This is the latest post in a roundtable on Clamp’s xxxholic.
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That’s a sequence from the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man Annual #1. I first saw it when I was 8 or so, and it’s stuck with me to this day. Not that I especially loved it or hated it — it’s obviously a fairly bland and pointless sequence.
That very blandness, though, was what arrested me. I couldn’t figure out why I was reading this. Okay, there’s a Spider-Man story…and then Dr. Strange shows up, and walks through four panels — and then he leaves. At other points in the story, Thor passes through in a similar way, as do the Avengers, as do the Fantastic Four. I think I knew even back then who all these characters were, but having them used in this way, for background cameos, left my eight-year old self completely non-plussed. What was the point? Was I supposed to enjoy this? How come?
Of course, I get it now. Dr. Strange walked through so that they could put “Special Guest Stars: Thor! the Avengers! Dr. Strange!” or some such on the cover. It’s a bait and switch.
Or is it? Not exactly, I don’t think. It certainly is a marketing gimmick, but the gimmick isn’t a cheat. Yes Dr. Strange is promised, and you barely get Dr. Strange at all. But I don’t think that’s likely to have been a disappointment to the readers. Rather, the very gratuitousness of the cameo — the fact that Dr. Strange doesn’t do anything and really has no reason for being there — is the point of the whole exercise. He’s trotted out so Marvel loyalists can basically say, “Hey! I know Dr. Strange! There he is! Right in the same world as Spider-Man! Whoo hoo!” The exercise is validated by the little frisson of pleasure you get from catching an allusion. If Dr. Strange were actually part of the plot, if Lee and Ditko had to explain what he was doing there and why he was involved, he wouldn’t work nearly as well as fan-service. He’s an extra bonus for true-believers — the crossover equivalent of a panty shot. The cutesy crassness isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. You pander to let your audience know you’re pandering. It’s a way of saying, hey, plot, theme, character…who cares? The point is that I know you’re reading, you reader you, and I’m looking out for you. Kawaii lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!
This kind of crossover porn has largely been replaced in American superhero comics by continuity porn — an altogether more depressing line of country. But at least for the first three volumes I read, xxxholic keeps things old school: the series is filled with allusions to other Clamp titles, but those allusions are all deliberately and even egregiously shallow. A glimpse of Cardcaptor Sakura’s staff shows up here; a purchase is made from Legal Drug there, little fuzzy bunny things show up from some other Clamp series there.
Even when Clamp flirts with continuity (as when characters from the simultaneously serialized Tsubasa pop in for an inter-dimensional walk-on) it’s very circumspect. Obviously, Clamp would like you to go buy Tsubasa as well as xxxholic, but they’re not going to be pushy about it. Instead, they’re going to be cute:
Yes, the little bunnies are a kind of dimensional vortex; you feed a useful item to the black bunny in xxxholic, it pops out of the mouth of the white bunny in Tsubasa. Watch bunnies ingest and egest from multiple angles when you collect them all!
There’s a kind of brilliance in that; the Dr. Strange cameo is cutesy in a somewhat sublimated, nudge-nudge way . So why not just drag that out in the open and have the container be as cutesy as the content? Clamp is better at being Stan Lee than Stan Lee ever was, in some sense. The clubby Marvel in-group of true believers could never attain the insular hothouse fervor of the fan-fic doujinshi circles that spawned Clamp.
I can admire that about Clamp. There’s something almost awe-inspiring in the way they combine the blatant enthusiasms of the amateur with the absolute polish of a professional. They give their audience what they want, and they do it without the audible grinding of gears you always got from those old Marvel comics. When Dr. Strange trots across the page, you can see Stan behind him pushing; the whole thing smells of greasepaint and pasteboard. In Clamp, on the other hand, the crossovers slide across the page so sinuously that if you’re not in the know you’ll never see them. Kinukitty, for example, had to point out the Legal Drug reference to me.
Even though I’m impressed with the craft, though, I have to say that, overall, I still agree with my eight year old self. I mean, yes, I enjoy hearing a familiar sample in a hip hop song, and I liked some of League of Extraordinary Gentleman. But there’s more happening in hip hop or Alan Moore than just dog whistles and secret handshakes. I don’t really open a comic to see Dr. Strange trotted out clumsily, or Legal Drug trotted out subtly. I don’t really want to be nudged by the writer and told that he or she knows these characters too, and isn’t that great. I don’t go to art to be inducted into a club — or, I don’t know, maybe this is just the wrong sort of club for me. In any case, the crossover porn in xxxholic had more or less the opposite effect on me from what was intended. Instead of convincing me want to go out and read the other Clamp series referenced, it made me want to avoid them all, even those, like Cardcaptor Sakura, that I had already read and enjoyed.
