Text in comics
Nov. 26th, 2007 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeA brief summary and discussion from Neil Cohn of an article on eye-movements reading comic pages, for those interested in that sort of thing. One thing noted: participants in the study were more likely to skip past a panel if the next panel contained a block of text; modifying the page so that the text was farther away from the skipped panel resulted in less skipping. Cohn wonders what level of "comic fluency" the participants possessed, since it's not discussed in the article, and comments, "The desire to jump towards panels with dense text insinuates a focus more on text than on the visuals, which was characteristic of a naive comic reader's eye-movements compared with an expert reader in Nakazawa's eye-tracking study."
I find this all very interesting in relation to some observed differences between stateside readers of American comics vs. Japanese comics. For close to two years, I've been involved in running a (very small) graphic novel club for adolescent girls, all of whom read manga, none of whom had any experience reading American comics of any variety until the club. For them, the comics experience is manga, mostly popular shoujo and shounen series. My co-host and I are ginormous manga fans, and that's what we tend to stick to, but every now and then, we try to push their boundaries a little--we've done Dramacon, Megatokyo, Usagi Yojimbo, Runaways, and most recently, Bone. Dramacon was an unqualified success. In our discussion of the book, my co-host and I expounded at length on the similarities and differences between Dramacon and Japanese-origin comics, and we found that the likenesses of Dramacon to conventional shoujo style helped them enormously in accepting the departures. The biggest successes otherwise were Megatokyo and Usagi Yojimbo, which are fairly significant departures from shoujo & shounen manga in terms of form and storytelling style, but had appealingly familiar subject matter. Runaways was liked for the story (it's one of those rare Marvel comics actually intended for younger, newer readers, which is why we tried it), but all the girls found it immensely confusing in every respect, from the artwork, to the superhero conventions (even though Runaways plays down those conventions quite a bit), to the overall storytelling style. Bone, much to my surprise, was mostly panned. They didn't dislike it by any means, but they found it so uninteresting that we couldn't really keep them on topic.
(Bone is the most popular graphic novel series sold to kids in my store, after the general category of manga, and I had assumed there would be some overlap between the readers of Bone and the readers of manga--as of yet, though, I have no evidence that there actually is any overlap; heaven knows, no one ever buys them together. Right after Bone in popularity is Tintin, by the way. I have never, ever, even once seen a superhero trade sold to anybody younger than me in that store, and most superhero trade buyers have ten to thirty years on me.)
Anyway, I have for quite some time had a theory that part of the growing popularity of manga in the US, and its appeal to new readers who not only have never read an American comic in their life, but maybe never will, is the fact that manga is usually less text-dense than American comics. I'm speaking obscenely broadly right now, and I myself could easily cite a few dozen contradictory examples from memory--but I have read a lot of comics over the years, and really, stuff from my side of the Pacific has expodentially more text.
The more cynical assumption I might make is that manga is more appealing to unskilled or lazy readers, folks who like pictures but skip the words. It's probably true for some people, although I can't really bring myself to dismiss a twelve-year-old girl who easily reads manga but struggles with text captions; if she can read manga well, it is making reading easier and more pleasant for her, and she will get better at it.
A less cynical take on the appeal of more lightly-worded comics is that with less text, the marriage of words and pictures is a more natural and harmonious thing, easier to read, easier to understand, and more emotionally affecting. I grew up reading American comics--old stuff, too, with densely lettered narrative captions, giant white thought bubbles and speech balloons always carefully tucked away in corners, where they wouldn't cover up the art--and I'm pretty well versed in the language. Learning to read manga took quite a bit of effort. The stylistic and thematic differences are many and significant, and I started out with contempt for things I've since learned to love, like the cleanness of black and white art, or the fluidity of page layouts. Once I learned to make the adjustment, and starting reading manga with an easier eye, I began to find that I preferred it. I can still read and parse superhero comics, but I often find them jarring and awkward in ways I hadn't noticed before--they're too wordy, or trying to ape the experience of watching television (and yes, there is a difference between feeling like a TV show and being cinematic); the text and the pictures are often in competition with each other for attention, and not working together to create meaning. It's not always that way, but it is too often.
