Meowwwrrrrr hiss hissss! *ducks for cover*
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(Found via MangaBlog) Girls generally may not have to endure the embarrassment that these guys went through buying manga at bookstores, but that doesn’t mean they’re free from clueless jerks clerks. Manga reader Mely details her recent visit to a bookstore where her selections came under some unwanted scrutiny. In this lovely quote, she rips a new one into chauvinists, self-appointed comics cognoscenti, and the French Modernist movement:
If I want to get into an argument about the false High Modernist division between commerce and art, or the unexamined and frequently classist, sexist, and racist standards by which you assign the high status of art or the low status of commerce, or the continued denigration of comics created by women in favor of the exaltation of a select group of male artists, I can find plenty of people willing to condescend to me on the Internet.
…ouch.
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Another blogger, I Against Comics, gives her take on Minx, and does something that seems to have become very popular lately… side-by-side comics vs. manga cover art comparison.
I don’t really have any commentary to provide on this per se, I just think it’s an interesting example of the perception problem Minx has with some of its intended target audience in the early going… much of which may be attributed to its first press releases and New York Times article.
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And what is for me a nice cap on the whole manga WW debate… well-endowed artist Gynocrat wants the hating on Wonder Woman’s chest to stop. I feel this highlights the unfortunate change in direction of the discussion, from “why don’t mainstream comics have more comics to appeal to girls/kids/anyone outside of superhero fandom?” to “how can we change existing comics to better suit our specific world view?”
As the saying goes, you can’t please everybody. If all characters in comics are tall, then short people would be offended; and the well-endowed offend the flat-chested, the smart offend the dumb, and the beautiful offend the ugly. And vice versa. If any slight based on image can be called sexism, then looking for it in the media would be like shooting fish in a barrel… with a cannon. That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist, but there should be some sense of priority. Real sexism isn’t in the Playboy spread, but the single mother with 3 children who has to work two jobs to get by. Racism isn’t an unfunny comedian cursing at hecklers, it’s in the ghettos and projects so poor and crime-infested that police refuse to patrol them.
On a more basic level, for all the criticisms levelled at Wonder Woman and DC, we’ve forgotten that she neither seeks nor tries to appeal to everyone. That’s true of anything… no one manga is created for all, either. What manga in general offers, though, is a diverse selection of material that will cater to its chosen audience, be it populist or niche. Let manga be manga, porn be porn, BL be BL… and Wonder Woman be Wonder Woman. Perhaps this is due to my bias against perpetual characters, but this one question lingered with me throughout the debate: Why reinvent her when the same effort can be put into creating wholly original works for girls without the baggage of continuity and history?
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Switching gears a bit… Mangacast continues the countdown to Comiket with a look at the catalogue… which also acts as a ticket into the event.
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Was there a specific thread where you saw comments like that? The closest I could think of was that one CBR thread I linked to, but even that didn’t strike me as quite what you’re talking about.
If I could build on your analogy, it’s like if one of the largest and most popular restaurant chains went from being a family-friendly establishment to a Hooters. Yeah, people don’t have to eat there anymore, but for those with fond memories of eating there when they were younger it doesn’t surprise me that they’d pine for a return to the original format.
(And to further twist the already tortured analogy, I see most people as simply asking for an *alternative* to every instance of the chain being a Hooters, not that all the Hooters be closed down completely. If you like T&A with your cheeseburger (or kimchi), fine, but how about something for the rest of us who lose their appetites when confronted with such desperate displays of skin.)
As for why creators don’t put effort into creating new characters rather than “servicing trademarks,” why do Japanese manga-ka create dojinshi featuring already established characters?
(For what it’s worth, I’d prefer to see Tintin’s proposal reworked as a creator-owned, non-WW project, but I also know that such a change would cause the project to lose some of its appeal for many fans.)
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Wow, defensive today? ^_^;;
It€™s just the notion that all western comics€™ publisher should make manga versions of their properties, or at least publish manga period, that seems, off-putting. ^_^
Come on, there are companies that specialize in producing manga, and WOW, they even know how the licensing game works. Let them license Wonder Woman from DC and make a shojo Wonder Woman. I have no issue with that, but Simon is right, this blogsphere flurry is bringing out the usual€¦HEY DC, Wonder Woman Sucks€¦fix it and us manga fans will read it, fantards who think that manga is the be all of sequential story-telling. They are out there, and they are running with this. No offense, but Simon nor anyone else should have to link these weenies to you in a bulleted list€”he didn€™t even mention your blog by name, so I think you should relax, just a tad. ^^;; No one is calling you out as their ring-leader.
Here is something that really irked me about your thread though€¦since you€™re so keen on roleplaying seme with me ^_-
€¦Your dis of Mike’s rendition of Diana€™s anatomy. Are you serious? Manga creators play fast and loose with anatomy constantly, sometimes to the point where it€™s absolutely fucking ridiculous. Gee Nana, what big eyes you got€¦that€™s no moon€¦it€™s a space station. Ot ot ot. I thought your nit-pick was uncool, considering Tinpan’s anatomy was not perfect either, intentional or not. Artists have styles that reflect their own notions on a character that make them unique. Some artists are fond of large noses, others large breasts, some BL mangaka like to give their bishies an impossible rib counts, while some western creators cater to the concept of spandex €˜fanserve€™ by making the impossible bust and waist lines. None of that should be contrasted and compared as a €˜which one is better€™ challenge. Just my opinion.
I hope Tinpan gets a MANGA PUBLISHER to pick up her project. I can€™t imagine D.C. refusing anyone a license to Wonder Woman, in order to promote a light hearted series for young women.
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Simon -
To be honest, I mostly skimmed that thread, so I’ll take your word for it. Even so, in general I am sympathetic to charges that superhero comics are sexist, so that might partly explain our different takes on the issue. Yeah, there are much more troubling examples of sexism in the real world, but that doesn’t mean that DC gets a pass for stuff like this.
I’d like to be optimistic about Minx (I think it has a great creative line-up so far and I’ll probably be buying most of the launch titles myself), but I do wonder (1) how ownership is structured for the books and (2) if it’ll succeed in attracting many female readers. Personally I think Berger brought on much of the backlash herself by coming across as dismissive of manga.
As for “how the issue suddenly became why manga WW is superior,” if anyone has phrased the issue like that, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they simply meant “this is a version of WW that I’d prefer reading to what’s currently offered,” so in a subjective sense, it is superior.
My dojinshi remark was intended to address your question, “Why reinvent [WW] when the same effort can be put into creating wholly original works?” Apparently the desire to play with others’ toys is cross-cultural, regardless of how old those toys are. (If you meant the question from the publisher’s perspective, I’d assume it’d be because DC would own the rights to WW, so it’d be in their interests to create a top-selling version of her.)
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