Extended Mag: Getting into Reading Manga Magazines! 🗞

[soggyboy]

@rodan

In general I would say though that in mainstream superhero comics in particular, where creative teams change on single books, publisher-mandated crossover events happen all the time, and shared continuity across the entire line is constantly tenuously maintained, it can be difficult follow a fully coherent run on a book to completion, much less plan and execute it. And perhaps the best you can hope for is that the collected volumes of a given creator’s run are all internally consistent and solid and numbered in a clear way, which is not always necessarily the case…

I tried getting into American superhero comics once and ran into all of these issues. I think what lost me was some big crossover event that was super dumb and affected every series I was reading whether I wanted it to or not, so I was like, great I can’t even ignore the ‘doctor doom is president’ storyline because now every single unrelated series is talking about how doctor doom is president. They’re also very expensive to keep up with, and series/characters constantly get rebooted, get moved to different writers, etc etc, so even if you like a character, the next writer might change everything about them. Very frustrating.

[Jintor]

Sometimes you get peak with the comics crossover stuff but other times (most of the time) it’s awful
. Though it’s more common I feel that like a lot of stuff some is peak some is terrible

[mitrac]

That turned into a fascinating discussion and answered questions I didn’t know I had, nice insights

I had no idea that’s how American comics work and now I see why that wasn’t accessible for me / my family as a kid and why I haven’t been attracted to the American comic universe / scene since. And why it’s so fun to go into French comic book stores! The French and Japanese language scenes seem to have gone in a direction that feels like the reader gets a closer connection to the creator

@rodan

My gut feeling is that at least for something like Harta, the month-to-month pacing is probably the more major concern mostly, but volume breaks are probably planned out to be smooth around that too.

That makes sense seeing it all broken down a bit more. In the first case artists have to succeed in the magazine, then in the collected volumes, as in, they would definitely lose if the pacing in the magazine failed so that consideration comes first, at least until they’re popular.

@rodan

This is complete speculation, but I also get the impression that probably virtually any given series as it starts out is on uncertain grounds in terms of how many volumes it will get in the end, and reader feedback and sales of the first volume I assume play into that decision. That’s just based on the open-ended feeling of the pacing on most series as they begin, and how it feels honestly pretty rare that the timing of a series ending feels 100% definitely planned far in advance

I was hoping for some insight like that and your other comments since you’ve read deeper into so many series. Thanks so much!

[rodan]

I did feel slightly guilty afterwards that I shared exclusively doom and gloom yesterday about American comics - it’s worth mentioning that there’s still cool stuff coming out all the time and a good comic book store can be a super fun place to visit! If I’d happened to move next to one when I moved out on my own instead of coincidentally ending up like a block away from a Kinokuniya I may well have been singing a different tune in some ways. And now that Bookwalker has gotten me well used to ebooks I should really check out the digital options sometime. My favorite inroad to superhero comics as a kid was actually DVD-ROM compendiums of scans of the original issues spanning 40 years of a given series that Marvel sold for a while before everyone worked out how digital comics were going to be sold going forward.

For a stray recommendation, I’d hazard anyone interested in the manga magazines I post about would definitely enjoy On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden, and DC’s Showcase Presents and Marvel’s Essential lines are great ways to get to try a lot of classic comics for cheap, since they’re big cheap 500-page black and white paperback compendiums. Showcase Presents: Superman in particular is just full of the strange, inventive, good-hearted, whimsical storytelling logic and world-building that I do love about comics from the 50s and 60s. It looks like they might not still be published though… I hope there’s something else to fill that niche.

[soggyboy]

@rodan

I did feel slightly guilty afterwards that I shared exclusively doom and gloom yesterday about American comics - it’s worth mentioning that there’s still cool stuff coming out all the time and a good comic book store can be a super fun place to visit!

I think for American comics you get better mileage out of following indie comic creators and getting into the graphic novel scene, vs trying to follow everything going on in the superhero comic scene. Graphic novels are easy to keep up with since they’re focused on single stories and don’t have the ‘multiverse continuity’ problem going on. There’s a lot of interesting storytelling going on there.

[mitrac]

@rodan

a good comic book store can be a super fun place to visit!

that is still something I’d love to do sometime - I came from a small town and didn’t even know that comic book stores existed until I watched big bang theory.

@soggyboy

indie comic creators and getting into the graphic novel scene

that’s a good point, my partner follows some and has a growing collection…

[ChristopherFritz]

@mitrac

do mangaka plan their episodes based on expected breakpoints in later collected volumes?

While I don’t know if this is taken into consideration for some mangaka, I’ve read many manga where this seems to be the case.

As I read digitally, and as I’m in the middle of many different series, it’s easy to not know how far into a volume I am. But some series (たいようのいえ and 思い、思われ、ふり、ふられ immediately come to mind) I can tell when I’ve reached the end of a volume just based on the cliffhanger that comes up.

It’s worth mentioning that those two series are from established mangaka with multiple completed series already. No doubt it’s easier to factor in volume compilations into story planning after building up experience.

[pm215]

@rodan

This is complete speculation, but I also get the impression that probably virtually any given series as it starts out is on uncertain grounds in terms of how many volumes it will get in the end, and reader feedback and sales of the first volume I assume play into that decision. That’s just based on the open-ended feeling of the pacing on most series as they begin, and how it feels honestly pretty rare that the timing of a series ending feels 100% definitely planned far in advance.

Certainly when Love Bullet got its first volume published last year the mangaka was clear on twitter that people who liked the series needed to buy the volume, because the series wouldn’t get to continue if the sales figures weren’t good enough. AIUI the traditional economics for manga are that those weekly/monthly “telephone book” magazines cheaply printed on lousy paper actually sell at a loss, and are effectively advertising for people to buy the collected volumes where the publisher makes their money back – though I don’t know to what extent that remains the case.

Sometimes the mangaka will talk about this in the little afterword at the end of a volume: how they brought in an extra character because the manga was doing well and they got to do more of it, or how they’d hoped to do XYZ with the plot but didn’t have the opportunity because they had to end it.

[Jintor]

Certainly you read about series having to take a sudden swing into an exit route when they get axed in Jump or whatever. (Jump I think is especially competitive)