Word: mangas
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Printed as cheap, multivolume paperbacks and sold at major bookstores, manga have ignited graphic-novel sales around the world. In the U.S. last year manga racked up some $100 million, almost double 2002's sales, according to ICv2, a pop-culture trade publication. The two dominant U.S. publishers of manga, TOKYOPOP and VIZ, will ramp up their 2004 title count to more than 300 between them. Later this year DC Comics plans to launch a manga imprint called...
...Shojo manga are a big part of that boom. Mostly written and drawn by women, shojo usually put cute, strong-willed 13 to 16 year old girls at their center. The stories typically focus on relationships and romance, but often also include adventures in magical worlds outside the humdrum realities of school and home. Mecca Moore, 13, of Los Angeles, buys manga every week and claims to spend $1,000 a year on the stuff. She says she likes shojo because, "They tell a story in art that makes a person have a special connection. You can actually feel what...
...Zimmerman, who teaches a course on "Gender and Popular Culture in Japan" for Wellesley college's Japanese department, sees shojo's appeal from a more distanced perspective. "Shojo manga are popular because they tap into the social obstacles and challenges that girls face: feeling excluded by cliques, having crushes on boys, and often wrestling with issues of their own sexuality," she wrote me in an email from Japan. She continued, "But they are also popular because they present a glossy image of a different kind of existence where everyone dresses up fashionably and looks cute...
...avaricious young warrior. Like most shojo the style of Fushigi Yugi includes lush costumes, impossibly beautiful boys and, yes, those big, saucer eyes and tiny, button noses. What new readers may be surprised at are the frequent shifts into goofball humor and the author asides -- both of which are manga tropes...
American-born shojo talent has also begun to emerge. Jill Thompson's manga-style book "Death: At Death's Door" became one of DC Comics' best sellers last year. Using the popular goth-girl character from Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe, "At Death's Door" tells of Death's struggles when her brother Morpheus takes over Hell. "One of the reasons I like manga is there are just pages and pages of characters regarding each other," Thompson says. "You can flip through them fairly quickly but you feel a lot of emotion without having to read words. I've always...