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I also wanted to respond to Suat, who, along with Matthias Wivel in comments wondered why critics in general, and me in particular, weren’t harder on mainstream Japanese comics and more appreciative of American literary comics. Suat suggested the leniency might be attributable to some kind of Japanophiliac “cultural forbearance”; Matthias countered with the theory that it was a species of hipster contrarianism. (Update: Altered somewhat for clarity.)
Of course, my last mainstream manga review wasn’t lenient at all. In fact, it was so unlenient it prompted Suat to intimate that my perspective might actually be racist.
But the real point, I think, is that there’s a tendency when you don’t agree with someone on aesthetics to assume that they’re putting you on. Oh, you can’t possibly like Mariah Carey more than Dirty Projectors, you’re just saying that to be contrary. This despite the fact that Mariah Carey actually has a bigger audience than the Dirty Projectors overall, and therefore you might reasonably conclude that liking her more is the default position, and liking the Dirty Projectors the contrarian one….but I digress.
Anyway, I explain at some length starting here some of the reasons that I find shojo more appealing than American literary comics. Also, just on a basic level, I tend to be more impressed with the craft in manga than with that in American comics, though obviously there’s a lot of individual variation. Japanese illustration is an amazing tradition, richer in many ways than the Western one, and it shows.
Despite all that, though, I still don’t like xxxholic much.
I’m still weeping, Noah. Still weeping.
Oh dear. You did see Kristy’s comment I hope.
Yes I did, I’m thinking of sending her a cake.
“…wondered why critics in general, and me in particular, weren’t harder on mainstream Japanese comics and more appreciative of American literary comics”
I don’t want you to be more appreciative of American literary comics (we have enough of that already). I want you to be just as hard on the Japanese mainstream as you are with Ware. CLAMP have been running on empty since the late 90s and need just as much coddling as Ware (i.e. none). There are significant problems with their work in the context of mainstream manga just as there are with Tatsumi’s work (as Bill indicated in his comments earlier).
But I wasn’t pointing to you in particular (the Ware/Clowes example notwithstanding; that was Matthias). It’s something which I notice in manga reviews throughout the web (there are exceptions of course). It may have to do with the thrill of the “new” or it might just be that manga reviewers in general are just “nice” people…
Yeah; I was going to list another three or four examples of me being mean to manga, but it started to seem kind of silly. I mean, if this roundtable hasn’t been sufficiently brutal, what kind of cold-hearted bastard are you? We made Melinda cry, for goodness sake.
I don’t think that it’s that manga reviewers are thrilled by the new, and I don’t think it’s because they’re intrinsically nicer people. And I actually am not even sure I agree that manga reviews are nicer than art comic reviews in any real sense — as I noted, I find a lot of art comic reviews really reverent.
I do think there is something of a difference in approach, or at least emphasis. I think mainstream manga reviews tend to tilt more towards a utilitarian paradigm (you should or should not get this book for the following reason) rather than towards some of the other available options (polemical, performance, more theoretical, what have you.) I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing…and I could be wrong about it, certainly. But that’s kind of been my impression.
I’ll say that’s mostly true from a descriptive point of view but it doesn’t exactly explain why this has come about. We might be seeing a latter day version of what the American mainstream had prior to the 90s before the collapse of that market – the sense of community etc. And with the better age/gender mix, the conversation is considerably more good-natured/intelligent than what you would get on a gaming forum/blog.
No one wants to make Melinda cry even figuratively speaking. She should give lessons on homepage design to the webmaster at TCJ.com though.
Thanks for this Noah; I don’t think I was necessarily intimating that you’ve been putting us all on — it was just too tempting to call you out when I evoked contrarianism in comics criticism. :)
Suat is right though, that my focus was slightly different from his. I wonder too about the blandness of most manga criticism, but my focus was clearly narrower: it basically concerned what I can’t help but see as an idealisation amongst certain critics of shojo and yaoi especially, simply because, it seems, they’re different from American comics.
Inspired by this enthusiasm, I’ve tried to read a bit of it, and definitely recognise the mastery of, say, Ai Yazawa, but at the same time it’s not only clearly targeted at a completely different audience than me to an extent where I can’t sustain even my intellectual enthusiasm for it, but it also only goes so far.
