Hertz Donut?

Amigos!

It is Sunday, and I’ve been so lethargic I’m only now sitting down to write what was supposed to be a super-short post on Friday night.

But turning on my phone at 7am (after the pug woke me up at 6:30am, because dogs don’t understand the idea of a weekend) made me realize, ‘Oh yeah, I should write this thing just so I can kind of get this thing out of my head.’

It’s not like the thing is super-substantial—it is very much the opposite, but I think it’s precisely for that reason that it keeps clattering around in there? And sure, in theory this is exactly what social media is for, but I kinda worry by the time I distill my meager point into a couple of “skeets” (I find that term a little gross, but I get that the more accurate “social media ejaculations” eats up a lot of valuable word count), there might not be anything left? I think it’s possible my appreciation for both Man-Thing and Swamp Thing stems from the fact that I have a very “moss-like” approach to thinking—it’s not the thing that’s interesting, it’s what ends up growing on that thing, you know?

Anyway, if I had to boil it down to my thesis statement, it’d be this: “Manga! It’s great! But sometimes kind of…not?”

(And hopefully that’ll give you enough information on whether or not you want to bail on the rest of this post or not.)

To unpack it a bit, and to build on a point I touched in my last post where I picked up Vol. 8 of Boichi’s Origin, when I did so and started reading, I realized with a shock that the title was wrapping up. It was going to be donesville, and this thing I liked was going away.

And you know? That’s not really something you have to worry about when you read Big Two superhero comics, is it? Oh sure, you can be bummed when a creative run’s team on the title ends, or, less often, when an “era” of a comic ends (such as the X Titles’ “Krakoa Era”). But you know, it’s not like, “ah gee, no more Batman.”

Now admittedly, I read very little of the Big Two these days and it’s been that way for a while, so maybe I’m once again talking out of my (old, wrinkled) ass (sorry for the unnecessary embellishment), but… it seems to me like you get stuff that’s announced as a miniseries, or it’s not specified that it’s a miniseries but it’s clear to everyone it’s not going to run much longer than whatever’s being publicized. Or it’s just something that always runs, forever and ever, and sometimes it sells great and sometimes it sells shitty but, with the exception of Thor and the Fantastic Four, there’s not really a “this thing is going away.”

Or more to the point, even if there is, you know it’s not. There may not be a Power Man & Iron Fist title on the stands currently, but it’s a pretty safe bet I just have to wait long enough and one will come along. ("Who says this isn’t the Mighty Marvel Age of Mass Transit Metaphors?”)

But manga? Manga ends. And then new manga starts up! And you know what they call it? I think you would call that….healthy?

I certainly don’t doubt the manga industry has gotten much less healthy over the years as readership has drifted away and, crucially, each generation of kids reading manga gets smaller and smaller not just due to video games and competing screen time but, you know, Japan’s population dwindling in a very significant and substantial way.

In 2022, I started keeping a very half-assed list of the manga titles I was reading in both collections and digital simulpub—now I just list the simulpub chapters I’m reading, part because if I’m not careful if the manga-ka takes a month off it might drop off my radar—and of the nine (again, a very half-assed list), five have wrapped up.

By the time we get to 2024, out of the thirty-eight titles, seventeen are no longer being published (and there’s another four or five titles I’m pretty sure have ended but I stopped reading before it got to that point, and there are at least two titles on that list that I think are ending soon).

Admittedly, I’m not a follower of the big Shonen Jump super-faves: I never got (back) into One Piece; I never tried out My Hero Academia despite all the recommendations; I was reading the end of Naruto at the very end when it was super-impenetrable.

But those titles will end (unless someone like Oda basically licenses One Piece out to run after he leaves/dies, which for whatever reason I can kind of see him doing but also find that super-duper unlikely).

Whether it’s the skin in the game of “you know what, this is my story and I’ve told it the way I wanted to and it’s done” or “we tried to give this a shot, but you’re not doing well on the surveys, your tankōbon aren’t moving, and no anime studio has express an interest in adapting, we’re going to wrap this up,” it definitely feels the opposite of the Big Two, which feels a bit….honestly I don’t know the word? I want to go with “staid,” but I’m not sure the manga industry is especially adventurous, and both “stagnant” and “moribund” feel a bit too harsh. And “dormant” feels a bit too euphemistic?

What’s interesting to me is when I realized the well of frustration for what it was, the “god damn it, everything I like to read never makes it beyond forty-five chapters” feeling felt both familiar and nostalgic?

As a child of the 70s, I grew up when Marvel and DC both tried their hands at aggressive over-expansion, and in the early and mid-80s, alternative and independent comic publishers got in the game as well. New things were coming out all the time—and the majority of them died quick, not-especially painless deaths. Omega The Unknown ran ten issues. Skull the Slayer ran eight issues. Claw The Unconquered ran twelve, The Joker ran nine, and none of the First Issue Specials ever got a second (though characters like Dr. Fate and Starman got their own titles, it was much later and not with the teams or slant of those first issues).

And as a kid of the 70s, I wasn’t sentimental about it—that would come later with adulthood—because when one title left, another one would take its place. Also, let’s be honest, the shared universe continuity of the Big Two took the sting out of a lot of it—the characters were more likely to pop up as a supporting character in another still-published title or to be part of a team in a title yet to come than never to be seen again.

(The fact they whatever new edges they had grown were sanded off when they returned was another issue—frustrating and unsettling, to be sure, but not guaranteed by any means.)

I would go to the store any time my parents went (much to my poor dad’s vexation as I only realized decades later half the time he went was just to try and get away from us kids for a bit), and every time I went to the comic rack, there was a mix of “oh great, one of my favorites” and “oh great, I have no idea what this is, it looks cool and I’ve got another quarter, I’m gonna get it.”

I think the reason I keep using MangaPlus on my phone as my primary manga reader these days is that you open up the app and it’s just one scrollable page of title thumbnails from newest to oldest, with the occasional pop-up advocating for a one-shot or new title, or the occasional banner at the top grabbing my attention.

Unlike with Big Two comics, the thumbnails don’t change—they’re not comic book covers in that sense, just new release indicators—but the effect might be much closer to the spinner rack than one would think…at least for me. And considering I’ve gone from nine regular titles to thirty-eight (though back down to eighteen currently because so many of those got the boot, though I also did a lot more of the obsessive comic nerd “I don’t like this anymore but I’m going to keep reading it either in case it gets better or so I can complain about it comprehensively.”).

But still! Eighteen titles I get to keep my eye out for every week or so (MangaPlus always announces the date of the next chapter at the end, but I almost never pay attention)! That’s pretty great, I think.

And think…and think…and thought… But hopefully now that I’ve passed that along to you, I’m free!

So, with that accomplished: I hope you are well, and your weekend is good…and I hope to turn up in your email again before too long!

Cheers,

-J.