Making a Living in Manga 3

In Making a Living in Manga Part 1, I explained nine reasons why the manga-making economy in North America is broken. In Part 2, we discussed the issue of fan and creator perception of original English language (OEL) manga, and whether it was "Real" or "Fake" Manga.

Now in Part 3, we'll discuss the role that art school plays (or maybe how it doesn't do enough) to teach would-be manga artists how to draw comics, and how the training gap leaves them without the drawing, writing and business skills necessary to pay the bills. We'll also discuss apprenticeship opportunities (or the lack thereof) in N. America.

The comments you're seeing here were mostly from a wide-ranging discussion held on Twitter in May 2012, with additional comments sent to me via email. Read on, and see what this mix of fans, novices, pros had to say about the training gap for manga artists in America.

ARE MANY WOULD-BE MANGA ARTISTS READY FOR PRIMETIME? PUBLISHERS SAY NO.

A frequently heard complaint from pros in the comics publishing business is how many portfolios and proposals cross their desk from aspiring manga creators who simply lack the skill, polish and experience to produce professional-level work.

Whether it's a lack of basic drawing skills, sloppy paneling and pacing, or lackluster storytelling, or a combination of these things, many novice creators, even ones that have completed four years of art school seem ill-equipped to make their dreams of a career in comics into a paying reality.

For example, for the past two years, Yen Press has put out an open call for new creators to submit a sample short story for their Talent Search. But in 2012, as in 2011, no 'winners' were announced. In the May 2012 issue of Yen Plus magazine, Yen Press Editor JuYoun Lee described what she had received in the 2012 Talent Search and why she found many entries lacking.

"Although I can see that a great deal of effort went into each page, sometimes just trying hard isn't enough.... Artwise, since this is a new talent search, the main thing we look for is potential for growth. One of the main aspects of that potential is whether or not the basics are there. Many of the submissions were too focused on the individual artist's style -- which is good to have, of course! -- but were lacking in fundamental skills."

This is not a new observation. Back in 2009 at a industry-only panel at Anime Expo, TokyoPop editor Lilian Diaz-Pryzbyl had this to say:

"I've been doing portfolio reviews for five years - some artists get the character design and storytelling, but they don't have the drawing skills to tell the story they have in their mind. The combination of drawing chops and having an understanding of how the story works is hard to find together in one creator."

Yamila Abraham, publisher of Yaoi Press had this to add about the quality of applicants that she's seeing cross her desk:

"Anyone touch on the 'How to Draw Manga' syndrome? It's hard to hire American artists to draw in the manga style. Their art work looks so dated. Those instruction books out there are teaching a manga style from 15 years ago. If you don't want to be called 'fake' manga you have to be contemporary with what artists are currently doing in Japan."

BACK TO BASICS: FIRST, LEARN HOW TO DRAW, WRITE AND TELL A STORY

I have heard this complaint from many pros: that young creators think 'manga' means they don't have to know the basics. Copying your favorite manga artists is fine for starters, but if you don't know the fundamentals of design, composition, and figure drawing, how to render light, shadow and color, how to use different line widths to create texture and dimension, and how to tell a sequential story, your weaknesses will be apparent to any professional who reviews your work, and will ultimately stunt your creative growth.

Whether you go to art school, a four-year or two-year college or just go straight into the comics biz from high school, you need to know the basics before you can be taken seriously as a pro.

"That's certainly one of my complaints. Learn anatomy. Learn good acting. Learn storytelling."
- Lea Hernandez (@TheDivaLea), Comics/webcomics creator and illustrator, Rumble Girls (NBM Publishing)

"Figure drawing courses go a LONG way! Taking some lessons and learning to draw properly, not just manga, helps immensely!"
- Heather Skweres (@CandyAppleCat), Artist, toy collector, and photographer

"Hey, a lot of pro superhero comics artists can't draw perspective, background, or, y'know, feet. Art class for all!"
- Alex Decampi (@alexdecampi), Filmmaker, author

"Writing is THE most important part of the whole. If your art is so-so, but your writing shines, you're golden. Reversed, give up."
- Jon Krupp (@WEKM)

"I think sometimes what N. American creators miss is making characters that people love or hate and can relate to."
- Benu (@Benu), Anime podcaster and blogger, Anime Genesis

