Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Manga and Anime have become a major part of Western Culture. Growing primarily from TikTok and what is deemed the “Great Shift,” being an era in which anime and manga went from a more niche medium to a much more popular medium. But here in the United States, we already had a super popular and not very niche readable medium in comic books.
Comic books in the 1940s were a popular source of literary media, mainly with the superhero genre. So with an almost 80-year head start, how did Manga manage to overthrow comic books as number 1?
One of the main reasons manga has become such a popular media source compared to comic books comes from the ease of entry that comes from reading manga over comic books. Manga uses linear storytelling from a single mangaka(author), creating a flow of storytelling told from a single perspective.
On the other hand, comic books often have multiple writers that change constantly, creating a lot of different perspective changes and can sometimes make understanding the characters and plot confusing. On top of that, comic books(especially superhero comic book stories) often have constant reboots and retcons of the characters and their stories.
Another major reason comic books are no longer the dominant source of comic media literature is the Hollywood-ification of comic book stories. Majorly with Marvel and DC Comics(run by Disney and Warner Bros. respectively). Over the last almost two decades, comic book stories and characters have switched to focus on being live-action adaptations and films.
This switch not only continues to change the continuity of the stories but also pushes comic books to the back of the list of importance, making comic book stories and characters into action-star characters instead.
As well as the genre of Manga being much more spread. There is a manga and story for any and everyone to enjoy. Action, romance, thrillers; if it’s a genre, there is a manga for it. Compare this to the popular comic book media, which is run by the superhero genre, a genre that, although it has much representation and plenty of stories that take place in different genres and have different subplots, at the end of the day it is still a superhero story which isn’t for everyone.
All in all, through its own greed for growth into Hollywood films and the difficulty and dislike of genre in reading for many comic books over the past half-decade, it has become a far less read and accessed source of literary media compared to manga even in the West.
