The above tweet caused quite a commotion when I woke up yesterday morning and I was prepared to write about it, and I still might for tomorrow. Then I went to the actual article for linking, Chrome decided to translate it for me, and then I saw a lot more to write about when it comes to Jim Lee’s comments. The article in question comes from Japanese entertainment site NikkieXTrend. Reporter Kaori Maeda asked the current DC Comics publisher/chief creative officer and the creator of the Wildstorm Universe about DC’s recent successes…and got a few facts incorrect. Then again, so did Lee.
Now, I don’t know if Lee was just trying to be nice but he’s not wrong in that currently Japanese comics are beating the daylights out of American ones in America. Before the fans get on my case, “manga” translates to “motionless pictures”, aka “comics”, and the previous name for the software I use to make my comics was “Manga Studio” in the US and “Comic Studio” out of Japan. Manga are comics. We favor no elitism here, even from fandoms. I will call them manga to set them apart from US comics easier and for the sake of argument, but if I mix them, deal with it! Yes, this is an issue with “manga” fans, including pronunciation for the really pedantic ones.
Credit where it’s due. Lee is a good storyteller and artist, which is why his work for both DC and Wildstorm has been praised to the hilt. His recent actions as COO, however, has left fans cold. The full interview is worth going over, but we’ll come back to the part the X-Twitter post focused on because that deserves its own article. The problem is so does the rest.
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