It’s rare to get an invitation to complain about comics, so I’m going to jump in with enthusiasm, although I don’t intentionally try to read crappy comics so I can only pick out a few comics which disappointed me.
Although it’s already been dogpiled on Hooded Utilitarian, I want to talk first about Craig Thompson’s Habibi, one of the most frustrating books I’ve read in the past two years—partly because of its high level of artistic skill. It’s not that Thompson uses every cliché about Arabs and the Middle East (child marriage, prostitution, harems, slavery, despotism); this itself is par for the course in Western pop culture, just a difference of degree, not essential type, from thousands of representations including Christopher Nolan’s terrorism-themed Batman trilogy with its civilization-hating, don’t-call-them-Muslims League of Shadows. What’s frustrating about Habibi, instead, is its relentlessly pedagogical nature, alternating these stereotypical representations with its “real” storybook-Bible lessons about the Quran and the Arabic language. On the one hand Wanatolia is an Orientalist fairytale land, and yet thanks to these lessons, it’s also the “real” Middle East—it’s like suddenly getting “educational” segments about Christianity in the middle of one of those fantasy manga set in an otherwise generic Medieval Europe, like Claymore or Berserk. Thompson is obviously attempting to use his positive book-larnin’ about Islam as a counter for the negative images of Arabs, but as a result, Habibi just falls into the tired idea that “Islam in the answer” to everything in the Middle East, a belief shared, ironically, by both right-wing Western Islamophobes and right-wing Muslims. Thompson does introduce a postcolonial element with the late-in-story discovery that evil white men are behind the evil powers of Wanatolia, but on the whole the series does nothing to counter stereotypes of the Middle East, even when Thompson’s trying to show the good side. People who think that “Arabs were savages before Islam” might find confirmation for their beliefs in Habibi. Even the supposedly uplifting idea that “Islam, Christianity & Judaism have the same roots” can’t be embraced by any really secular liberals or leftists, since it expels atheists, as well as members of every other religious tradition, from the common tree of humanity. In reality, Habibi, like Thompson’s other works that I’ve read, is more than anything about male sexuality. This is where it really succeeds in expressing its theme, although unlike in Blankets and Carnet de Voyage (the obvious prequel to Habibi with its sidelong sketches of veiled women in Morocco) there’s no one “Thompson” figure—rather there’s two, Zam and the Sultan.
It’s hard to think of a most overrated manga, because most manga gets no mainstream critical coverage and most manga fans are completely fine with that. One exception is Natsume Ono, who has received a lot of Western press for her minimalistic art style and indy-comix-ish stories. To her great credit, Ono has engaged with her overseas fans in return, appearing as a guest at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival in 2011. Which makes it unfortunate that, beneath her breezy art, most of Ono’s stories are so conventional. Not Simple, her first work published in English and also set in America, is typical. Ian, the adult survivor of child abuse, is a bishonen Christ figure, giving his body up to the desires of evil men and deserving women without ever expressing any desires of his own, except for family (to find his sister). Some critics seem to have taken Ian’s childishly innocent demeanor as a serious depiction of the lack of affect suffered by abuse victims, but it’s really shojo-manga-esque wish fulfillment, a male figure who’s just a handsome doll who needs a hug. Even the conflation of the American setting with homosexuality and broken families follows a formula established in ’80s manga like Banana Fish and Cipher, where such hot-button issues are depicted as ‘Western’ ills. Ono’s fascination with nonthreatening guys is also evident in Ristorante Paradiso and its sequel Gente, about an Italian restaurant whose waitstaff is composed entirely of handsome, glasses-wearing men in their 50s and 60s. Nicoletta, the 21-year-old protagonist of Ristorante, gets a crush on Claudio, a sweet, gentlemanly 50ish divorcee, who’s too physically weak to resist her advances—if only he weren’t still pining for his ex-wife! Although Ono attempts to write some real character interaction between Nicoletta and her mother, the male characters in Ristorante all lack any inner life or any flaws (apart from ‘cute’ flaws). The result is lots of eye candy and dojinshi bait, but Ono’s resourcefulness in finding and exploiting the oyajicon/meganecon fetish market does not a great manga make. I simply haven’t read an Ono manga yet which believably depicts any serious emotion or character development, which is why my favorite Ono manga is her very first one, La Quinta Camera, a slight European apartment-complex comedy manga which can basically be summed up as Ristorante Paradiso without the romance; here, Ono’s whimsy and Western-exoticism is pleasantly on display, unburdened by attempting to get ‘serious.’
