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 Reader Mail: Dear John
Written by Manga Life Admin
Reader Mail: Yotsuba&!
Recently, the site received some mail from one of our readers, John Callahan about Barb’s recent review of Yotsuba&! v1. The letter brought up some interesting issues about “manga as a genre and an American comics fan being introduced to Eastern-produced comics.
Hi there! I assume I'm writing to Barb Lien-Cooper, since this is the address that popped up when I clicked on your name.
I read your review of Yotsuba&! v1 and just wanted to whole-heartedly agree with you on several points. I'm a 57 year-old guy. I returned to comics about 4 years ago after a long hiatus. I still enjoy some of the superhero comics, but feel there is a crisis of overly serious darkness in comics these days. Thank goodness for cute & funny Power Girl so every super doesn't have to be a big downer! I am happy we can occasionally get a break with original stories from, say, the Luna Brothers or Terry Moore. I have now been reading manga also for about 2 years.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of manga understands that it is most assuredly NOT a genre. There is so much diversity, originality and refreshingly weird Japanese and Eastern cultural influence that I believe there is something for everyone. Anyone, that is, who is willing to drop their preconceived notions of manga-as-genre and actually read it.
Although I have read many types of manga to date, I find the emotional series to be among my favorites, be they high school romance (Love*Com) or more adult perspective (Nana).
I love Yotsuba&! too and just don't understand how anyone could not. The art, particularly the backgrounds and exteriors, is beautifully rendered and the characters, from Yotsuba herself, her single dad, Jumbo, to the adorable neighbor girls are just lovely and funny and human. I find myself smiling through each volume.
Thank you for championing Manga against stereotyping. If the superhero fanboys cannot get over their prejudices and fear of girl cooties, it is truly their loss.
Sincerely,
John Callahan
And here’s Barb’s response:
Dear John:
Wow.
Thank you.
I was a big comics fan as a child. I practically learned how to read off of back issues of Denny O’Neil’s Batman. When I returned to comics culture as an adult in the mid-1990s, one of the reasons I did so wasn’t just because of the wide variety of great comics or the fact that comics had grown up. I also did so because of the culture itself. Back then, almost every fan-guy was a lot like you---articulate, reasonable, knowledgeable, and loyal to the sub-culture, but not unthinkingly so. I didn’t mind being a minority in comics back then, as none of the fans cared that I was female as long as I loved comics and knew what I was talking about. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I still believe that the silent majority of male comics fans are a lot more like you than the stereotype of the rude, crude, angry web-troll that wallows in his immaturity and loutishness.
Sadly, the vocal minority of irate fanboys, the stereotype that makes all fan culture look bad, is now how those outside of comics culture tend to see all of us, as well as how too many inside our culture now self-identify.
In the 1990s, I loved comics and comics fans. I loved one comics fan so much I fell in love and married him. I still have nothing but respect for the silent majority of male comics fans who are what I call “lawful good”, people who would never misuse the internet as a way to insult, bully, or menace those who don’t agree with them. The majority of fans do not expect fan culture to walk in lock step with each other, do not see every negative review of a comic or a movie as a personal attack that could and should be addressed with insults and angry threats, and do not embrace comics as a way to justify arrested development.
Sadly, many “good” comics fans have left comics because many of them feel, frankly, that the wide variety of well-written comics so available in the 1980s and 1990s are things of the past. I often hear of characters, beloved for ages, which now act out of character, of complaints of characters seeming to be nothing but a corporation’s intellectual property, there only to bring in short-term profits through whatever means necessary, even if a character’s integrity, the long-term viability of a franchise, and/or customer satisfaction is sacrificed in the process.
Sadly, independent comics, being squeezed by their more powerful competition and the rules of said competition, find increasing risk in supporting various excellent comics that don’t fit in with what the hardcore fanboy supports. Again, I hear complaints from people about too many superhero events, about comics based on video game and movie franchises, and about derivative works that seem only destined to try and tempt Hollywood or to appease Diamond, and of products that have suffered as a result. But most recently, I've heard from fans who say they can no longer show loyalty, let alone unquestioning loyalty, to companies that destroy beloved characters, who are only interested in using fans as a taste-tester/demographic to tempt Hollywood to option a fleshed-out proposal as a “media property”.
To be fair, I liked the grim and gritty comics of the 1980s and 1990s. However, I loved them because they were an alternative to business-as-usual comics. I also liked the funny comics (Justice League of America, Ambush Bug) because they were an alternative to normal comics, just as the indie comics were. But when the characters of the Dibneys, as well as Blue Beetle, were thrown into the grim-and-gritty way of doing things and then slaughtered for the sake of squeezing out sales with their respective deaths, I decided that I had to change the way I thought about comics-- not permanently, but for the foreseeable future. Sue Dibney was the 12th woman in the DCU alone that had been raped, killed, tortured, or otherwise sexually assaulted in a comic since I started reading them again as an adult. I identify with plenty of females in manga, even the shonen manga, even the mature title manga, such as Monster, and few female characters I’ve cared about there have been subjected to such a fate.
I read manga because I believe there is room in the sequential storytelling world for variety, male and female characters I can believe in, character interaction that matters, optimism, faith, hope, humor, compassion, a fascinating mixture of darkness and light, and backstory---as well as kick-butt action. I used to be able to find those things in comics (classic Spider-Man, Claremont’s X-Men). I'm not looking for those things in comics any more. If I'd continued to find them with the ease I used to have, I probably wouldn’t have been so tempted by manga in the first place.
As to Yotsuba….yes, it’s for kids, but it’s so genuine. I don’t expect the world to publish only comics that are “safe” for kids, but, darn it, don’t we readers deserve top of the line all-ages comics, too? Pixar delivers quality all-ages fare all the time. Japan does, as well, with neat little works like Yotsuba&! and Cowa! (very readable).
I read manga because comics, not to mention some within comics culture, have sometimes demonstrated the worst, basest aspects of human nature. I still want comics to thrive, but until the products re-evolve (I think the unpleasant vocal minority are pretty much unreachable) into what they can be at their best, I’m going to continue to be over here on the side of things for awhile.
Thanks so much for writing.
Take care. Comics needs readers like you!
---Barb
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