Thanks for the incredibly thoughtful replies! I guess it's unfair to compare translated manga -- which admittedly centers on the most mainstream titles -- with the wealth of American indy-comics which are relatively easy for us to find.
However, about "Big Issues," I guess what I'm saying is that when I think of the "most critically acclaimed" American comics, even among superheroes, I tend to think of works that have a fairly high amount of political content and intentional "high-culture" references. Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis... to some extent, they all play around with politics and religion and art movements and history and other obscure, weird, intellectual things which you would not in a million years see in Shonen Jump. Even in Death Note.
Now, admittedly, I guess all the authors I've mentioned are all British dudes who got their start in the '80s and '90s and perhaps my ideas of the big-name creators are out of date, when we compare to other modern superhero comic authors like Rob Kirkman and Brian Wood and Garth Ennis (a great writer, I think, but not as artsy and high-faluting as the other ones I've mentioned), or even J. Michael Straczynski. It's possible that my idea of the Really Awesome Superhero Comic Authors is just 15 years out of date (sob). Also, all these people are clearly writing for a "seinen" audience and not a "shonen" (let alone shojo) one.
But still, they *did*, or *do*, represent the "high-end mainstream" of American comics, and they all have great visibility, winning Eisner Awards and so on, being recognizable to all but the stupidest fanboys, while also selling lots of copies. Does it make any more sense to compare them to seinen authors like Kaiji Kawaguchi and Naoki Urasawa, rather than comparing them to Masashi Kishimoto? I dunno. Or perhaps I'm being blinded by the fact that these comic authors, perhaps partly because they're British and grew up with the super-dense British anthology comic magazines, all create very "information-heavy" comics, which is the exact opposite of manga, in which ideas (if there are any ideas at all) tend to percolate slowly over the course of hundreds of pages.
But yeah, that's what I mean when I say that American superhero comics ("American" despite the fact that all my favorite creators are British :/ ) tend to be more idea-driven than Japanese comics.
Re: pt 2
However, about "Big Issues," I guess what I'm saying is that when I think of the "most critically acclaimed" American comics, even among superheroes, I tend to think of works that have a fairly high amount of political content and intentional "high-culture" references. Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis... to some extent, they all play around with politics and religion and art movements and history and other obscure, weird, intellectual things which you would not in a million years see in Shonen Jump. Even in Death Note.
Now, admittedly, I guess all the authors I've mentioned are all British dudes who got their start in the '80s and '90s and perhaps my ideas of the big-name creators are out of date, when we compare to other modern superhero comic authors like Rob Kirkman and Brian Wood and Garth Ennis (a great writer, I think, but not as artsy and high-faluting as the other ones I've mentioned), or even J. Michael Straczynski. It's possible that my idea of the Really Awesome Superhero Comic Authors is just 15 years out of date (sob). Also, all these people are clearly writing for a "seinen" audience and not a "shonen" (let alone shojo) one.
But still, they *did*, or *do*, represent the "high-end mainstream" of American comics, and they all have great visibility, winning Eisner Awards and so on, being recognizable to all but the stupidest fanboys, while also selling lots of copies. Does it make any more sense to compare them to seinen authors like Kaiji Kawaguchi and Naoki Urasawa, rather than comparing them to Masashi Kishimoto? I dunno. Or perhaps I'm being blinded by the fact that these comic authors, perhaps partly because they're British and grew up with the super-dense British anthology comic magazines, all create very "information-heavy" comics, which is the exact opposite of manga, in which ideas (if there are any ideas at all) tend to percolate slowly over the course of hundreds of pages.
But yeah, that's what I mean when I say that American superhero comics ("American" despite the fact that all my favorite creators are British :/ ) tend to be more idea-driven than Japanese comics.