One of the big differences between American comics and manga is that the characters can grow old and pass their mantle on to their children, friends tell me. Should American creators follow suit?
STORYTELLING IN THE PAST!
Fans like me who have been around a while likely remember when TV, comics, and other forms of storytelling were harder to access than they are now. These forms of entertainment were considered more like distractions than full-time commitments. If we missed an episode or an issue, it didn’t matter. “Every issue was someone’s first comic” was the motto of the day.
So, if you hadn’t gotten to your local spinner rack before others, well, you’d miss a story or two, but you could just pick up the following book and wouldn’t worry because whatever happened last issue stayed there.
See, there was a thing called the status quo. If you wrote a comic story, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end… and it was contained in that one issue. Whatever the status quo was, even if you varied it in your story, you had to return to it by the end of that book.
In Star Trek, this was called the “galactic reset button.” Again, you weren’t guaranteed to write every story, so you had to return to the place you started so someone else could pick up and do the same thing next time. And so on, and so on, and so on.
A perfect example of this was a story called “Robin Dies at Dawn” in Batman #156. Batman is participating in a scientific experiment, and he is led to believe that he and Robin are on an alien planet, and Robin apparently is killed before his eyes. When he is awoken, he then reacts differently when he perceives Robin is in danger—he jumps immediately to save him even when he doesn’t really need saving. When the story concludes, Batman realizes it was all a fantasy, so he goes back to normal. Case closed.
This was done so someone else could tell a different story in issue #157 the next month.
In fact, I remember one time when DC actually printed a page indicating that Batman was “always” in his early 30’s, and this was true no matter how many years had gone by.
STORYTELLING TODAY!
It’s different now. Advertisers want to make sure you NEVER miss an episode or an issue because they want as many opportunities to sell you their product as possible.Thus, serialization was born. My personal favorite was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. If you missed an episode, you could find yourself somewhat confused as to exactly what was happening! Thus recording devices became popular!
As far as comics went, no more going to pharmacies and looking for spinner racks! Local comics shops with their pull lists made it less likely (but not impossible) that you would miss an issue.
Character development became all the rage. Consequences for the actions of the previous stories became important. I think this was often best represented by the X-Men comics. In fact, you had better be caught up on every issue from the last 50 years because you might not understand when a character you forgot becomes important to the current story.
MANGA ALSO CHANGES OUR PERCEPTION!
As I previously mentioned, the advent of manga to American audiences has started to become an important influence. I understand that the passing of the torch from father to son is quite a common occurrence in manga. At least, that’s what my friends who are big fans like to point out to me.
The Dragon Ball franchise is a prime example of this. Son Goku eventually takes over the main role, and his abilities seem to increase from generation to generation.
Of course, anime is also important in this development. I used to watch when SYFY used to run what they called “Saturday Morning Anime” movies so I could catch a glimpse of this kind of storytelling. I still miss that show.
EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
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!Naturally, not everything followed these rules all the time. For instance, Dick Grayson started out as a very young Robin before he became the leader of The New Teen Titans, and then he adopted the Nightwing identity. Since then, though, he seems to have been stuck at the same age for quite a while now.
I think this is why Bruce Wayne has collected quite the large Bat-family. When a new Robin comes around, they don’t seem to leave… they just stick around. (I still miss Alfred, though!)
The question is, though—should American comics follow manga when it comes to aging and all? I mean, DC recently replaced Clark Kent with his son Jonathan, but he just never quite felt like a real “Superman” by comparison. So Clark is again back in the Super suit.
And DC also tried recently to make a Black Batman, but he seems to have faded away. I’m just not sure fans of American comics are ready to see the heroes they have loved and followed for decades get sent out to pasture. At least, not yet.
Marvel had Spider-Girl for a while, which showed her father, Peter Parker, as an older guy who had left the hero business. Also, the son of Reed and Sue Richards sure hasn’t been around as much these days.
Do these characters deserve their chance to replace their famous parents? So far, that hasn’t worked out well!
I guess it will all depend on how much more influence manga continues to develop here in America. Granted, conventions like New York Comic Con are seeing the sections promoting American comics shrinking while manga and anime are taking those spaces. But I don’t think American audiences are totally ready for manga-style storytelling to completely replace our comics. Perhaps time will tell, though!
What do you think? Should American comics be more like manga? Is that the wave of the future, with our sales diminishing? Or will there be a resurgence in American comics storytelling? Whatever your opinion, be sure to share it on our Discord Server!
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Wayne Hall creates the Wayne's Comics Podcast. He’s interviewed Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, John Layman, Kyle Higgins, Phil Hester, Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray, David Petersen, Christos Gage, Mike Grell, and Matt Kindt. On this site each week, he writes his "Comics Portal" column (general comics comments and previews) and reviews comics.