Shigeru Sugiura
PictureBox to publish Ten-Cent Manga (actual price may be higher)
Love it or hate it, manga has revolutionized American comics by bringing in new readers, new genres and new creators. Sometimes the influences are obvious, as in the manga-style graphic novels of Svetlana Chmakova or Laurianne Uy, and sometimes they are less so; many artists who don’t work in what we think of as the “manga style” have adopted storytelling, paneling and pacing techniques from Japanese comics.
What we forget, because manga still seem so exotic and foreign, is that the influence went the other way, too, and that’s the underlying premise of a fascinating new line of manga scholar Ryan Holmberg is editing for PictureBox. Titled Ten-Cent Manga, it will showcase manga that explore “that mysterious underground country between Japanese and American popular culture.” Even the name suggests a pulpy sensibility that is straight out of the American mass market of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.