Book Review - The Early Reception of Manga in the West

 reviewed by C.T. Lim

Martin de la Iglesia. The Early Reception of Manga in the West. Ch. A. Bachmann Verlag, 2023. ISBN 978-3-96234-077-3. <http://www.christian-bachmann.de/b_bn13.html>

Comic studies’ publications in general are in bloom. One can imagine manga and anime scholarship studies in English (as distinct from scholarship written in Japanese) would constitute a big part of that given the popularity of manga and anime. Recent titles by Eike Exner and The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime edited by Jaqueline Berndt are notable. The Early Reception of Manga in the West is a fine addition to the list.

de la Iglesia posits the origins of the popularity of manga in the West dating to when the first translated manga was published by independent publishers in America in the 1980s. He argues against the general perception that the manga boom started in the late 1990s, when dubbed anime adaptations of manga such as Dragon Ball or Sailor Moon were shown on television. 

de la Iglesia focused on four titles as the starting point of manga’s acceptance in the West: Lone Wolf and Cub, Japan Inc, Akira, Crying Freeman. These were titles translated and published in America and Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, which Iglesia dubbed as the first manga wave of 1987 to 1995 (in the book’s back matter). 

He argues though that the impact of the early translated manga in the 1980s and 1990s was limited. Although one can say that the publication of the 1970’s Lone Wolf and Cub by First Comics was a big deal in the American direct sales market, as it featured covers and introductions by famed cartoonists including Frank Miller, a hot property in the 1980s. Miller was visibly influenced by Japanese gegika manga such as Lone Wolf and Cub in his 1980s comics Daredevil, the four-issue Wolverine mini-series and Ronin. 

Lone Wolf and Cub was soon followed by The Legend of Kamui, Mai the Psychic Girl and Area 88. American readers would also have been exposed to translated manga in Frederik Schodt’s landmark book, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983) and I Saw It!, a comic book version of Barefoot Gen published by Leonard Rifas in 1982. And this is where, when reading this book, I am reminded how our mind plays tricks on us. We remember things differently. Some things we remember as bigger than they actually were. In my mind, the publication of the English version of Lone Wolf and Cub was a major comic book event. In reality, Iglesia proves empirically that Lone Wolf and Cub was not that significant in the whole scheme of things for manga publication in the West. In short, looking at the reception and sales of Lone Wolf and Cub, and Japan Inc in America and Germany, they are not significant to manga’s breakthrough in the West. But the Marvel Comics’ imprint Epic’s edition of Akira was the game changer, despite its more expensive prestige format. (p. 144) The Western comic book format was a hinderance to the success of Lone Wolf and Cub and the graphic novel format did not make Japan Inc a best seller, but Akira broke through the market.

In terms of argument, approach and structure, the author borrows heavily from reception history, which is the fundamental art historical method used in this study. Its overall aim is to find out what people in certain regions of the world thought about manga at a certain time. (p. 10) Iglesia chose to focus on people rather than manga readers to get a broader sense of the reading audience. To quote: 

 

Note that I deliberately use the generic term people instead of more specific ones such as manga fans or even manga readers. This is because the latter terms imply a particular subset of recipients who repeatedly or even regularly read manga and who already have a pre-formed opinion about manga that sets a positive expectation for their next act of reception; in other words, the act of manga reception has become a habit for them. In this study, the only prerequisite to qualify as a relevant recipient is that he or she has read at least one manga, or even only part of a manga. 

But there is a problem with this approach. To quote:

 

However, only a small fraction of these recipients have recorded their thoughts about their reception experience, and even less have done so in a form accessible to researchers today. The best bet for the researcher is to seek out records that have been both written down and published. The most common form of such records is a text in a magazine – most likely a specialised comic magazine (that is, a periodical that reports about comics, not an anthology of comics)… As a result, the group of recipients that I concentrate on is narrowed down to what I am going to refer to as journalists, be they professionals or amateurs, with vocational training in journalism or not. (p 10-11)

Iglesia is aware of the limitations of taking journalists’ writings on manga at face value. 

 

It is safe to say that the intent of a journalist writing about a comic is not, for instance, to give an accurate and objective picture of the manga reception of his or her time, and the intended recipient of his or her message is not a researcher working 30 years in the future. It is crucial to be aware of the original configuration of these acts of communication – of the intended recipient and the original intent of the journalist. We need to find out what the journalist wanted to achieve, as this intent shapes the content of his or her message, in order to extract the information we are interested in.

 

Some journalists were even comic publishers themselves at the same time. A different but no less problematic incentive for journalists to review comics was the opportunity to obtain review copies – particularly as there was usually no (or only little) monetary compensation – which tempts journalists to write unduly positive reviews in the hope of receiving more review copies from the same publisher in the future. 

