Fascinating observations! I'm curious -- what "superhero conventions" did your audience have trouble with? I'm not a huge fan of superheroes myself, I'm just wondering. God knows, manga certainly has its own set of conventions.
About Bone, it occurs to me non-manga-style "children's comics" or "all-ages comics" may have the "most to lose" when pitted against manga. Almost all the boom in manga publishing has been due to material aimed at tweens, the "13+" market. That age group has totally absorbed manga. On the other hand, there are very few translated manga in the indy-comix, underground, art-comics mode, very few translated equivalents of Eightball or Maus (Barefoot Gen, sure, but not quite...) or the Acme Novelty Library. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that even American superhero comics are much more concerned with Grappling with Big Issues than most manga, however superficial and awkward that grappling may be. I suspect that many American comic artists, even mainstream ones, have some interest in the whole "indy-comix, creator-owned" pool of comics which is more open to political subject matter (look at just about any superhero comic in the Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis age!) or experimentation for experimentation's sake, and even when they're doing superhero genre exercises, they feel the urge to throw some of that in there.
(Or maybe I'm just talking about the superhero books *I* like? I dunno... what do you think?)
no subject
About Bone, it occurs to me non-manga-style "children's comics" or "all-ages comics" may have the "most to lose" when pitted against manga. Almost all the boom in manga publishing has been due to material aimed at tweens, the "13+" market. That age group has totally absorbed manga. On the other hand, there are very few translated manga in the indy-comix, underground, art-comics mode, very few translated equivalents of Eightball or Maus (Barefoot Gen, sure, but not quite...) or the Acme Novelty Library. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that even American superhero comics are much more concerned with Grappling with Big Issues than most manga, however superficial and awkward that grappling may be. I suspect that many American comic artists, even mainstream ones, have some interest in the whole "indy-comix, creator-owned" pool of comics which is more open to political subject matter (look at just about any superhero comic in the Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis age!) or experimentation for experimentation's sake, and even when they're doing superhero genre exercises, they feel the urge to throw some of that in there.
(Or maybe I'm just talking about the superhero books *I* like? I dunno... what do you think?)