This writeup also wouldn’t be complete without critiquing the halo that perpetually surrounds the work of Osamu Tezuka. It’s not that Tezuka is bad; even his lesser manga, like Swallowing the Earth, The Book of Human Insects (a character portrait so sexist Dave Sim could have written it) or Message to Adolf, provide hours of entertainment, twisty storytelling and visual invention. (Incidentally, Tezuka feels like a strong influence on Thompson’s Habibi.) But, like the way that American comics critics used to deem Lone Wolf and Cub the only manga worthy of serious consideration, it’s frustrating to see the “God of Manga” get so much attention, and so many new translations, while so many other classic mangaka linger in obscurity. What about Leiji Matsumoto, Go Nagai, Riyoko Ikeda, George Akiyama, Sanpei Shirato, Shinji Wada? Yes, we now have translations of Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, Kazuo Umezu, Hiroshi Hirata and Shigeru Mizuki, to the great praise of their publishers, but what about so many other classics, like the ones described in Takeo Udagawa’s Manga Zombie? Must Tezuka always be the William Shakespeare of manga, with everyone else from his period in his shadow? Does the Tezuka name really = reliable $$$ from manga buyers? Admittedly, one of the reasons publishers license Tezuka is that he liked to create self-contained works of only a few hundred pages, switching from project to project rather than the “draw the same comic for 20 years”, 1000+ page tactic of newspaper strip creators and many manga artists. Also, it’s a BIG help that Tezuka Productions, the rightsholders to Tezuka’s work, are very eager to work with licensors despite the small size of the American market; the extreme example of the opposite is Riyoko Ikeda’s famous Rose of Versailles, which, it’s an open secret in the manga industry, has never been licensed because Ikeda’s company wants a ridiculously large licensing fee. But my point is: I want to see more from other classic creators.
As for the mainstream comics industry, my biggest complaint about it is, of course, that it’s become nothing but a license farm for Hollywood, producing movie pitches in easily digestible comic form. This doesn’t just apply to Marvel and DC, but to all the companies trying to follow in their footsteps. The glut of miniseries, the desperate chase after movie options (which destroyed Tokyopop), the prevalence of noir and superhero themes…it all adds up to an incredibly boring comics market from which the real action has long ago moved on to Kickstarter and self-published webcomics. Convince me otherwise.
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Jason Thompson is the artist of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories and the author of King of RPGs (with Victor Hao). He also wrote Manga: The Complete Guide.
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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.
“It’s hard to think of a most overrated manga, because most manga gets no mainstream critical coverage and most manga fans are completely fine with that.”
I wondered if you could expand on this a little, Jason. Do most manga fans actively not want manga to get more mainstream coverage? And when you say mainstream, are you talking NYT, or TCJ?
Wasn’t Natsume Ono’s first work translated to English the samurai drama House of Five Leaves? Or does it not “count”, since it was first serialized online before being published in print? (I’m not sure if Not Simple was in print first, but I’m pretty sure I read several chapters of House of Five Leaves online before Not Simple came out). Whatever the case, I actually got bored of that work pretty quickly, and I didn’t really find the style or subject matter interesting enough to seek out the other books, and I found the praise that Ono got kind of surprising. I’m glad to see I’m not alone.
I love me some Tezuka, but I agree, we need more classic manga on these shores. Jason, somebody needs to hire you to curate a series of classic manga releases or something; it’s a shame that we only get to see a smattering of that material in English. I want to read more!
@Noah – I meant two things: (1) hardcore manga fans are so separate from fans and critics of Western comics, despite the efforts of a few worldly bloggers & sites (such as this one) to mix coverage of manga & Western comics. They’re really like different worlds. (2) The bestselling manga since 2002-ish are YA titles, and most of the fans in that age group aren’t engaged with or interested in criticism; I don’t think the majority of buyers/readers of Black Bird and Naruto care about critical opinions any more than fans of the Twilight or Percy Jackson novels.