What I’ve read — and perhaps it’s not a sufficient amount — has been rather formulaic, even if driven by a different (and initially fresh-seeming) cultural coding than the one that makes a lot of American and European comics so instantly dull.
At the same time, like Suat, I find much more to think about, much greater emotional resonance when I read a comic by Dan Clowes or, say, Yoshiharu Tsuge. A comic not only more clearly directed to me, but one invested by much more careful attention to emotional reality.
I appreciate your “Comics in the Closet”, although I think it paints a somewhat one-sided picture of the American comics tradition as a whole, and I think get why you prefer the kind of manga genres you talk about, but the distinction you make seems to come down more to sexual politics than to engagement with the individual works. And come on, Japanese cartoon characters also wear masks, they’re just different.
Also, what do you think of Shonen?
“Inspired by this enthusiasm, I’ve tried to read a bit of it, and definitely recognise the mastery of, say, Ai Yazawa, but at the same time it’s not only clearly targeted at a completely different audience than me to an extent where I can’t sustain even my intellectual enthusiasm for it, but it also only goes so far.”
Ai Yazawa seems pretty accessible to me. I mean, it’s romance and soap opera. How hard is that? Yaoi is yaoi, and I don’t read a ton of it, but I’ve very much enjoyed a couple of series (Antique Bakery, Let Dai.) Obviously, those comics were created in a different country, but I find them much more emotionally resonant, and much more directed at me, than the work of Dan Clowes and Chris Ware.
And, in fact *so do a majority of comics readers.* If you’re making claims about what you personally enjoy, I can’t argue with you, obviously. But if you’re claiming (as you seem to be) that it’s odd for western readers to find emotional connections in shojo rather than in Dan Clowes, the demographics are heavily against you. You’re the odd one out — which doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but does suggest that you need to start making arguments about the shallow stupidity of the masses, rather than about the benighted contrariness of hipsters.
You may well have read all of this as well, but you might be interested in Bert Stabler’s discussion of why shojo has a worldwide appeal and Kinukitty’s discussion of why yaoi and slash make sense to her.
I think various things about shonen. I love Parasyte; I appreciate the craft of Lady Snowblood, though I have problems with the ethical world it presents; I think Ranma is wonderful…. I haven’t read or thought as much about it, necessarily. Again, my impression is that the art is in general superior to that in U.S. comics.
You misunderstand me; when I say it isn’t directed to me, I don’t mean it in a cultural sense, but rather in terms of age/demographic — stereotyped teenage romance simply doesn’t do it for me, no matter how well executed. I prefer more emotionally nuanced work, such as what I find in Clowes, Ware, Tsuge or Shin’ichi Abe. Or, if we’re talking archetypes and genre, the wonder and inquisitiveness of Tezuka when he is best.
I’m not making an argument about mass/elite culture, really — that’s a different discussion — and I don’t think mass appeal precludes the kind of thing I’m interested in: a lot of my favorite comics, films and novels were conceived as mass culture. What I’m noting is simply the sense I get that intellectually astute critics, such as yourself, seem to be playing a rigged game in the name of social/cultural politics when it comes to these works. But maybe I’m being entirely unjust.
My question about Shonen is along the same lines — I don’t see the same enthusiasm for it and I wonder whether it’s because it projects a more stereotypically male point of view. As for myself, I’ve had similar experiences as with shojo or yaoi: I recognise why something like Naruto is as popular as it is — great premise, excellent execution — but it simply doesn’t connect with my ageing self, and it reveals its formula after a while.
Thanks for the links! Looking forward to reading those pieces.
Ah, okay; it’s a genre vs. real literature argument, then.
I don’t find Yazawa or even xxxholic any more stereotypical or cliched in approach than Dan Clowes or Chris Ware, myself. I think literary fiction (or literary comics) is a genre as much as romance is. And, yeah, I prefer romance, whether it’s Jane Austen or Ai Yazawa. I know as a middle-aged guy that perpetual middle-aged crisis is supposed to turn my crank, but it just doesn’t. I find it irritating and largely irrelevant to my experience. Emotional attachment seems much more real to me than emotional detachment, and certainly not more predictable or formulaic.
If you’re looking for a very unusual example of shojo which isn’t about romance, you could try Dokebi Bride. It’s mostly about grief, which it handles with much greater subtlety and thoughtfulness than Chris Ware is ever likely to even dream about, IMO.