I was a relatively sophisticated, adult comics reader when I picked up manga, and I still found it a very difficult leap from one set of artistic traditions to the other. I really only made it because I have a large enthusiasm for comics art (and a mad, life-long, instinctive draw to Japanese stuff. Whence it comes, I will never know). It'd be a very dedicated reader of comics indeed to do it the other way around--to go from the lively art and broad subject matter of manga to the arcane world of superhero comics. Superhero comics are an acquired taste--who's going to acquire them now? Not the girls in my club. We've found out by trying that it's not that easy to go from manga to non-superhero American comics; almost impossible--and really, rather pointless--to try to go from manga to superheroes.
There's a lot that's wrong with the American comics industry, and it's mostly to do with superhero comics. Better informed and more intelligent people than I have expounded on its flaws at length; I am left with the morbid belief that it will eventually collapse in on itself because it can't draw in new readers. I don't know what will happen to American non-superhero comics if cape comics fold, because I don't know to what extent they are either hindered or supported by capes. Indy comics like Dramacon that appropriate styles and themes from manga evidently can draw in new readers from the existing manga audience, if they want to; the dispirited reaction of my club to Runaways suggests that it takes more than a low price-point and a tankoubon-sized digest to reach the manga audience.
I find this all very interesting in relation to some observed differences between stateside readers of American comics vs. Japanese comics. For close to two years, I've been involved in running a (very small) graphic novel club for adolescent girls, all of whom read manga, none of whom had any experience reading American comics of any variety until the club. For them, the comics experience is manga, mostly popular shoujo and shounen series. My co-host and I are ginormous manga fans, and that's what we tend to stick to, but every now and then, we try to push their boundaries a little--we've done Dramacon, Megatokyo, Usagi Yojimbo, Runaways, and most recently, Bone. Dramacon was an unqualified success. In our discussion of the book, my co-host and I expounded at length on the similarities and differences between Dramacon and Japanese-origin comics, and we found that the likenesses of Dramacon to conventional shoujo style helped them enormously in accepting the departures. The biggest successes otherwise were Megatokyo and Usagi Yojimbo, which are fairly significant departures from shoujo & shounen manga in terms of form and storytelling style, but had appealingly familiar subject matter. Runaways was liked for the story (it's one of those rare Marvel comics actually intended for younger, newer readers, which is why we tried it), but all the girls found it immensely confusing in every respect, from the artwork, to the superhero conventions (even though Runaways plays down those conventions quite a bit), to the overall storytelling style. Bone, much to my surprise, was mostly panned. They didn't dislike it by any means, but they found it so uninteresting that we couldn't really keep them on topic.
(Bone is the most popular graphic novel series sold to kids in my store, after the general category of manga, and I had assumed there would be some overlap between the readers of Bone and the readers of manga--as of yet, though, I have no evidence that there actually is any overlap; heaven knows, no one ever buys them together. Right after Bone in popularity is Tintin, by the way. I have never, ever, even once seen a superhero trade sold to anybody younger than me in that store, and most superhero trade buyers have ten to thirty years on me.)
Anyway, I have for quite some time had a theory that part of the growing popularity of manga in the US, and its appeal to new readers who not only have never read an American comic in their life, but maybe never will, is the fact that manga is usually less text-dense than American comics. I'm speaking obscenely broadly right now, and I myself could easily cite a few dozen contradictory examples from memory--but I have read a lot of comics over the years, and really, stuff from my side of the Pacific has expodentially more text.
The more cynical assumption I might make is that manga is more appealing to unskilled or lazy readers, folks who like pictures but skip the words. It's probably true for some people, although I can't really bring myself to dismiss a twelve-year-old girl who easily reads manga but struggles with text captions; if she can read manga well, it is making reading easier and more pleasant for her, and she will get better at it.