"One problem I've noticed among American 'manga' creators is that they tend to put artwork above interesting characters/storytelling. What I always loved about manga was the storytelling. The most successful creators tell great/interesting stories, even if they can't draw well (look at Rumiko Takahashi). Some good artists (Tanemura Arina) are popular at first, but become obscure when they fail to produce stories with good storytelling. Almost nobody talks about her manga anymore and instead she has artbooks."
- Jamie Lynn Lano (@jamieism), Expatriate American comics creator, now living in Japan, former assistant on the Tennis no Oujisama (Prince of Tennis) manga

"No slight to art school, but I taught myself more from drawing 100s of comics pages -- mainly DIRTY PAIR -- than I ever learned from any teacher. No art teacher could teach you more about inking than you'd learn from, say, the brutal DIY inking course in PEN & INK. The advantage of art school? I was able to work on comics pages fulltime, rather than trying to fit 'em in around a (non-art) work schedule."
- Adam Warren (@EmpoweredComic), Comics creator, Empowered (Dark Horse) and Dirty Pair (Dark Horse)

NEXT: Teachers Who Don't Get Manga, Students Who Don't Want to Learn the Basics

Making a Living in Manga 2

"OEL had the stigma of being 'fake manga' so a lot of both American comic fans and manga fans wouldn't go near them. They should have just called them 'comic books' or 'graphic novels.'
- James L (@Battlehork)

"I am interested in what you say re: room for manga-influenced comics in USA (UK for me though)... but isn't there a worry that readers will just think 'un-original manga-influenced', and see them more as parody?"
- David Lawrence (@DCLawrenceUK), UK-based illustrator

"Manga was this whole other thing that got grouped in with Anime and video games. OEL Manga seemed 'contaminated,' I think."
- Ben Towle (@ben_towle), Eisner Awards-nominated comics creator / webcomics creator of Oyster War

"I wonder if the term OEL was never used in manga publishing, would more people give N. American manga/comics a try?"
- Jeff Steward (@CrazedOtakuStew), Anime/manga blogger at OtakuStew.net

"The curse of being a manga-inspired creator is that you are an outsider in EVERY sequential art-related industry."
- Fred Gallagher (@fredrin), Webcomics / comics creator, Megatokyo (Dark Horse)

"Most comments about OEL, on either side, seem to involve unfair generalizations about Japan/America/teens/amateur comic artists."
- Jennifer Fu (@jennifuu), Comics creator (Rising Stars of Manga) and illustrator

"One of Tokyopop's greatest sins is creating an asshole generation of readers obsessed with 'authenticity,' hatefully pointing out 'fake' manga. There is an audience for work influenced by manga and Japan. It was at TCAF this weekend. We just gotta ignore the haters and press."

"I don't buy the 'fans are always haters' argument, fan behaviour has changed dramatically over the 20 years I've been watching. I credit a lot of cool current American yaoi/BL (boys' love manga) fans for looking past the "authenticity" issue and supporting work they like. I don't believe in the 'American creators influenced by manga are fake manga' discussion. It's dumb. Artifice had 1000 backers spend $36,000." (Note: Artifice is a boys' love webcomic by Alex Woolfson and Winona Nelson, which had a very successful Kickstarter campaign)

"There is an audience for this material. People making it need to support each other, work together to find fans and purchasers. And haters need to step all the way to the motherfucking left."
- Christopher Butcher (@Comics212), comics retailer at The Beguiling, comics blogger at Comics212.net, and director of Toronto Comic Arts Festival

"I think yaoi/boys' love has embraced 'local' creators a lot faster than other genres, and that's really only happened in recent years. I had a hell of a time getting people to read OEL yaoi when I first started blogging. Now it's the norm."
- Jennifer LeBlanc (@TheYaoiReview), Boys' love manga reviewer/blogger for The Yaoi Review and Editor for Sublime Manga

"Never try to win the 'you shouldn't call it manga' argument. Get over it. Those will never be their readers."
- Kôsen (@kosen_), Spanish comics creator team Aurora García Tejado and Diana Fernández Dévora, Dæmonium (TokyoPop) and Saihôshi (Yaoi Press)

"Interestingly, I recently spoke to a high school class who asked me how they could break in to the industry. I asked them how many manga they bought by American artists and they told me 'none.' But they didn't see the connection."
- Erica Friedman (@Yuricon), Manga publisher, ALC Publishing and manga/anime blogger at Okazu

"Looking back on Manga: The Complete Guide, I regret not including any OEL titles (or manhwa). They needed the support. But had I included OEL, I would have had to include EVERYTHING even vaguely manga-influenced, going all the way back to the '80s."