@Matt – You’re right, I had forgotten the House of Five Leaves was originally serialized on the Ikki website! My mistake. I actually haven’t read more than the first volume of House of Five Leaves, so I didn’t want to analyze it based on that. My initial impression was that it followed the bishonen-manga formula of the “guy who is obsessed with some other guy who’s handsome and seems really cool,” but since that’s just an impression from the first volume it’s probably unfair (though I just wrote it here… but still! I’ve got to read the rest of House of Five Leaves before I can really write about it!).
” I don’t think the majority of buyers/readers of Black Bird and Naruto care about critical opinions any more than fans of the Twilight or Percy Jackson novels. ”
That makes sense…though Twilight has gotten tons and tons and tons (and also tons) of mainstream analysis. The Percy Jackson novels a bit less…though I think there is some out there.
We really should have something on Naruto on this site. It’s so damn intimidating to approach though because of all the volumes….
Maybe that should be my next long read-and-describe project…
I don’t see how it’s possible to overrate Tezuka. It seems you’re more saying those other creators are underrated. I agree. But you put your finger on it when you mentioned Tezuka Pro’s attitude. They are very eager to get his work out in English, as well as extremely accommodating of the wishes of American publishers and willing to experiment, which puts them in a totally unique category among Japanese licensors. So, we need to keep working on convincing the other rights holders to lighten up. In the Japanese corporate world this is, to put it mildly, an uphill battle.
I will read any article on this site about Naruto, as long as it prominently features Gamabunta the giant frog yakuza boss.
Can I get you to write it?
Jason, when I grow up and hit the lottery, I promise to license as much Go Nagai as I can, and Shinji Wada (all 22 volumes of Sukeban Deka) and as much Ikeda as my lottery winings will support, starting with Oniisama E, if only for the bell-bottoms and Claudine, because dammit, Claudine ought to be in English.
I read and did not like some of Ono’s manga, but I think House of Five Leaves is quite successful. One of the only manga series I’ve been following. Ono adds a nice gappiness to the narrative and the image are often oddly cropped and composed in ways that I really like.
I do think that a lot of Tezuka’s work is overrated, but I stand by Phoenix as one of the best manga series out there.
Actually, I wrote a piece on the Percy Jackson novels for this very blog.
Yep! I remember that; I just don’t know if we qualify as mainstream….
Ha, probably not.
Tezuka–recently read the first volume of his ‘Buddha’. Interesting in a screwed-up way. He really had no inner borders warning him from what would destroy his work’s inner world. Goofy gags undermining his serious intent.
Tezuka– why is he such an uncriticisible icon– as people reproach Kirby, Hergé and Barks for being?
@AB – I like Tezuka’s lack of borders. He keeps a certain meta “hey, it’s all a comic” awareness in the background most of the time, no matter how serious the story, although I don’t know whether he does it to amuse himself or his audience. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing; it’s part of the unpredictability of his storytelling, and it’s refreshing that he doesn’t always take himself seriously. I mean, look at his artwork — this guy is a cartoonist first and foremost.
Incidentally, Tezuka *does* have critics — Fred Schodt in “Dreamland Japan” (although Schodt loves Tezuka) writes quite a bit about the controversies surrounding racism in some Tezuka stories (I believe some blackface-style artwork has been officially redrawn in some Tezuka reprints with the blessing of Tezuka’s estate), and I’ve read some really excoriating blog reviews about sexism/misogyny in Tezuka’s works.
I think La Quinta Camera is, in fact, Ono’s first manga, even if it wasn’t the first we got over here. I believe it was originally a webcomic she wrote while living in, or just after coming back from, Italy.
“Some critics seem to have taken Ian’s childishly innocent demeanor as a serious depiction of the lack of affect suffered by abuse victims, but it’s really shojo-manga-esque wish fulfillment, a male figure who’s just a handsome doll who needs a hug.”
