhood Spiderman hanging around in Ichikawa City!

I'm sure after being redesigned, retconned and rebooted so many times, he was just here for a little R&R.

Glad to see Spidey in his classic duds for this visit :-)

Yesterday afternoon, shortly after I tweeted that Vagabond has been shut down indefinitely, I finally got around to reading a "House of 1000 Manga" column that I had bookmarked since October. I'm a fan of Jason Thompson's columns, so when I finally did read it I was suprised and a little flattered to see myself quoted in the last paragraph as follows:

Former Prime Minister and famous fanboy Taro "Rozen" Aso openly promoted the idea that anime, manga and galge might revitalize the economy the way televisions and automobiles had once done. "By linking the popularity of Japan's 'soft power' to business, I want to create a 20-30 trillion yen ($200-300 billion) market by 2020 and create 500,000 new jobs," Aso said in 2009. Unfortunately, the plan failed, and record unemployment forced Aso to resign as Prime Minister in August 2009. (Gottsuiiyan, a manga translator and blogger (http://www.gottsu-iiyan.ca/), mercilessly mocked Aso's initiatives. "In terms of international relations and global economic clout, soft power via comics, cartoons and teenage cosplayers is the diplomatic equivalent of erectile dysfunction. “Soft" it surely is, but the hard truth is that it isn't very powerful.")

While I still feel exactly the same way about that particular topic and would write the same thing again if I were doing it right now, I found myself thinking about other similar things I've written. Then I thought about the "mercilessly mocked" comment. Yeah, that's right on. No doubt I was merciless in my mocking. Aso was and is a dolt who never should have been prime minister, and all this "Cool Japan" stuff has always made me roll my eyes, if not cringe, but I was left wondering how many things I have mercilessly mocked that may not have deserved it.

Maybe I'm just getting soft and reflective in my not-really-that-old age, but I couldn't get that comment out of my head. I started going through my archives here at the Eastern Edge to take a look back at how I viewed some things when they happened and how that may differ from what I think now. In most cases I realized that while I still feel fundamentally the same way about most things at their core, given the opportunity I would probably take back the way I expressed a few opinions over the years.

I opened this blog on August 1st, 2005 with the following:

Now that the Blog is up, on to everything else...

This is how I feel Monday morning!

Truth be told, that's how I was feeling about much of life in general, not just the way I felt that particular Monday morning. I suppose that influenced the off-the-cuff, often cynical, sometimes nasty tone this blog would often take over the subsequent five years.

Only a little less than a year prior to starting this blog, I was with my soon-to-be boss visiting Disney Animation, Warner Animation Studios and Warner CP among other places in Burbank, California, and then Nickelodeon in New York at the MTV building, followed by Japan's big content market TIFFCOM in Tokyo in the same month. I had wanted to be in a creative field like animation or comics in Japan and felt like I had found the Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road. It only got better six months later when I was in Cannes, France, for MIPTV meeting many of the major studios and licencors from around the world. It was great! I worked brutal hours for little money, but I believed in what I was doing and I loved my job.

Unfortunately, over time, the curtain was pulled back on the inner workings of the Wizard of Cool Japan and the more I saw the less I liked it. Once you begin to question things and the seeds of doubt are planted, it doesn't take long for it to begin to snowball. The long hours started to feel more like undue torture than hard work, and the tiny paychecks with little hope of them getting bigger were beginning to force me to tighten my belt a little too much. To top it all off, the industry was already beginning to crack at the seams, despite the fact that domestic animation production in Japan was at an all time high. From the inside we knew that the market was saturated here and already in trouble and losing money. At the same time we were collectively running out of places to sell overseas and without that revenue to prop up the homeland things would only get worse. All the major overseas licencors were suddenly bridling at the massive MGs (minimum guarantees) that Japanese companies demanded as they realized sales were leveling off and acquisition budgets were being cut industry wide. All the while the fanbase, and even many analysis and "experts", seemed blissfully unaware or in denial because according to them Cool Japan was supposed to take over the world. Few in the industry trenches were truly shocked when things started to unravel overseas in the later half of the decade that was.
The writing was on the wall back in 2004, and when comic books suddenly became the big thing around that time, it all just looked like deja vu to me.

