Jim Lee, DC Comics President, Chief Creative Officer, and Publisher, spoke to Nikkei XTrend about his career, current trends, and the advantages that Japanese manga and anime have over Western comics. Lee says that Japanese storytelling (and Asian content more broadly) is booming because young people want to discover something that is “uniquely their own,” perhaps rather than just inheriting current trends, and because of the nature of the stories compared to Western comics:
“The stories told in Japanese manga and anime are incredibly powerful. I often find myself wondering, ‘What is missing in Western comics, and why aren’t they able to achieve the same flavor?’ Also, I think manga has an ‘advantage’ over American comics, which are mostly about superheroes, and that’s where the majority of sales and readers are concentrated.“
“In Japan, it’s closer to ‘literature,’ and anyone can read it, and it’s not just hero stories. There’s a much wider range of genres, like stories about cooking and soccer. You can draw stories from that. So I’m very happy that the manga has been so successful, because it gives me a ‘goal’ to aim for. The manga market is bigger than our industry, so the question becomes, ‘What can we learn from this?’“
Lee says that it’s not just art style, but the “sensibility” of Japanese stories, and later adds, “Another thing to add is that in the West, comics and animation have been considered ‘children’s media.’ As people grow up, they move on to live-action. But in Japan, that’s not the case. Not only is there a wide range of genres, but adults also read manga and watch anime. As a culture, it’s an ‘art’ that isn’t limited to a specific age group.“
Elaborating on young people wanting something that is “uniquely their own,” Lee spoke about cycles in popularity, citing the huge manga boom in the 90s. This was followed by a decline and then bust in the mid to late 2000s, caused by several factors, including market oversaturation, quality declines, the rise in Internet piracy, and the financial crisis, leading to crashes in the adjacent anime market and bookstore closures. Manga sales saw two years of consecutive growth in 2013 and 2014 for the first time since 2006-2007 (ICv2), continued its growth during the 2010s, and saw an explosive COVID-era boom.
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There’s a really interesting video essay on manga’s domination of the US market and its boom and bust cycle by mattttt – comic & manga history. He interviews senior figures from TOKYOPOP, VIZ, and more. There’s also a cool adjacent interview from 2007 on the anime boom and bust between ANN and HIDIVE’s John Ledford. You can check out the rest of Lee’s interview below, where he discusses James Gunn, company success, the mix of politics and storytelling, and more.
Source: Nikkei XTrend
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