/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3870989
>That's an isolated case though
It's not; one look at the Japanese Kindle Store's search results would likely overwhelm anyone who wasn't already an otaku themselves. My point was that it's easy for westerners to get into manga because unless there's a reasonably large demand for more, we only ever get the classics licensed over here. We get new comic issues practically on IV drip by comparison.
>Wanna read Ghost in the Shell, you start with the 1991 manga. Wanna read Dragonball, you pick up the tankobon. It's easy.
Consider all of the little nips whose first exposure to GITS and Dragon Ball has been through the ARISE and Super manga respectively. I think you're just complaining that people in the western comics industry don't idolize the "artist-author" as much as their manga counterparts do.
>but there's no real story that has a beginning and an end, it's all episodic.
So? A lot of the earliest popular manga were essentially written as scripts for tokusatsu and anime.shows (you can thank Osamu Tezuka for that). You don't need an overarching story to grow attached to certain character designs. The episodic nature of them all means that just about anything can be done with them. Hell, that's the whole appeal of Spider-Man right? "Anyone can wear the mask!" Initial struggles adapting B&W manga to film and television also comes to mind, when mangaka and animators used any colors they had on hand for hair.
>>3871073
Some of the greatest Italian comics were heavily influenced by the Years of Lead; you should read pic related. Also, capeshit has never really had the capacity to be explicitly marxist or even anarchist without completely uprooting established tropes; look past the woke shit because there ain't nothing deep about it. On the other hand, one of the best indie comics publishers right now, Black Mask are specifically interested in stories reflecting more marxist/anarchist sympathies; definitely recommend checking them out: https://blackmaskstore.com/