"On the other hand, I'm glad I never made any arbitrary decisions about which OEL artists were 'real' and thus worthy of inclusion. I would never have wanted to exclude Ben Dunn (Ninja High School), or Chynna Clugston-Major (Blue Monday), or Adam Warren (Empowered), or even Frank Miller (Daredevil, Sin City) & Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil) etc. Many of those artists couldn't have gotten published by Tokyopop because their work doesn't look 'manga' enough. Super lame."

"I've always seen manga and comics as one coin and it's sad that the 'color line' of Japanese/non-J is such a big deal for some fans. On the other hand, I don't think there is really so much a distaste for OEL among fans, as much that it's collapsed as a publishing phenomenon."
- Jason Thompson (@khyungbird), Author, Manga: The Complete Guide, comics creator (The King of RPGS and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories), former Shonen Jump editor and Otaku USA Magazine manga reviewer

Making a Living in Manga 1

In Bakuman, the manga about making manga created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, two teenage boys pursue their dreams to become professional manga creators. Over the course of 20 volumes, the teens become young men who toil over their drawing boards to reach their goal: to get a popular series featured in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine.

It's not an easy career path for Japanese creators, but it is possible to make a living as a manga-ka in Japan. However, for creators outside of Japan who draw comics with a strong manga influence, it's much tougher to get published and get paid, especially in superhero comics-centric North America. Is it possible to make a living in manga in North America? What would it take, what needs to change in order to create real opportunities for North American 'manga' creators?

MAKING A LIVING IN MANGA: ONLY FOR THE LUCKY FEW?

This topic came up at the 2012 Toronto Comic Arts Festival when Svetlana Chmakova (creator of Dramacon, Nightschool, and illustrator for James Patterson's Witch and Wizard graphic novel, and arguably one of the most successful North American comics creators working in a manga-influenced style) asked this question to me, and a few other creators and publishing pros at breakfast one morning.

Later that same morning, I threw the question out there to Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim), Becky Cloonan (Demo and East Coast Rising), and Adam Warren (Dirty Pair and Empowered), who are all very successful comics creators whose work have strong manga influences. The trio were panelists at a Sunday morning TCAF panel entitled "Making Manga in North America." Like Chmakova, they were all grateful for the success they currently enjoy, but expressed doubt that it would be easy for others to follow in their footsteps.

9 REASONS WHY THE AMERICAN MANGA-MAKING ECONOMY IS BROKEN

Now that manga has been published in English in North America for over 30 years, we now have a generation, if not two, maybe three generations of creators who are influenced by Japanese comics. Many want to make a living making comics. There's lots of talent out there, but right now, prospects for these young artists to make a living just by drawing manga-style comics in North America? Well, they're not great. Here's why:

• A smaller pie = fewer slices - Compared to Japan, fewer people per capita purchase and read comics on a regular basis, thus the North American comics publishing industry is much, much smaller / generates much less money.
• Want to be published in manga magazine? Dream on - Unlike Japan, there are few North American anthology magazines that feature up-and-coming comics creators.
• American manga readers tend to snub/ignore 'fake' manga - While North American manga readers love manga from Japan, they have have been reluctant to show the same level of support for homegrown content. This includes the artists' alley scene at many anime cons where pin-ups and buttons featuring fan art of Japanese manga characters outsell original comics stories and characters.
• Little love for homegrown manga at superhero-centric comics shops - Many comics shops are focused on selling mainstream/superhero fare from the bigger publishers, so self-published work doesn't get much play there. Same goes for most bookshops, big chain or independently-owned stores alike.
• The demise of Borders/ the rise of digital publishing - The North American manga publishing business is in a state of constant flux, partly due to the closure of the Borders Books and Music, a manga-friendly retail chain of stores. The rise of digital publishing platforms is also changing the way books are sold and read in a big way.
• Risk-adverse publishers tend to shy away from original content - In these tough economic times, few North American publishers are less willing to take a chance on original 'manga-inspired' works by new creators. Instead, they are largely focusing on adaptations of best-selling young adult novels, which have a built-in audience and stories with proven success. This is great in that it generates paying gigs for artists, but in the end, it's not original stories that they've written/created themselves, which is the dream for many aspiring creators.
• Art school, then what? - Art schools in North America produce scads of aspiring comics creators who have few real job opportunities waiting for them at graduation, or they graduate without the business/marketing skills necessary to market/sell their work or get picked up by publishers.
• Want to be an artists' assistant? Good luck - Unlike Japan, apprenticeship / assistant opportunities are scarce in North America. Several pro artists have expressed interest in getting assistants, but various factors, including the lack of talent living in close proximity to an artist's studio and reluctance to take on responsibility to pay someone when they can't quite meet their own expenses have been mentioned.
• Webcomics are fun, but don't always pay the bills - Many aspiring comics creators now rely on webcomics to polish their craft, but most webcomics are free to read, and only a handful of webcomics creators make a viable living solely from their online work.