Oh…and I’m exceedingly enthusiastic about Parastye, which I think is a phenomenal series.
Noah, I was about to unleash my cranky inner shojo fan on Matthias, and here I find you’ve done much better than I could. Thank you!
I’d like to put in a word for shonen manga as well. While many shonen series follow an intentionally formulaic plot, that honestly has little bearing on characterization or emotional content, so I’m afraid I can’t go along with Matthias’ generalization here, either. I’ve been as deeply moved, for instance, by volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist and Hikaru no Go as I have by anything else. A good writer can write an emotionally nuanced story in any genre, for any demographic, and quite a few shonen mangaka do.
Somewhat pointless clarification: neither Parasyte nor Lady Snowblood are actually shonen titles in Japan. As for Ranma (a shonen title) I’ve never found it particularly enjoyable. Given a choice, I would pick Takahashi’s Inuyasha.
And I agree with Melinda above on her choice of shonen titles. Fullmetal Alchemist and Hikaru no Go are great titles for boys (and adults). Nicely done anime adaptations as well.
Suat: Hey, thanks! :)
I know Clamp’s work is marketed differently in Japan; over here, though, I think Tucker is pretty much correct about the main readership.
I never got into InuYasha. I liked the monster art, but the adventure narrative seemed dull compared to the nutty slapstick romance in Ranma (though I’ll admit, I didn’t read the whole Ranma tale — I think I made it through 15 volumes or something, which was great, but really sufficient.)
My brother and I used to watch the Inuyasha anime pretty regularly, but we both realized around the same time that the show was going to drag out a very simple plot for as long as possible.
I really enjoyed Ranma for a while too, but the romantic comedy gags started getting repetitive after about season 3. In fact, a lot of the shonen anime that I’ve watched were entertaining concepts that just went on for too long.
I’m going to check out Parasyte though. Looks pretty cool from what I’ve seen online.
Sorry, Melinda, I didn’t want it to sound like I was dismissing all shojo, shonen, yaoi, or what have you, out of hand. And Noah, I don’t agree that ‘literary fiction’ is a genre in the same way as, say romance or westerns, neither do I think that the work of the cartoonists I mentioned necessarily all fit under it as an umbrella term.
But really don’t want to get into a discussion of genre theory and of course recognise that genre is neither the problem nor the solution to anything, merely a framework within which to work. I’m really not making an argument for “real literature” vs. genre here (I think it’s an artificial distinction, especially when talking about comics).
As I said, some of my favorite narrative art trades in archetypes and works within genre conventions — I mentioned Tezuka before, and might add Schulz, Hergé, Kirby or Barks to the mix. Or Austen, now that she’s been mentioned. My problem, rather, is that even somebody as accomplished as Ai Yazawa doesn’t seem to me to transcend, for lack of a better word, the conventions of her genre. I simply don’t find the emotions conveyed moving or interesting enough, but maybe I dropped Paradise Kiss and Nana too quickly, or maybe simply haven’t read the right shojo yet. Same goes for shonen: I like what I’ve read of Ranma, FullMetal Alchemist or Death Note fone, for example, but didn’t feel sufficiently inspired to follow through to the end of either.
I’ll have a look at Hikaru no Go, Dokebi Bride and Parasyte though. Thanks for recommending them!
“And Noah, I don’t agree that ‘literary fiction’ is a genre in the same way as, say romance or westerns…”
Of course you don’t. This is why you are wrong!
It’s interesting that the value for you is in the work’s “transcending its genre.” I don’t think Yazawa transcends her genre either, but I don’t see that as a problem. Idiosyncratic geniuses busting boundaries can be lovely, but there’s a virtue to keeping it real as well. Elvis is great, but so was Kitty Wells. (Or replace with Funeral Mist and Marduk if you prefer.
“Again, my impression is that the art is in general superior to that in U.S. comics.”
This is so subjective. Its kind of apples and oranges. Clamp’s art suits the stories they do- I think if they were assigned Captain America: the Return #1 to draw, it would be a disaster.
I think that many American comics tend to have more complex character designs and more complex backgrounds- certainly, the use of color alone adds a lot of complexity. I get the impression the ideal in American art is closer to realism than the ideal in a lot of manga.
I think there’s a number of shoujo with very muddled storytelling- some shoujo creators try to do action oriented material but fail at it, because the minimalism that can work for emotional storyline doesn’t necessarily work for an adventure. (Are Clamp fight scenes ever engaging? I remember absurd proportions in Tsubasa fight scenes ticked me off. Actually, I’ve barely read Sailor Moon, but I got the impression it would fall into the muddled fight scene category.)