I disagree. Not Simple seemed to me to fit very nicely into the “bad things happening to helpless innocents” shoujo angst-fest niche, which has been a popular topic since the year dot (its origins going back to Victorian melodramas). The earliest versions usually feature young girls in the role of victim, but pretty young men have been a popular option since at least Moto Hagio’s A Cruel God Reigns. In either case, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the genre is that the protagonist’s problems can’t be fixed with just a hug; the stories generally pile on the trauma, one damn thing after another, until somebody breaks. Ian is indeed very passive; the protagonist-victims in these stories usually are, since the point of the exercise is essentially to watch them suffer and and thereby experience Aristotelian “pity and terror”. (This is a type of story that has gone out of fashion in the West; nowadays we feel uncomfortable with pity and those who suffer beautifully and prefer stories where victims rise up and murder their oppressors.) Not Simple is shorter and more, well, simple than some of the more celebrated examples, but I think it ends up successful in being a feel-bad book.
I second the recommendation for House of Five Leaves; it’s very slow-moving and elliptical, and I suspect that it will end without complete narrative resolution, but it’s been well worth the trip so far.
@vommarlowe and Noah – I have to read that! But the question I was asking is more: are Percy Jackson/Twilight fans, by and large, driven by the desire for critical praise & recognition? I’d say that, generally, they’re just into the stories, and the critics can do whatever. (Not that they wouldn’t dogpile a messageboard thread against Jackson/Twilight if they happened to come across it.) The same for manga fans.
@JRB – Perhaps a mere hug won’t solve Ian’s problems, but as the reader, you do *want* to hug him, and I think that’s the point. -_-
“Ian is indeed very passive; the protagonist-victims in these stories usually are, since the point of the exercise is essentially to watch them suffer and and thereby experience Aristotelian “pity and terror”. (This is a type of story that has gone out of fashion in the West; nowadays we feel uncomfortable with pity and those who suffer beautifully and prefer stories where victims rise up and murder their oppressors.)”
Wonderful analysis!!! But Ian’s style of beautiful suffering disinterests me. He’s not emotionally invested in his own suffering; he’s got no obvious inner life; he’s just this pretty boy who drifts through other people’s lives, endlessly seeking a familial….. HUG -_- … while the people around him are amazed by how beautiful and self-sacrificing and ‘unbelievable’ he is. Call me someone who was an adolescent in ’90s America, but I prefer my suffering protagonists to be more aware & present in their own emo, masturbatory (self-)torment.
Or rather: I need some ugliness in my beautiful suffering.
“Perhaps a mere hug won’t solve Ian’s problems, but as the reader, you do *want* to hug him, and I think that’s the point. -_-”
I agree on that point. “Bad things happening to obnoxious jerks who totally deserve it” is an entirely different, very popular genre (the term “comeuppance theatre” has been bandied about the manga blogosphere for that genre), and is much more straightforwardly sadistic/vengeful.
“while the people around him are amazed by how beautiful and self-sacrificing and ‘unbelievable’ he is.”
I do think Ono stumbles a bit in having what’s-her-name be so much of a reader-empathy stand-in; I’ve noticed a number of Japanese books (not just manga) where the author does a lot of prompting the reader on what they’re supposed to be feeling, and I’m not sure if that’s a difference in cultural conventions of storytelling, a lack of editorial oversight or just a coincidental string of noob-author fumbles.
VM’s post on Percy Jackson is here.
I nominate Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life as the most overrated manga.
On the “cartoony” style of Buddha et al.: By the time Tezuka was creating more mature work the gekiga movement was already in full swing, and he was reacting against the younger generation’s realism by trying to prove that serious work could be done using the traditional visual vocabulary of manga. You can make the argument that he failed, or at least had mostly given up on that goal by the time Barbara came out in 1973-74. By his death in 1989 he had come around to a completely modern style for his adult work, on display in Gringo. Yet once I got used to them the sudden gags didn’t seriously affect my enjoyment of his work from that earlier period.
The reason I don’t think anyone in the U.S. can overrate Tezuka is not because he’s above criticism – he’s certainly flawed, which is part of what makes him such a fascinating character – it’s more because his influence here is so minuscule. Even his top-selling books get read by so few American comics fans, which makes him easy to ignore. The massive and revolutionary contributions he made are really impossible to appreciate fully, at least for an American my age.
Jason, you might have been trying to capture a similar feeling when you said, “It’s hard to think of a most overrated manga, because most manga gets no mainstream critical coverage and most manga fans are completely fine with that.” I’m not fine with it — I think people are missing out and I will continue giving comics fans I know manga I believe they will enjoy. I’m also aware that a lot more people are reading manga than are buying manga, which contributes to low sales, which is a much greater cause of mainstream media ignorance of manga. But that’s a whole other discussion…
Also — it’s important to remember that though it was marketed mostly toward adults in the United States, in Japan Buddha was a shonen manga serialized in a magazine meant for boys.
