Ponderings: World-Wide Graphic Stories and American Cluelessness

One of the things that turned me into a reader was comic books and cartoons - though those who know me these days might find that hard to believe. I was not a big reader before the age of 12 and what I did read almost always had pictures: pages full of text and nothing else were uninteresting to me. I wasn't a bad reader - anything but! I was the best reader in my class and was reading at the college level by the time I was eight. I just didn't find reading interesting. If I read, it was a comic book from the 10 cent comic book rack at the now long gone Groton Pharmacy, across the street from the old Bureau of Groton Post Office. I remember the terrible day that comics went up in price to 12 cents!

As a kid, I used to wait impatiently for the monthly delivery of Children's Digest in the mail. Inside that venerable publication was the monthly installment of Tintin by Herge. Tintin was my introduction to the world beyond the stagnant American comics venue. In Belgium and France, graphic novel offerings like Tintin are known as Bandes Designees. Just about the whole world knows that graphic novels and graphic stories in Japan are called manga. It's only here in the United States and Canada that we are stuck with the names "comic books" or "comics" for things that are better termed sequential art or graphic stories.

So here we are, two decades into a quiet revolution of graphic story telling, in large part fueled by the breakthrough of Japanese manga and anime into American culture. The current mostly young male and female audience of mange and anime will be the first American generation to recognize that the scope of comics is huge and covers all of life. And yet, we still seem to be saddled with literary critics and scholars who just don't get it. Many of these literary pundits still think that comics are for not-too-bright junior high school boys interested in only superheroes wearing skin-tight tights and female supergirls in tighter tights with impossibly round and unsagging boobs...

Why does the "death" of a Marvel or DC comic book hero make front page news - like the recent demise of Captain America - but that most Americans have never even heard of the world's most popular "comic book," the manga called Naruto? I think that part of the answer has to do with what passes for "news" these days. I guess Captain America must be more news worthy than things like the increasing shortages of raw material commodities or the demise of small manufacturing businesses in Italy - but the media types know they will lose their advertisers to the competition if they report too much "boring" news and not enough "human interest" stories. Certainly no journalist in America is going to report on major literary trends in another country, especially in a genre that's considered the purview of pimply adolescent boys. I find it disturbing that the news media really do have the power to shape public opinion in this manner. Perhaps the news worthiness of Captain America stems from the belief that American icons still define world culture, a comfortable stance that speaks of our continuing inability to admit that the world doesn't love us anymore.

The world of the graphic story is immense. Anyone who has kids these days probably has encountered the tour-de-force of Japanese manga and anime. What we are missing, however, is the breadth of Japanese manga as a literary phenomenon. There are manga for little kids, for adolescent girls, adolescent boys, and adults. It seems to be a continuing and very annoying theme that when you mention adult manga in this country, the news types inevitably jump on the non-representative and trivializing happenstance that some of that adult manga literature is pornographic in both depiction and intent. I'm going to resist the temptation to trash our journalism professionals any further - so I will rant no more about the proclivity of the press to report on the most crass, trivial and irrelevant characteristics of any news item they find. The world of adult manga covers classic stories like Barefoot Gen, an eyewitness account of Hiroshima; great modern graphic novels like Adolf, a story of Japan, Germany and Jews during WWII; and new works like Deathnote whose protagonist is a anti-hero mass murderer. Comic book porn, however, will always make "good copy" on any news program or radio broadcast, regardless of the merits of other (non-pornographic) adult manga.

Frankly, the drugged up and pornographic character of your typical National Lampoon comic strip or 60s underground comic book is old news in this country and has been since at least the early 70s. American underground comics are probably Ph.D. fodder at this point since they capture a snapshot of the now long-gone hippie era. The taboos these comics broke seemed like a big deal at the time; however, since then we have gotten used to literature and movies that depict sexual acts and doing drugs regardless of our approbation or lack thereof. Back then, the reaction of "The Establishment" to these comics was due in part to the expectation of comic book self-censorship. What gets to me is the mind-set which still assumes American comics should follow the self-censorship of the 50s comic book code and that the target audience for comic books will always be adolescent boys.

Because of these ingrained American attitudes toward comics, there have been some major works that have never received the critical acclaim they deserve, like Will Eisner's Contract with God, The Invisibles, the Jane Grey storyline of 1978-1980 in Marvel's X-Men and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four stories. Why is it that the literary savants of this country can only take an American graphic novel seriously if it deals with big, socially-valued events, like one family's story of surviving the Holocaust in the Pulitzer-prize winning Maus? Our graphic story-telling legacy is far greater and much richer than just Superman or Spiderman. Recognizing this is more than overdue.

When is the literary establishment of this country going to wake up and admit that something like Hal Foster's Prince Valiant is a major work of 20th century literature?