I think that you can argue that American comics are far more “plot” oriented while manga is more “emotion” oriented.
Its interesting that I think Takahashi it at least somewhat impressed with the art in American comics:
Question: Do you read American comics?
Takahashi: There are a number of titles that I collect. One of them is, of course, Spider-Man.
Question: Using Spider-Man as a reference, what do you think are the differences between manga and American comics?
Takahashi: Hmmm… In a certain sense, the quality, the art of American comics is very high. I think the element of storytelling through images is strong with American comics. Japanese manga are really… manga can be created even without drawing any action into them. Even boring everyday things, such as portraying that it’s a really hot day or that something is really hungry- even just that is enough for manga. I guess it’s a difference of how people see the world, what people think makes a story. I believe that’s where the difference lies.
http://www.furinkan.com/takahashi/takahashi10.html
“A comic not only more clearly directed to me, but one invested by much more careful attention to emotional reality.”
I think that says more about your perception of emotional reality than it does about the comics.
I hate to point out the elephant in the room, but you know, what a lot of this boils down to is that Matthias and Suat are arguing that girls comics aren’t getting criticized hard enough, that if they were held to the same standard as the lit comics, more critics would be saying the comics suck.
This is the same argument that is leveled against romance novels all the time. There’s a reason that almost all deep-level romance novel criticism takes place in female-dominated, frequently locked realms. That’s because if you do it in the “mainstream” the criticism tends to boil down to: Girl stuff (like, say, romance itself) is icky (or emotionally shallow). I hear that enough already, and I’m really not interested in hearing it again. If I thought romances were emotionally shallow, I wouldn’t be reading them. Arguing that they’re worth reading is EXHAUSTING.
I’ll just say that I actually read a LOT of good, thoughtful, fierce criticism of shojo, and most of it is in locked spaces where the boys aren’t allowed.
I’ll put this another way: Let’s say I have 3,000 words to talk about a piece. I could spend 2,500 words trying to convince Matthias that romances are emotionally subtle (probably to no avail, since that just isn’t his thing) or I could spend that same 2,500 words talking about the story with someone who already believes it’s worthwhile.
If I wanted to do the latter, the sad truth is that I’d need to do it in a culture where those who believe romances are inherently worthwhile hang out (or be hit by all these comments saying, ‘isn’t the whole thing just shallow?’ which would return back to the beginning). And that’s just not the culture of the modern, American comics criticism realm.
Matthias, granted I’m a huge fan of Yazawa and there’s a good chance that you might never feel the same kind of connection to her work that I do, no matter how much of it you read, but I will make an argument that something like NANA is intended to sustain itself over a long period of time (there are 20 volumes currently published in English & the series is still running in Japan) and that’s reflected in the storytelling to a huge extent. NANA uses conventional romantic hooks to lure in its intended demographic (which has *finally* been officially labeled josei by its publisher) and then reveals itself slowly, becoming more deeply nuanced over time as we get to know the characters.
I’m part of an ongoing roundtable called The NANA Project in which three adult women (two of whom, including me, are current on the English volumes) discuss the series, two volumes at a time from the beginning. One of the most interesting things about it for me as a participant has been looking at its early volumes from the perspective of the later ones and realizing just how well-constructed it has been from the start. It’s a slow burn, deliberately so, which is what makes it work as such a long series.
I think to appreciate this type of manga, you really have to be in it for the long haul. I will even say that this kind of storytelling is one of the greatest draws for me, personally, and one of the reasons I enjoy manga. If you’re looking to experience everything the mangaka has to offer over just the first few volumes, however, you’re going to be disappointed.
Sort of as a contrast to that…the most recent volumes of Nana have been fairly disappointing to me; I feel like the series has gone adrift. On the other hand, I thought the five volume paradise kiss was just about perfect….
Pallas, that Takahashi quote is fascinating. I personally, would love to see a Clamp Captain America…but obviously that’s bound to be a minority opinion….
VM, I sympathize with the frustration of constantly returning to first principles. To be fair, Matthias isn’t that into Japanese comics for men, either. His benightedness knows neither limit nor gender….
Vom, you’re partly right that I come to this with a gender bias: I tend to prefer robots over romance, I guess, but I really, really don’t think that romance is just “girls’ stuff”: us guys feel it too!