Furthermore, 

 

The importance of the role of journalists cannot be overstated, as they were a major part of, in the words of Bourdieu, the whole set of agents whose combined efforts produce consumers capable of knowing and recognizing the work of art as such. This means that the production of »the meaning and value of the work, that is, the attitude of readers towards individual manga titles, is to a certain extent shaped by critics (as well as publishers, who Bourdieu mentions explicitly). So in addition to trying to find out what a critic him- or herself thought about a particular manga, we should also aim to estimate the influence of a journalistic text on the attitude of the reader of that text towards the manga in question. (p. 11)

 

Although in a footnote to this paragraph, Iglesia said that comic magazines are not widely read so their influence on readers would be limited. Again, this is a reminder not to take things at face value, but with a critical eye. The important point is this: the whole idea of perceiving manga as a genre has been brought about by these journalists. (p. 12)

So to unpack the above, this book is really about the reception of manga by journalists and, in turn how the views of these journalists influence others' views and reception. But I would say this is problematic because how do you prove this? It is an issue of causation that cannot be solved easily. You can show a co-relation, but you cannot prove causation. On page 214, it was suggested that “by mapping one reception environment (Japan) onto the other (USA), one could speculate about the chances that such a hypothetical early manga translation would have had.” I doubt that is so. The book also does not examine the influence of manga on the American comics creators such as Miller because Iglesia argues “this kind of reception is hardly relevant to the larger question about the propagation of manga among the general public”, (p. 13), I disagree as Frank Miller was so popular at one point that his fans would read manga because of him. I know I did. 

Chapter-wise, Iglesia examines his case studies by looking at their publication and reception in America, then in Germany. Deep analysis and comparison is being done here by looking at issue six (1987) of Lone Wolf and Cub as it was also the only one to be included in the first German edition of the series. For the Akira chapters, he looks at issues like flipping the art, coloring, script, charts to show the rank sales of Akira in Advance Comics Top 100, the number of cyberpunk scenes in the Akira issues and which year they appeared in. Akira is central to Iglesia’s argument; that is, if you accept his argument. 

There are some things I disagree with. While he has proved with sales figures and reviews that Lone Wolf and Cub was a “modest cult hit” (p. 63), I disagree with the assessment that its “relative lack of success was most likely due to (the) rather mediocre quality of the original material (compared to Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s Akira, for example)” (p. 63). This same subjective assessment was also leveled on Crying Freeman, which was described as a “mediocre series” in the back matter. While Akira is great and I would say superior to many other manga series, too much acclaim is given to it. One need not dismiss Lone Wolf and Cub and Crying Freeman to argue Akira was good or important. His position does not accord with the fact that Freeman’s author Ryôichi Ikegami was given a highly acclaimed lifetime achievement award and a retrospective at the Angouleme Comics Festival a few years ago. 

I am also not convinced by the utility of Chapter 8, Online Survey. It had 22 responses and it was a checklist to find out which manga were read when, in order to pinpoint the breakthrough of manga in the West. (p. 201) There were no open-ended questions. While Igelsia explained why he chose to conduct a survey instead of conducting in-depth interviews to get more responses, I believe interviews with 20 respondents would be richer and the resulting data more meaningful.

Compared to the other case studies, the book devotes three chapters to Akira, both the manga, the anime and its connection to cyberpunk. He rightly pointed out the importance of cyberpunk in making the film popular, although the English edition of the manga was popular for other non-cyberpunk reasons. (p. 162) On this aspect of transmedia and intertextual context (p. 160), another area Iglesia could have explored is to compare the success of Akira as a film shown in the cinemas and Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon as anime shown on television, and how both events differ as turning points in making manga popular in the West. The difference in medium should tell another story. While outside the remit of this book, the impact of Ghost in the Shell film (1995) and the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series would be interesting case studies. Other points he discussed are the importance of the adoption of the tankobon (roughly paperback) size in the eventual success of manga in the West (p. 199), and the issue of flipping artwork for publishing Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball. (p. 218)

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, as it brought me back to the 1980s of reading manga in English. Being in Singapore, I have been reading manga in Chinese. Recently I wrote a chapter on the reception of manga and anime in Singapore. This book exposed me to other reception approaches and theories. 