Today in 2010, even the die hards are realizing that Japanese comics and animation are in trouble, both overseas and at honme, but back in 2005 the cracks were mostly only visible from the inside of the animation industry and comics were only just hitting it big and looked unstoppable. That's when I started this blog. Within the span of just over a year since getting into the industry, I realized that if this were the Emerald City in the Land of Oz, I was now the tin man. But instead of getting a heart I was having mine ripped out. A few months after that first blog post, when it all became too much and I had more questions than answers and more doubt than hope, I bailed on what I had once thought was a dream job.

I was disillusioned and broken hearted. I felt especially betrayed because I worked primarily with cartoons directed at kids. Without getting into commentary on the industry at large, how it treats its own, and the way it markets to children, suffice to say that the brand of idealism I brought to the table in the beginning would have been better suited to somewhere other than mainstream Japan (with apologies to a handful of outstanding Japanese companies that are all around different from the rest).

Anyway, that's the head space I was in when I started this blog, and it is the reason behind the venom that sometimes trickles into my ranting. While I do not necessarily regret the tone of some of my rants because it was true to the way I felt at the time, looking back I realize that some things were worded rather clumsily. I'd like to take back a handful of things that I tripped over and didn't finally express properly until no one was listening anymore, but I can't. I have, however, learned that first impressions are often the only impression some people will ever get. Who reads the retractions after the sensational headline? Who really pays any attention to someone trying to work through an idea after gaffing it the first time? Unfortunately, not too many. Some people carve their opinions in stone after only a brief glimpse, so you have to get it right the first time, or at least as close as possible, and sometimes that means diluting venom more than I had been. That's not to say to the other extreme - i.e. the ass-kisser - is any better, but if you're going to write something mean you'd better mean it and get it right! If you gaff it someone equally mean will make you pay for it.

There is one rant, however, that I'm still proud of and likely wouldn't change a word if i were writing it right now. It's called "State of the Disunion." At some point I feel there became a sort of disunion between the angry me that sometimes misrepresented myself by expressing things all wrong in the heat of the moment, and the me that sat back and thought before writing an opinion. I've been sort of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of blogger, and who remembers the good doctor after Hyde gets loose a few times, huh?

I think it's time I sat back, took a breath, and tried to focus on the more of the good things in the industry again. At the very least, I think I need to make sure that even when I'm ranting I at least try and drop a hint that I do it because I care, not just because I want to be mean.

When it's all said and done, I guess it all boils down to trying to make sure that the Eastern Edge cuts with a little more precision instead of trying to hack everything to pieces. In 2011 I will sharpen up my blade and only pull it when I mean it.

On that note, and since there's no Vagabond to talk about because Takehiko Inoue has lost the enjoyment in his work (Yeah, I can kinda relate!), I'd like to end the year off with a repost of "State of the Disunion." (comments may be found at the original post here)

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State of the Disunion - March 2009

Last night was the second night in a row of live-action Yatterman movie hype on NTV’s News Zero and it has got me thinking about how utterly ridiculous all this Manga vs American Comics crap really is.

The feature that set me off was one on the NYCC screening of Yatterman. They even had one of the actors over there as part of the event and he talked with industry people about the influence of Japanese properties in America and the “manga boom”. You remember that, right? The big bang that some here in Japan like to pretend is still resonating throughout the world like an infectious, unstoppable wave of cultural dominance that will have everyone reading comics on the subway, shouting “yatta!” and shamelessly dancing to sugarcoated pop music performed by groups of 15 year old girls in miniskirts. (Huff huff… run-on sentence).

So far “Cool Japan” is more like a cherry bomb in a schoolyard than an explosion. Some kids stopped to stare, some of them even went over to check it out, but many more gave it a curious glance and then went on with their lives. Even if it was bigger than I’m giving it credit for, it’s time to do a post-boom assessment at ground zero (i.e. in Japan) to see where it might go from here. But, instead, many still have their ears covered and eyes shut in anticipation and haven’t even noticed that the smoke is beginning to clear.