I’ve just be rereading Fabrice Neaud’s fantastic Journal, which deals as intensively as anything I’ve seen in comics with being in love. It’s one of the most moving comics I’ve read.
We are all biased some way, but what I’m trying to get at here is that the works in question have not have anything resembling the same effect on me. Beyond that, I was pointing to what I perceived to be a subtrend in comics criticism that I found slightly irksome. (Yeah, I know, how insular can you get?)
I’m genuinely interested in reading some great manga criticism. When we were compiling our list of the best comics criticism of 2009, a lot of pieces on manga had been nominated, and with a couple of exceptions, none of them compared in quality to many of the nominated pieces on Occidental comics. Please show me the way to the ‘locked spaces’ — I want to learn something.
Melinda: thanks for your comments. I think I will try to give Yazawa another chance.
And yeah, as Noah says, I’m not crazy about most of the shonen I’ve read either.
I do love a lot of Japanese comics though — just not the ones we’ve been discussing here.
Noah, my personal experience with recent volumes with NANA has been different, but I’m certainly not going to tell you that you’re wrong about yours! Also, from a critical standpoint I can absolutely agree with your assessment of Paradise Kiss, even in terms of how it compares with NANA.
I think why NANA resonates more strongly with me is that it not only has at least two characters with whom I personally identify to an enormous degree (something that Paradise Kiss does not), it also has much more relevance to my own life and personal experiences overall. Whether I should perhaps regret that the sprawling messiness of NANA better reflects my life and personal history than the concise perfection of Paradise Kiss is, of course, another question entirely. :) It is, however, an unavoidable truth.
I love the early volumes of Nana, and I still like the most recent stuff. All the band machinations though and the publicity worries — I just really don’t care about that stuff.
Ah, well; mileage will vary, as they say.
Noah, I left my former line of work to a great extent because all that same kind of stuff was becoming more important than I could bear, so I suppose I just… relate. I think, though, that the series is finally moving towards some real resolution for both Nana & Hachi as the two timelines come closer together, so perhaps it will get back to the heart of what you loved about it soon.
Minor point here…there are, in fact, US “romance” comics that receive sustained/fascinating/insightful critical commentary. Los Bros Hernandez’s “Locas” and “Heartbreak Soup/Palomar” are clearly “romances.” Written by men, yes…so there’s a difference…but it’s not strictly a romance vs. robots thing. Critics are willing to talk seriously about “romance” to some degree. I guess “Strangers in Paradise” is another example…although this received less attention. I found it kind of hard tough it out through the 6 big manga-style books for SiP, but I’m always eager for more Love and Rockets. I would also point out that many/most superhero comics are more like soap operas/romances than not. The “ongoing” story of Spiderman has often been “who is Peter dating–which girl will he end up with”–and X-Men is always about which members of the team are “together” or “brokenhearted” or whatever. Until the obsession with universe-wide continuity–the continuity of superhero comics (of the 60’s and 70’s at the very least) was basically a “romance” continuity.
I think there may be an age bias (not just a gender one) at work here. The notion (not fact, maybe, but the notion) that manga is principally aimed at _teen_ girls may have more to do with it than just being aimed at “women.” Likewise, the idea that superhero comics were for the “juvenile” has always (even now) given the genre less cultural cache than those supposedly aimed at adults.
I admit to not really being captured by most manga. For one thing, I’m unwilling to mentally invest the money or time in a 20-30 book series. Admittedly, US comics go on ad infinitum–but I pretty much agree with myself that I’ll read until x writer or artist leaves a series (usually within 5 trades at most) and then I’ll stop. I read first volumes of Ranma, Inuyasha, and a couple of others–but nothing has made me say–“ok, I’m in this for the long haul.”
My guess is that I would have a similar attitude toward superhero comics too, though, if they hadn’t been part of my youth. It’s the pretty rare comic of any kind that strikes one as worthwhile after only an issue or two…
Hey Matthias:
When I say locked, what I mean is that some of it is locked to certain users only (usually friends) on LiveJournal. I don’t know how much of American comics criticism plays on LJ. There’s some communities where scans are posted, of course, but there are also some discussion communities, both in general (like Yaoi Cafe) and fandom specific (Saiyuki or Yami).
Quite a bit of what I read is in friends’ journals. Often it’s the comments that get interesting. I think there’s more of a group discussion feel.
