this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Anime & Donghua

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36
DC's Jim Lee Admits Manga Has Beaten Western Comics (www.cbr.com)
submitted 4 days ago by Yuritopiaposadism@hexbear.net to c/anime@hexbear.net
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He continued to add, “in Japan, it’s closer to ‘literature,’ and anyone can read it, and it’s not just hero stories. There’s a much wider range of genres, like stories about cooking and soccer. You can draw stories from that. So I’m very happy that the manga has been so successful, because it gives me a ‘goal’ to aim for. The manga market is bigger than our industry, so the question becomes, ‘what can we learn from this?’“

"Another thing to add is that in the West, comics and animation have been considered ‘children’s media.’ As people grow up, they move on to live-action. But in Japan, that’s not the case. Not only is there a wide range of genres, but adults also read manga and watch anime. As a culture, it’s an ‘art’ that isn’t limited to a specific age group," Lee said.

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[–] save_vs_death@hexbear.net 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Japan has a rich history of self-publishing, people put their stuff out there, and regular people actually buy and read it. It's not just people in the self-published space boosting each other's work. Eventually, the most successful self-published stuff gets picked up by a megabux company and "hits the mainstream". Their publishing model is completely different.

The closest we have to that in the west are webcomics, i think, and the closest we'd get to the Japanese model was if DC started throwing big money at these creators to publish their stuff. That could never happen because DC couldn't then go on to own everything in perpetuity, which they need so they can sell a doctor bubbleman funko pop without ever paying royalties.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Except most webcomic artists just end up working for a big name studio eventually.

I think it comes down to how easy it is to get around Japan to go to all of these small to medium size manga conventions. The U.S. simply can't sustain that level, as travel time is too long and lodging is too expensive to do more than maybe three a year if you are truly dedicated. Whereas in Japan, with the public transit system you could probably go once a month if not more.

Hell pretty much all the conventions around where I live were killed since COVID, apparently never to revive.