Europe’s Manga Mania

The popularity of Manga outside of Japan now seems to inevitably breed homegrown versions. See the following extracts from an article in Business Week from the 26th December and click the link below to read more…

Younger readers are abandoning stalwarts like Asterix for the Japanese comics known as manga. Now European publishers are creating their own.

At Frankfurt’s largest bookstore, Hugendubel, 18-year-old Svenja Malis bypasses the best sellers and heads to the comics section. She’s not looking for the latest Betty and Veronica or Supergirl, but manga, the richly illustrated Japanese comics that tell stories of love, mystery, and even horror. A friend got Malis hooked on manga three years ago and, like many girls in her class, she began to finance the habit with her monthly allowance. “I could also read American comics, but I prefer the Japanese ones because they’re less clumsy,” she says.

In Germany, where comic-book reading has traditionally been less widespread, manga now accounts for 70% of all comics sales, says Joachim Kaps, managing director of Hamburg-based Tokyopop, a manga publisher. “manga is one of the biggest success stories of publishing of the last decade.” So successful, in fact, that Germany is now producing and exporting its own manga.

Read more on Business Week

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