Anyway. A couple of my favorite critics are taking a hiatus at the moment (due to RL constraints), and don’t post to anyone but friends atm, but I wrangled up some old favorites:
Kate Nepveu
http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/114625.html
http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/114625.html
Here is my favoristest manga criticism ever:
http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/574092.html
http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/574629.html
http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/575116.html
(It’s three parts) and a new short post here:
http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/1044745.html
(See discussion of josei in comments as well)
Oyceter is another favorite critic and she is reviewing currently. She frequently gets some manga in Chinese translation, so it isn’t always available to the US reader, necessarily (or is, but in scans):
http://oyceter.livejournal.com/tag/manga
(That’s a list of her manga reviews)
She is the one who told me about the grand crack that is Yuki Kaori.
Here is another current critic that I enjoy, Rlina:
http://rilina.livejournal.com/tag/seq-art:+manga:+xxxholic
Those are her xxxHolic posts.
I hope some of these are helpful! I have, uh, some more if you need more. But that’s a good place to start I think.
Hey Matthias, I’m putting together a list of some favorites for you, but the TCJ HU anti-spam isn’t letting me post them as a comment. I’m doing a bit of a work-around. Sorry about that.
Argh…I have so many nerdy, nerdy thoughts on this subject. To me, American comics, even most “art” or “literary” comics, are very external and plot-oriented in their storytelling. This is even true of comics that go in for a lot of visual experimentation; Acme Novelty Library, for instance, never gets inside the characters’ heads in a visual/visceral way, and in fact all its brilliant formal tricks seem designed as distancing mechanisms, like the comic-book equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film.
Which is a perfectly legitimate approach, of course, but one of the things that draws me to manga is that even the most formulaic genre work is so internal and character/emotion-oriented. By comparison, manga makes American comics look dry, disengaged, and emotionally stunted. I guess a lot of American comics readers see the emotional intensity of manga as silly or shallow or embarrassing, but my reaction is the opposite; to me, American comics are shallow and silly for shying away from any deep depiction of the characters’ internal lives.
Look at the Takahashi quote above: she comes from a comics tradition where a character being hot or hungry can be depicted in a visually rich, exciting way. To me, that’s interesting and worthwhile, and a “genre story” that successfully captures such moments is possibly more interesting than a “literary” work that stays safely confined to the cerebral level.
Right now I’m reading a yaoi series about Mad King Ludwig II for review, and it’s gloriously silly and melodramatic and ridiculous. I’m trying to figure out how many stars I can get away with rewarding something this absurd, because my immediate instinct, in the heat of reading, is FIVE MILLION.
“Which is a perfectly legitimate approach, of course, but one of the things that draws me to manga is that even the most formulaic genre work is so internal and character/emotion-oriented. By comparison, manga makes American comics look dry, disengaged, and emotionally stunted. I guess a lot of American comics readers see the emotional intensity of manga as silly or shallow or embarrassing, but my reaction is the opposite; to me, American comics are shallow and silly for shying away from any deep depiction of the characters’ internal lives.”
Yes, yes, and also yes.
What Noah said.
Plus…
“Look at the Takahashi quote above: she comes from a comics tradition where a character being hot or hungry can be depicted in a visually rich, exciting way. To me, that’s interesting and worthwhile, and a “genre story” that successfully captures such moments is possibly more interesting than a “literary” work that stays safely confined to the cerebral level.”
… one more “Yes.”
Also, I gave Ludwig II a B+ when I reviewed it which probably people thought was outrageous but the truth is, I could have easily graded it even higher just for pure enjoyment. It’s so… fraught.
Vom: Thanks so much for putting those links together; I’ll go discovering now!
Eric: I agree wholeheartedly with almost everything you say there, and I also have that lingering interest in superheroes that I probably wouldn’t have had, had I not read them when I was younger.
Shaenon’s point is also a good one, and I agree to an extent — it is a both exhilarating and fascinating aspect of much manga. On the other hand, I don’t think Western comics necessarily *lack* emotion as much as they treat it differently, due both to cultural and gender factors, I guess. Schulz, Kirby and Crumb, to mention but some of the greatest, are strong on it. And I realise I’m in the minority here, but I find rich emotional experience in the work of Clowes the Hernandez Brothers, or even Ware.
VM: “…that Matthias and Suat are arguing that girls comics aren’t getting criticized hard enough, that if they were held to the same standard as the lit comics, more critics would be saying the comics suck. This is the same argument that is leveled against romance novels all the time.”