There are probably more factors that I've missed listing here, but you get the idea.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CREATE A VIBRANT COMICS ECONOMY?

A vibrant comics economy needs talented/hardworking creators + (paying) readers + (paying) publishers + training (apprenticeships/art school). Right now, there seems to be a shortage on several fronts, so fixing the 'manga as a career choice in North America' situation is not easy.

Why? Well, if art schools pumped out more creators and gave them the training they need to succeed (not just drawing, but business/marketing too), where are they going to get their first paying job or gain real world experience/apprenticeships/opportunities to hone their skills and showcase their work to readers if there are only a handful of opportunities available?

Even if we have publishers who are willing to pay/publish new artists' work, it means nothing if artists are lacking in skill/professionalism who can pitch their work to publishers, deliver consistently good work, and meet deadlines.

Even if we have better comics/more talented creators, it means nothing if we don't have that critical mass of (paying) readers.

Even if we have readers who are willing to pay for new, original work by artists inspired by manga, it means nothing if they can't find quality comics at their local comics shop, book store, anime or comic con, or find that hidden gem in a vast sea of so-so/mediocre or simply hard-to-find webcomics on the Internetz.

And even if every comics creator decided to go it alone and opted to self-publish / rely on Kickstarter to fund their comics projects, what happens when they discover that their book needs to be marketed and distributed to comics shops and book stores, and publicized so the press and potential readers will know about it? Will they miss out on the editorial / business guidance that an experienced editor/publisher can provide so they can take their work to the next level?

Trying to figure out the 'making a living in with manga in North America' problem is a huge, huge topic. So many want to do it, so few succeed, and there's so much to fix. This has been a long-standing problem and one that deserves some attention. So I threw it out there on Twitter, and boy, I got a lot of great responses from pros, fans and up-and-coming creators alike from North America, Europe, South America and Asia.

Here's are some of the questions that I asked to the Twitterverse: Q: How did we get here? Where are we now? And what would it take to create an environment where N. American 'manga' artists can thrive professionally?

A: [you fill in the blank]

You had a lot to say, so I'm breaking up your comments into several parts. Part 1 is this intro, with four additional parts covering these topics:

• Part 2: "Real" or "Fake" Manga: The OEL Dilemma
• Part 3: The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Manga Training Gap
• Part 4: Publishers vs. Self-Publishing with Webcomics / Kickstarter
• Part 5: What Needs to Change? Suggestions for Solutions

Want to add your thoughts to this discussion? I'll be opening up the comments for each topic as I post each part on my blog. For kick things off, you can add your comments about this article on the blog post introducing this series of articles.

You can also tweet your comments to me at @debaoki or @aboutmanga. If enough comments come in, I may do a follow-up post.

Vampire Manga

Author: Hideyuki Kikuchi
Artist: Saiko Takaki
Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing
Compare prices for Vampire Hunter D Volume 1

In a world ravaged by a long-ago armageddon, vampires are aristrocrats, scientists and the rulers of the world. While humans are re-emerging as a force to be reckoned with in this grim world and the rule of the vampires is on the wane, their thirst for human blood remains.

In this bleak, corrupt world is D, a half-vampire, half-human dhampir who belongs to neither world. He has the unique combination of strength, magical power, smarts and elegant, bewitching beauty that make him the ultimate vampire hunter.