A less cynical take on the appeal of more lightly-worded comics is that with less text, the marriage of words and pictures is a more natural and harmonious thing, easier to read, easier to understand, and more emotionally affecting. I grew up reading American comics--old stuff, too, with densely lettered narrative captions, giant white thought bubbles and speech balloons always carefully tucked away in corners, where they wouldn't cover up the art--and I'm pretty well versed in the language. Learning to read manga took quite a bit of effort. The stylistic and thematic differences are many and significant, and I started out with contempt for things I've since learned to love, like the cleanness of black and white art, or the fluidity of page layouts. Once I learned to make the adjustment, and starting reading manga with an easier eye, I began to find that I preferred it. I can still read and parse superhero comics, but I often find them jarring and awkward in ways I hadn't noticed before--they're too wordy, or trying to ape the experience of watching television (and yes, there is a difference between feeling like a TV show and being cinematic); the text and the pictures are often in competition with each other for attention, and not working together to create meaning. It's not always that way, but it is too often.
I was a relatively sophisticated, adult comics reader when I picked up manga, and I still found it a very difficult leap from one set of artistic traditions to the other. I really only made it because I have a large enthusiasm for comics art (and a mad, life-long, instinctive draw to Japanese stuff. Whence it comes, I will never know). It'd be a very dedicated reader of comics indeed to do it the other way around--to go from the lively art and broad subject matter of manga to the arcane world of superhero comics. Superhero comics are an acquired taste--who's going to acquire them now? Not the girls in my club. We've found out by trying that it's not that easy to go from manga to non-superhero American comics; almost impossible--and really, rather pointless--to try to go from manga to superheroes.
There's a lot that's wrong with the American comics industry, and it's mostly to do with superhero comics. Better informed and more intelligent people than I have expounded on its flaws at length; I am left with the morbid belief that it will eventually collapse in on itself because it can't draw in new readers. I don't know what will happen to American non-superhero comics if cape comics fold, because I don't know to what extent they are either hindered or supported by capes. Indy comics like Dramacon that appropriate styles and themes from manga evidently can draw in new readers from the existing manga audience, if they want to; the dispirited reaction of my club to Runaways suggests that it takes more than a low price-point and a tankoubon-sized digest to reach the manga audience.
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no subject
on 2007-11-27 03:35 am (UTC)One possible factor here is that you're mixing genres too much. Like, one big difference in how comics/manga are sold in Japan vs. the US, is that there's a lot of specificity in how manga series are marketed and to whom. I'd say the kind of reader that goes for shoujo or yaoi (I'm that kind of reader, anyway) would be less likely to like the superhero genre and may be turned off American comics because of their frequent equation with the superhero genre. I say this as someone who likes superheroes and loves American comics (as distinct from manga), and has been a comics fan before getting into manga (I was into anime, but not manga for the longest time, because I preferred American comics for being colored, of all things).
Likewise, 'Bone' may be popular, but with what audiences? It's the equivalent of weird adventure/comedy shounen, isn't it? Maybe if someone likes 'One Piece' they're more likely to like 'Bone' (not sure, never read it, though it's been recced to me). I think it's quite likely shoujo readers would like 'Strangers in Paradise' or 'Love and Rockets', and other more characterization-driven series like 'The Sandman' and a bunch of Vertigo titles. Granted, those are all wordy, but there's lots of girls who like shoujo because it goes in depth in the characters' minds and is about relationships, and more is always better. That's partly why doujinshi for shounen series are so popular, aren't they? There's this urge to go deeper into the characters' minds and motivations in a way shounen manga doesn't allow for-- and most superhero comics, including an unusual one like 'Runaways' (though I enjoyed it) don't really go that far either. There's a reason most of the audience for them has traditionally been male, though the female readership is currently on the rise, I believe.
Anyway, 'Runaways' in particular has a meta background-- its enjoyment is highly increased by being familiar with comics history; a lot of its appeal is because of how it reverses or comments on old comics trends, after all. Otherwise it's just another story of its kind. If there's adventure series that have cross-over potential, it's stuff like 'Hellblazer' and 'Y: the Last Man', but then I'm probably biased; I do know they go deeper into their characters than most superhero titles and yet their plots and structure are both stand-alone and sufficiently mainstream. 'Bone' has a weird look/aesthetic, at least at first glance; the art never struck me (why I never picked it up). In manga, y'know, everyone tends to be pretty :> Shallow but true!