Deathnote - a serious thriller and study of moral ambivalence for mature readers

Venue: Deathnote by Tsugumi Ohba (story) and Takeshi Obata (art) is a shonen (“boys” story) manga originally serialized in the weekly Shonen Jump magazine published in Japan. It has recently been made into two “live-action” films, an anime and a prequel novel, all in Japan. The anime version has recently started showing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program though I haven't had a chance to watch it yet (I noticed the Cartoon Network commercial for it while watching TV at a hotel when on a recent business trip). The episode I did manage to catch was a bit disappointing. Most of the episode covered the conversation between Light and the fiancee of the FBI agent Light murdered. The pacing was too slow for the length of the conversation and the cinematography of the scene was bland. It certainly didn't leave me with the feeling that I had to see more. This limited sampling of the anime may not be a representative, but since Deathnote is one of most cerebral manga in existence, I'm not feeling optimistic.

The manga series started in 2003 in Japan and the complete story arc is now available in its entirety in trade paperback in both Japan and in English in North America. The English version is published by Viz Media and has been recently showcased with big splashy displays in the manga sections of both Borders and Barnes & Noble.

The Viz Media version of the completed story takes up 12 trade paperbacks priced at $8 apiece. There are also several site where the fan-translated serialized version from Shonen Jump is available for free reading. The language in the translated versions available online is much much courser than that in the Viz Media version.

Art: This manga uses typical Japanese black and white manga style but it's more realistic and “grittier” in quality than your usual samurai/ninja-fantasy manga that you see in Shonen Jump. Given the subject matter, the stark and very detailed style is appropriate to the moral ambivalence of the story. The use of the occasional odd angle of perspective is employed to great effect in the story to emphasize the increasing alienation of the main character from the rest of humanity as the story progresses. In many of the episodes, the use of close-ups and half-face views of the characters feed the suspense of the cat-and-mouse game played by Light and his colleagues against the super-sleuths on Light's trail.

Age Groups: Senior high school and up. As far as junior high school students are concerned, I think I'd let a ninth grader read Deathnote but not a sixth grader. The story is essentially what I'd consider as adult fare. You may want to ponder the implications that in Japan, this is a story is in the “boys literature” genre. Personally, I find that this really is a story for adults. If you want an example of a graphic novel that's the antithesis of stupid superhero comic books targeted at adolescent American males, Deathnote is it. There is some bad language though no pornographic art, not even the soft-porn variety that sometimes creeps into other “shonen” targeted manga. There is no silly impossible boob art for a change. There is, however, a ton of moral ambivalence.

Publishing Frequency: the series was originally a weekly serialized graphic novel (see venue, above). The series is now complete. The completed manga is now in bookstores in English. The anime version in Japanese with English subtitles was available on a pay-per-view basis from Viz, almost in real time as it aired in Japan: this is the fastest that an anime has ever been available to the North American market. It's now on Adult Swim. The anime is currently being released on DVD, with two or three currently out and the rest to be released in dribs and drabs throughout 2008.

Story: Deathnote is at the intersection of horror, crime fiction and psychological thriller. Remember the shinigami from the review of Bleach? Well, there are shinigami of a very different character in Deathnote. In Japanese culture, shinigami are like angels of death or the anthropomorphic and scythe-carrying character of Death in Western culture. In Japan, supernatural creatures like shinigami fall into a class of being known as kami. Kami is a word that doesn't translate well because the Japanese have very different conceptions of gods and spirits than we do. Some Kami, like Amerastu, are deities – though it is good to keep in mind that even gods in Japanese mythology are not truly immortal though they can be long-lived. Other kami are more like angels or demons or bogey men, like the creatures called kappa who prey on travelers alone in swamps.

So anyway, shinigami are the kami of death. In the world of Deathnote, a creepy-looking batwinged shinigami named Ryuk is bored. To generate some entertainment for himself, Ryuk leaves his deathnote, i. e. his notebook of names of people scheduled to die, in an alleyway for someone to find. A top merit-scholarship-class high school student named Light Yagami finds the deathnote (in Japan and in some of the translated online manga, the name is Yagami Raito). Upon reading the instructions in the deathnote, Light decides it's a good prank. The instructions say that the person whose name is written in the deathnote will die in several minutes of a heart attack if there are no other details describing the future death. So Light tries the deathnote and discovers that it's no hoax. In the space of a day or two, Light decides to use the deathnote to improve the world by removing all the world's hardened criminals. The moral ambivalence of the story involves Light's efforts to create a better world by the simple expedient of murdering hundreds of thousands of criminals. The plot tension of the series revolves around the cat-and-mouse game between Light in his vigilante role of “Kira” (a word that's essentially the same in pronunciation of the Japanese word for killer) and a set of virtuoso extralegal detectives known as L, Mello and Near. The road that Light subsequently follows is a dark one. To protect himself, Light bumps off several legitimate policemen. Because of the deathnote, he is also the indirect cause of his police-detective father's death. As the story progresses, more than one deathnote is in play though Light is the mastermind behind most of the action. The real story of Deathnote is really about the corruption of Light and his followers.

The end of Deathnote is both horrific and appropriate – though I won't ruin it by leaving any spoilers here. The short epilogue to the story is a rather timeless statement about the perseverance of religious faith in a godless world.