However, while I’m getting used to Japan pushing soft power as hard as possible, what I’m really getting sick of are the pointless, snobby digs at American and other comics that always seem to be a part of manga hype. And it's not the Japanese who are doing it because they mostly ignore American comics. It’s the American fans of Japanese comics that are feeding the negativity. Why!?

Maybe the negativity is just the first signs of the realization that they aren’t the shiny new car in the lot anymore and they have to start earning their parking spot outside Japan, but whatever it is I wish it would stop.

The most tiresome of the “manga vs. comics” rhetoric is the old “manga are so incredibly creative and diverse, whereas American comics are all superheroes and all the same.” It’s unfortunate that it’s Americans spreading that kind of propaganda because Japan eats it up, becomes even more convinced of this recent sense of pop-culture superiority, and becomes even less likely to give foreign comics or animation (except for Disney and Pixar) a fair chance.

While people always have style preferences, I wish more people would start talking about comics as a whole and quit the superficial separation of American and Japanese. The fact is that while they are very different for obvious reasons, they are still the same medium. Manga are comics, nothing more nothing less, and American and Japanese comics always have and always will have a reciprocal influence on each other because creators aren't bound by the same narrow-minded prejudices that their fans often are.

When I speak of “American comics”, by the way, I include ALL comics, not just Marvel and DC. I think it’s unfair to compare everything Japan has to offer to only one type of American fast-food comic. Ever hear of Sin City, Bone, The Goon or Mouse Guard? Or, if you want to expand it a little further and talk about the mass appeal American comics “don’t have”, how about Calvin & Hobbes, The Farside or Dilbert? They’re comics, too. The Simpson’s was also a comic, in case people are forgetting. Besides, I could flip the entire argument around and argue that Dragon Ball is about superheroes and so are many of the hit kids comics out of Japan. That, however, is another debate I’ll fire up on another day.
My point is that the comparisons I keep hearing are superficial at best, and just plain ignorant at their worst.

As for crusty, old-school American superhero comic fans, many don't even give those new-fangled, foreign manga thingies a chance, preferring instead to spend their time and energy in self-loathing and endless debating on continuity issues or which of Spiderman’s suits is the coolest.

But at least at North American comic book conventions you get joint participation. You guys can congregate in some of the same venues, share some of the same interests, and costumed fans can mingle. A Jedi and Batman can have a diet coke with Inuyasha and Goku at ComicCon, but that won't happen in Japan.
Japan turns up its nose at American comics and animation and is guilty of the same snobbery as the hardcore superhero crowd. It’s too bad that some of the self-proclaimed otaku overseas waste the chance to mingle in the comic community and chose to box themselves into little overprotective, paranoid communities of their own from where they can spit on other types of comics (just like the hardcore superhero geeks do), and fret about what happens when everyone’s favorite black and yellow ninja retires.
Speaking of which, I’ve even read where people think that even Japan is facing doom when that happens. No chance!

As far as Japan is concerned; the question is not whether the industry will survive the end of a particular title, the question is whether or not the industry will survive at all.

But I don’t think the sky is falling yet, though. Comics are not a niche market in Japan and it isn't all going to come crashing down anytime soon. It’s not new and fragile, nor is it perceived to be held up on the shoulders of a single Atlas-like property that saves it from certain doom. The market in Japan is far too mature and diverse to fear for its life under a one or two title Sword of Damocles.
In fact if any market can be brought down by one title then there was never a market to begin with.
It won’t happen.

But what also won't happen is real acceptance of Japanese comics until the "manga" people quit trying to divide and conquer, and realize that comic book fans don't need to be turned and made manga fans, they only need be introduced. Manga will never break into the mainstream if it can't break through barriers in its own backyard. Quit building fences and giving your neighbors the finger and maybe you'll find that you aren't really that different, you're all just comic lovers who like different styles.

Marvel, DC, Shueisha, Kodansha, Dark Horse, who f*cking cares!? Get over it.
They're all comic book publishers and they all have something to offer.
Save the bashing for stuff that really deserves it and give other genres and styles a chance, everyone.
You might actually find other things you like and wonder why you turned your nose up at them in the first place.

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