Book Review: Matthias Lehmann's Parallel

reviewed by Lizzy Walker, Wichita State University

Matthias Lehmann. Parallel. Oregon: Oni Press, 2023. 452 pages, $29.99 9781637151006. https://oni-press.myshopify.com/products/parallel

 

            Translated from German into English for the first time by Ivanka Hahnenberger, Matthias Lehman's Parallel presents the story of Karl Kling, a gay man living in 1980s Germany. He is struggling to reconnect with his estranged daughter through a letter he wants to send to her. Lehmann presents Karl's story in two timelines. One timeline is in the 1980s before the Berlin Wall coming down and Germany’s reunification, shortly after Karl had retired from his job. The second timeline is during 1950s postwar Germany, after Karl has returned from his time in the German army. The story presents Karl's struggle to conform to familial expectations and social conventions, keeping his sexuality hidden from everyone close to him, and with reason. Homosexuality was illegal until 1994.

            The graphic novel opens with elderly Karl and his friend Adam discussing his retirement, but Karl's demeanor does not reflect any joy at facing his "hard-earned" reward. His mood improves little at the celebration held in the local bar that evening. When Adam talks of the beaches of Italy, and of the gorgeous women he could meet, Karl does not say much. Later, when Adam inquires about Karl's estranged daughter, Hella, Karl reveals he has not heard from her in eight years. In a flashback, the reader sees that last fateful evening with Karl and Hella. She is angry with him, she yells at him, and she leaves. The story snaps back to the present, and Karl starts going through old photographs. His first memory conjured by these windows in time is from when he served as a cook in the German army in World War II. An innocent romantic encounter with his tent-mate gives the reader the first glimpse at Karl hiding his homosexuality.

            Karl's life in the 1950s is fraught with bad decisions and tragedy along the way. After Karl kisses a man whom he mistakes for his old tent mate in the restroom at a local bar, rumors start to circulate. This information makes it to his father-in-law who happens to be a prominent figure in the community. He issues a severe warning to Karl, who does not heed it. Instead, he meets a man at the local swimming hole, which leads to a sexual entanglement that costs him his marriage and his livelihood when his father-in-law intervenes yet again, via a group of men who assault the two lovers. When he leaves his first marriage, Karl finds friends and foes in his struggle to come to terms with his identity while still attempting to maintain a straight façade. Eventually, Karl marries a second time, which becomes a relationship also fraught with tragedy. At one point, a clandestine lover loses his housing, so Karl invites him to live with his family. Much to the surprise of Karl, and the reader, this ends terribly, but not as might be expected.

            Throughout this graphic novel, Lehmann depicts Karl with all of his flaws. Despite how much he says he wants a traditional family, Karl destroys them by hiding his extramarital relationships the best that he can, while denying his identity out of necessity. He could not live openly as he might have wanted because of the illegality and stigma of being homosexual. As infuriating as Karl's actions are, it is a struggle to remain angry with him. While his life story unfolds, the reader sees his second marriage fall apart, more relationships fall apart, and betrayal after betrayal. They are not all of Karl's doing, but come as the result of his actions.

            Lehmann's approach to themes of loneliness, confusion, deception, and how the decisions of one man's lifetime culminate in isolated introspection and coming to terms with his past both work to provide the reader with a whole person. Karl is not perfect. The reader can despise the character's actions in one panel, and have compassion and empathy for Karl in the next. Lehmann's use of nonlinear storytelling helps tell the complicated story of Karl's life, weaving back and forth between his past and present, interspersed with the letter he is writing to his daughter. Karl's story hurts and it is meaningful in that hurt. It is engaging in a way that makes the reader feel like they are witnessing a very human character. Lehmann does not sugarcoat anything here. The reader sees everything primarily from Karl's point of view. At first, I wondered why Lehmann did not spend any time from Hella's point of view, but this could be for various reasons, including that the story is based on an actual relative of Lehmann's.

            It is worth taking time reading through Parallel, both to digest Karl's whole story and to take in the artwork. While there are many secondary characters, it is not hard to remember who they are and what their roles are in Karl's life, both those he harms but also ones with whom he shares genuine friendship. Lehmann's chosen palette for this graphic novel is black and white, and he makes good use of light and shadow. The backgrounds are worth taking extra time to peruse. Lehmann effectively matches the environment with the mood of particular scenes well.

 

Book Review- The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre

 Reviewed by Chris York

Christopher Conway and Antionette Sol. The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496218995/ 

[Until December 31, all books are half price - enter 6HLW22 in the promotion code field of your shopping cart and click "Add Promotion Code" when making your purchase.]

 Christopher Conway and Antionette Sol have assembled a well-conceived and well-executed anthology exploring the development of the Western genre in international comic books. Their introduction lays the foundation for the book by briefly summarizing the origins of the genre within the American comic book industry and the conduits through which the genre initially established itself in other nations. The introduction, however, is the last time the United States is the focus of the anthology. All ten of the subsequent chapters of the book are devoted to the Western within different comics traditions, Though Conway and Sol discuss the role of U.S. companies in popularizing the Western comic abroad, nearly all of the chapters are devoted to stories developed within the comics industries of these different nations, as opposed to merely imported comics.