Setting: The setting for Deathnote is modern-day Japan, specifically the Kanto region (the area around Tokyo). The story is the most morally ambivalent I've read in years with a central character who ends up more twisted inside than Captain Ahab. There is none of the noble underworld character you find in Frank Miller's Sin City or the corrupted innocence of the characters in The Great Gatsby. There are no happy endings here; even the “good guys” are tainted as they resort to more and more desperate measures to end the reign of Light Yagami's alter ego as Kiro, self-appointed judge and executioner to all of humanity.

This is not really a setting that is congruent with modern American culture. The characters may look like modern urban dwellers but the venue is modern urban secular Japan with its Shinto and Buddhist roots intact. The story gives a person living on this side of the Pacific a good look into the academic “cram culture” that many middle class Japanese students experience daily (since many top careers in Japan are only available to graduates of a handful of top universities). In keeping with this modern secular world view, at the beginning of the story, Ryuk the shinigami tells Light that there is no heaven or hell, that the ultimate fate of humans after death is non-existence (the mu state, as one of the online English translations versions stated it). Within the context of the Deathnote setting, this makes the end of the story and its epilogue all the more poignant.

Other Comments: Deathnote is a tremendous piece of literature. Don't be fooled by its wrapper and the still-too-common American devaluation of sequential-art storytelling. To say that Deathnote is a great book with all the literary baggage that that statement implies is dead on the money from my point of view. Deathnote is an excellent example of all that a graphic novel can be - and yet you'll never see something like Deathnote ever get a review in the New York Times, which is highly regrettable considering that the rest of the world is nowhere near as stupid as we are about this fine art form.

Deathnote isn't a manga for kids. This is a graphic novel for adults and should be approached as such.

Naruto: the world's more popular manga for a reason...

Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto is another Shonen Jump manga available as dead treeware from the publisher, Viz Media. There are 24 trade paperback volumes priced at $8 apiece. There are also anime episodes currently showing nightly on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program. In Japan, this manga is published in 20 page installments weekly in Shonen Jump, a manga serial targeting the “boys” market. There are several places online that carry Naruto as an English-language translation, either as a download or as a streaming manga read via an embedded manga page viewer

Art: Typical Japanese manga style. Okay art but nothing hugely special.

It is interesting to note that the author was motivated to become a manga artist because of inspiration like a promotional poster for Akira, the famous manga-cum-anime movie.

Age Groups: Junior hight school and up. If your kids are reading Natruto online, be aware that some of the translations available use occasional profanity. There is also a small amount of impossible and silly boob art.

Publishing Frequency: the series is a weekly comic book (see venue, above). Some of the translations online are posted as fast as the translators can translate...i. e. weekly. The “official” English language versions of the anime and manga are significantly behind the Japanese originals.

Story: Naruto is a boy in a world where some small nations are controlled by ninjas. At the start of the story, he is a 12 year old ninja student in the village/polity of the “Hidden Leaf.” He has a bit of a problem in that the soul of an evil nine-tailed fox was sealed inside of him when he was an infant. When things get tough, the power of that evil spirit becomes available for Naruto to use. The “plot line” of the manga revolves around Naruto's adventures as he comes of age as a ninja of the Hidden Leaf.

Setting: The setting for Naruto emphasizes the principles of stubborn self-determination in the face of adversity and also of the value of love while growing up. As a kid with no parents growing up in an atmosphere of distrust because of the demon trapped inside him, Naruto is faced with overcoming prejudice on a daily basis. He starts the story arc as a kid acting out and committing acts of vnadalism for attention. He is saved from becoming a juvenile deliquent by the care and attention of his teacher at ninja school – and through his growing love for his very few friends – but it is an effort on everyone's part to keep Naruto on a straight path. Naruto resembles both the Little Train Who Could and The Man From La Mancha: his determination to succeed, to earn the respect of his village and to grow up to become the Hokage (ruler and ninja champion) of his village is what keeps the kid going through thick and thin. His refusal to give up on the seemingly-impossible goal of becoming Hokage invites both ridicule and ultimately admiration from the people in his life. He's not exactly a great brain nor is he a good student initially and his self-assumed role as an irresistable force is one of his few good characteristics.

Other Comments: Given the rather common fantasy setting (for Japan) and theme of coming of age through adversity, there is little that stands out about this manga at first glance. Accordingly, one might be bemused over Naruto's status as Japan's most popular manga of all time - right up to the point of reading it for the first time. My husband and I made the mistake of picking up the first three trade paperbacks issued by Viz Media and now we're stuck... For something that from the outside looks like just another ho-hum manga imported to exploit the growing American manga market, Naruto is addictive. The story is so tight from the get-go and the characters so very well-conceived that it's impossible to put down. Naruto works because its young author can really craft a great story and that's all there is too it. It's a great manga because its delivery is perfect.

It's the characters that make this story. Naruto is populated by believable people with believable lives and believable flaws. There is plenty of hubris driving several of the bad guys and there are lots of ethical potholes to trip up the good guys. The emphasis on affection in families and between friends, even when relationships are flawed, is everything one could ask for in a manga that lots of kids are going to read. There are a lot of life's little lessons in this manga. If you find your kids reading or watching Naruto, don't stop them. It's a great story set with good ethics set in a well-conceived fantasy world.