There’s probably more for me to unpack, but as an obsessive manga fan I too struggle against this overriding notion that Tezuka is a master master at mastering everything manga. Even though the world of English-language manga review and discussion is claustrophobically small, the world of manga itself is not, nor are the digital spaces where manga is rampantly scanlated.
So (according to my totally unfair dichotomy) you either have to read scanlations in order to get a better perspective about manga, sacrificing a logically consistent principle about the morality of scanlations in the process, or you get stuck in these boring, unpleasant patterns of thinking that are largely based on English manga publisher talking points.
It feels oppressive after a while. Tezuka may have written a lot of great manga, but most of the best manga I’ve ever read wasn’t made by him. Hell, most of the best manga I’ve ever read hasn’t been published in English. I want to talk about fucking Devilman!
Scanlations of unlicensed classic/niche manga are a tiny fraction of manga piracy online. The most popular manga at pirate sites (Naruto, Bleach, Fairy Tail, One Piece) are available for reasonable prices at Barnes & Noble. I mean, when I started the Kickstarter campaigns for Barbara and Unico, neither of them had ever been scanlated (as far as I know).
So I think you personally don’t have to beat yourself up too much — as long as you do go out and buy manga you like when it IS published in English by D&Q, Fantagraphics, Vertical, etc. (Or another publisher… I’ll just leave this link here: http://www.amazon.com/Danza-Natsume-Ono/dp/1612622364 ) Rewarding those publishers is the only way things will improve. Showing that adult manga can sell — not great, just ok numbers would be fine — would let certain editors do certain things they want to do. (Have I mentioned this link? http://www.amazon.com/Danza-Natsume-Ono/dp/1612622364 )
Of course, there are series that fall in between, that become popular online illegally but don’t have wide commercial appeal. In those cases by the time the Japanese licensor takes the books to American publishers, they may judge that the book’s already reached most of its audience online. Those are the books that are falling through the cracks.
Re: fucking Devilman, I’m sure you can find a dojinshi that depicts such an act. ;)
Milo, write me a piece about Devilman and I will publish it.
I’m going to get someone on this thread to write about manga for me, damn it….
Wouldn’t it be possible to assess Tezuka’s work much the same way the EC New Trends comics line has been thought of in the two-part article by Ng Suat Tong? I’m thinking specifically about the way its’ being a sort of point of departure has been more significant to the way we hold it in such high regard than its’ actual merits as drama, comedy or farce.
But I guess to do so we’d need access to the other works surrounding that time of initial success Tezuka enjoyed during the early 50’s. Also, to balance out his legacy, it’d be necessary to name the other candidates up for discussion when arguing the artistic merits of manga during its’ initial stage (which would bring us back to what Milo and Ben are referring to).
This business of comics criticism is tough going, people. I salute you all.
This is just my opinion by the way. I respect your opinion, but I don’t agree with it. I don’t think she’s really mainstream.. Most people don’t even read her mangas, because of her art work. She doesn’t lack character development or emotion to me. I can actually feel the different fleeting emotions. The only reason why it seems like she lack emotions is because most of the time she doesn’t spoon feed you all the details. She’s not very straight forward. I don’t think she lacks character development either. Her characters are quite unique to me.
The League of Shadows was Muslim? Why do I think you see attacks on Arabs under every black meteorite? Weren’t they too disciplined for Muslims?
“Weren’t they too disciplined for Muslims?”
Jeff, you deny anti-Muslim sentiment — and then retail anti-Muslim stereotypes in the same breath. It doesn’t make your case very convincing.
@ Jason Thompson
The funny thing about Tezuka’s use of black face. (as well as other manga artists of the time) It’s been reported that the Japanese very rarely saw black people in those days. The only time they saw them was in American cartoons which of course in those days always depicted them with black face. American cartoons were a big influence to Japanese artists of the time so they picked up what they learned from those for better and for worst so really, the only reason they have black face in their mangas is because it was the only way they saw them drawn in cartoon so it was the only way they knew to draw black people.