.:My 2 Yen:.
TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2004
CLAMP does Marvel Project
Anime on DVD reports that it appears that C.B. Cebulski has stated that CLAMP will be working on a project for Marvel Comics.
Will this count as a manga because Japanese women doing it or will it be a comic because it's a Marvel project?
It would depend on a person's definition of "manga" and "comic".
The publisher doesn't affect the definition at all. There are three things that affect the definition:
1) The creators
2) The intended Audience and
3) The content itself.
But unless a definition is necessarry, forget about defining it. There's no need for you to waste time trying to label it in such black and white terms as "Manga" / "Not Manga."
For some fans, this is the nail in their "I'm a fan of CLAMP" coffins.
I love Marvel Comics. Don't get me wrong, but some think CLAMP has other things they need to be working on. Like, X for example. It's been 2 years, and still no new X.
And now they're just continuing their decline from interesting titles to generic been- there-done-that crap!? They've sold out and obviously only care for the money now-a-days!?
Um… no….
My interest in CLAMP stems from my love of their art in anime and manga, and from an artistic point of view, I think some of their new stuff is phenomenal. XXXHolic is bringing back the style they used in Magic Knight Rayearth. Any way you dish it, CLAMP continually produces visually appealling (and in my case... engrossing) work. Any story that they bring to it is just icing on the cake.
Manga is a pure folk art which is lovingly hand-crafted by serious artisans who devote themselves to their craft for only the purest of motives. Just because it isn't written, drawn, printed, stapled, boxed up, driven to the comic book store and rung up at the register by Japanese people, doesn't mean it ain't manga.
Some won't be calling it manga. It's commissioned work in some eyes. It's a Japanese group doing work based on American characters for an American company, intended for American readers. For that same reason they don't consider Kia Asamiya's brilliant rendition of Batman manga either.
To me, it depends on the style. People can't choose what country they where born in or what their nationality is. I read the rising stars of manga book, and I considered many of them manga.
However, 'manga' is an appropriated word, like 'otaku'. 'Manga' in English means 'Japanese comics'. We have a word for Korean comics too. Just like 'otaku' means anime fan.
But does it have to only be manga if it's from Japan. Why is calling an American work that's expressly intended to look and sound like manga like calling a dog dressed in a cat suit a cat? Does a spade have to be a spade?
Admittedly the American stuff is at times inferior, but it is different, and I think one of the great things about our language is the ability to be precise with our words.
That having been said, I look forward to the X-Men all becoming androgynous, angst-ridden homosexual adolescents who murder each other.
I'm extremely looking forward to that event.
Oh wait. That's basically already what X-Men is. Never mind.
Every time one of the Big Two (DC/Marvel for the brain-dead) tries to get a celebrity writer (manga-ka for the brain-dead) to play in their sandbox, it fails to involve many. Child of Dreams and 1602 were good and I expect this project to be the same. It certainly helps that I'm a fan of Marvel and CLAMP.
And just to get on the other side of the looking glass, anyone ever read the Death manga? For those fooled into reading it thinking it was manga, for it looked very authentic, you should know it was based on Sandman, an American creation and, to add insult to injury, drawn by an American artist. Admit it. It was stunning.