I’m not asking for the same standards to be leveled at both lit and girls comics. There are however specific standards by which we can judge shojo or more romantically inclined material. Some of these standards may seem somewhat subjective since they deal more with personal connections to the work – these are after all stories which bring emotions to the fore.
But there are objective criteria which can be applied to shojo as well: whether the situations depicted conform to some form of reality, their novelty and intellectual content, the quality of the dialogue, drawings and pacing etc. As with any genre, one is likely to get increasingly fussy the more one reads and absorbs, and I’m pretty particular when it comes to the romance genre in manga/anime. There are just as many useless shojo manga out there as there are superhero comics. Suffice to say a romantic manga/drama won’t make it to the top of my reading/viewing pile unless it moves me deeply (even to the level of tears) and that depends a lot on all the factors above.
[And, like Matthias, I don’t find Ware or the Hernandez Bros to be completely emotionally stunted. There are some pretty emotional moments in Ghost of Hoppers for example. It should be clear, however, that the emotions elicited by their works vary somewhat from those produced by shojo or more romantic manga. This does not make these emotions any less worthwhile.]
“I’m not asking for the same standards to be leveled at both lit and girls comics.”
See, I’m happy enough to use the same standards. I just don’t feel that literary fiction, in its various guises, comes out better. Twilight is not ideal, but it’s better than Kavalier and Clay.
“There are just as many useless shojo manga out there as there are superhero comics.”
I think this sort of “pox on both their houses” thinking can be a little too easy. Super-hero comics right now are particularly awful — I mean, they’re really, really bad. The genre is at a terrible place, coaxing crappy work from even some of its most skilled creators. From what i can tell, shojo is much better off. (Though you may have been speaking historically, I suppose, in which case the calculus would be more complicated.)
Noah: If you’re trying to convince me that American literary novels from the last 20 years or so haven’t been particularly wonderful, you won’t have to work very hard. I don’t number any of them among my very favorites and I’ve really cut down on my diet of American fiction because of decreasing returns. I used to be considerably more disgusted with the level of mediocrity on display in Pulitzer Prize winning novels but have come to accept that they’re not much better at differentiating quality than the Oscars. But that’s a whole other discussion.
[And I wouldn’t know about Twilight since I’ve only watched the movies. That was enough for me.]
So, basically I’m a woman who sometimes she forgets she’s not a 50+-year-old dude, because I spend ALL DAY arguing with 50+-year-old dudes about things like what year Bill Finger met Bob Kane at a party (an argument I totally won, by the way). I work in comics, a medium in which a portion of its fandom can only enjoy if Gurlz are Not Allowed.
As Johanna Draper Carlson pointed out a few weeks ago, as a critic, because she so often reviews comics Not Meant for Her, one of the first things she asks herself is, “who is this comic meant for?” And I found myself nodding in agreement: I do the same thing.
I say this to contextualize: sometimes, it’s just a relief to read comics meant for me, which is much more likely to happen in manga than in U.S. comics, mainstream or otherwise. This doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy things that aren’t, or see the merit in things that aren’t, but sometimes it’s just relaxing (and I say this as someone who tends to hate straight-up soaps or romance; I can much more easily watch J-horror or ’70s exploitation films than contemporary U.S. Hollywood mainstream “romantic comedies,” which I find highly offensive. For example, “Prison Pit,” on the other hand, I finally had to stop talking about in my personal time because my SO didn’t want to hear about it anymore).
What this all boils down to, as a critic, I try to be aware of what pushes my buttons, and why, and if it has objective qualities beyond that (for example, I love “Tramps Like Us,” because it pushes exactly the right buttons for me; though, I would have a hard time defending it objectively. However, something like Moyocco Anno’s “Hataraki Man” also pushes my buttons, but I could wax on its objective qualities, such as its sharp art and incisive, savage observations, all day).
Don’t even get me started on the Hernandez Bros (whose work I love with the passion of a thousand fiery suns) and Austen (ditto, and I’m always kind of weirded out when people emphasize the romance in her stories, because they’re so often bald-facedly making fun of Romantic conventions).
Oh, in case my convoluted syntax didn’t make this clear: I love Prison Pit A LOT. I just can’t talk too much about it professionally for conflict-of-interest reasons.
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Kristy: “So, basically I’m a woman who sometimes she forgets she’s not a 50+-year-old dude”
This sounds like a high-concept contemporary U.S. Hollywood mainstream rom-com. I’ll start writing the screenplay now!
It would have been good for Natasha Lyonne.
Urgh. From that quote, poor Natasha, she would have the problems with the grammar.