            It may seem counter-intuitive that a genre so steeped in the ideological morass of exceptionalism, individualism, and colonialism peculiar to the United States would enjoy enduring popularity with international audiences. Even a casual observer of comics around the world, however, knows that the Western’s appeal is widespread. The Comic Book Western addresses how the genre gained a foothold internationally, but also how the genre evolved and, in many cases, thrived within these disparate cultures. The overarching premise of the book is that the global popularity of the Western genre has endured because creators “reterritorialize” or “destabilize” the conventions of the genre, adapting its recognizable conventions to fit within different cultural milieus.

The structure of the individual chapters is remarkably uniform for an anthology. Though the book is divided into “Transnational Histories” and "Critical Reinscriptions,” the difference between the sections seems to be one of degree. All of the chapters trace the growth of the Western within a specific comics tradition, many of them reaching back into the 19th century to identify the culture’s first exposure to the western form.  Each chapter also provides a deeper analysis of a specific title or titles to illustrate the unique character of the Western in that nation. Furthermore, the anthology strikes a good balance between chapters that focus on well-established, critically-acclaimed titles, such as Blueberry and Sargento Kirk, and titles that are more obscure.

            Each chapter traces what the editors call the “vital dialogues with local and transnational currents” that comprise the Western tradition around the world (3).  For instance, Sol’s chapter on Blueberry and the Franco-Belgian tradition identifies 1960s counter cultures as part of the impetus behind Charlier and Giraud’s anti-hero. While the counter-cultural revolutions of the 1960s changed the Western in nations around the world, Sol also notes that Blueberry’s aesthetic owes a great deal to the “local” cinematic tradition of the French New Wave.

            Much of the “reterritotrialization” occurs through the merging of genres. Manuela Borzone’s chapter notes how Argentinian creators merged the Western with their own gauchesca tradition. Similarly, Christopher Conway shows that, despite their almost exclusive portrayal of American settings and the absence of Mexican characters, Mexican Westerns are infused with melodramatic conventions of sentimentality and family values that make them a uniquely local product.

            In addition to the nations mentioned above, The Comic Book Western includes chapters on Germany, Italy, Poland, Great Britain, Spain, Japan and Canada. Joel Deshaye’s chapter on Canada is noteworthy because it includes the only exploration of an indigenous creator using comic book conventions and Western themes. Several chapters touch upon the portrayal of Indigenous Americans, but Deshaye’s discussion of David Garneau’s comics-inspired paintings—which make use of panels, gutters, and thought bubbles—is the only chapter to address an artist whose heritage is from one of the indigenous nations that the genre so exploits.

            The anthology contains sixteen black and white illustrations. Many of the images are covers. Nearly all of the images do important work, and the authors all explicate them well. However, I found myself wanting more. With such a wide range of source material, at least some of the comics are bound to be unfamiliar to portions of the readership. This is not a problem unique to this anthology of course. I would guess this was a limitation imposed by the publisher and not the editors. A more liberal use of images could have better illustrated points the authors are making.

            In the end, though, my criticisms are few. Conway and Sol have assembled a rich anthology, a balanced, insightful volume that effectively addresses the global nature of its subject. In their introduction, they articulate the modest hope that the book helps “to make the study of comic book Westerns less implausible than it has been”(6). I have no doubt of that. In fact, I suspect comics scholars interested in the Western genre, or in comparative studies in general, will find this a useful resource for years to come.

 

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Globalization of the Comic Book Western by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol

Part 1. Transnational Histories

1.      Italian Western Comics and the Myth of the Open Frontier by Simone Castaldi

2. Comic Book Westerns and the Melodramatic Imagination in Mexico by Christopher Conway

3. German Western Readers and the Transnational Imagination by Johannes Fehrle

4. Beyond Parody: Polish Comic Book Westerns from the 1960s through the 2010s by Marek Paryz

5. Blueberry: Remaking the Western in Franco-Belgian Bandes dessinées by Antoinette Sol

Part 2. Critical Reinscriptions

6. Argentina’s Outlaws and the Revisionist Western: The Case of Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Hugo Pratt’s Sargento Kirk by Manuela Borzone

7. British Comics and the Western: The Future West, the Supernatural, and Strong Women in The HellTrekkers, The Dead Man, and Missionary Man by Lee Broughton

8. Canada’s Triumph Comics and David Garneau’s Métis Response to the “Indian” of the Comic Book Western by Joel Deshaye

9. A Spanish View of the American West: El Coyote and His Comic Magazine by David Rio

10. Faraway So Close: The Representation of the American West in Igarashi Yumiko’s Mayme Angel by Rebecca Suter

Index