NightMareBunny posted...
discussing American comic books leaves me in a ghost town but mention the latest chainsaw man chapter and suddenly people are coming out of the woodworks to talk about it online
Oh. THAT context makes more sense.
Two reasons:
First
, anime has helped to establish and popularize manga in the US, in no small part because manga tends to get adapted into anime an almost 1:1 basis whereas comics are often heavily reimagined when they get shows or movies.
And the discrepancy between tv/film and comics kinda limits the cross-over appeal. It's not 100% either side's fault, other than the broader issue of things running forever and continuity changes being inevitable (although a lot of continuity changes are inherently problematic, like crippling Barbara Gordon, which was edgy in comics and -- in today's climate -- would lead to cancellation attempts).
Secondly
, American comics suck right now. Like they're legitimately terrible. Let me preface that a bit further -- Marvel and DC, the two companies with the broadest reach and who largely dominate the market, suck. And because the US's comic industry isn't as varied or robust as Japan's (where it's not just two companies basically running everything), that kinda kills the industry.
The other issue is Marvel and DC have more or less cultivated a narrow lane by leaning into superhero stuff. And I also think it *might* be more expensive to produce comics in the US than Japan, partly due to expectations (since the US tends to favor full-color everything) and also labor costs.
There are other supporting cultural reasons, too, that helped manga offer a larger variety of content. And because the number of manga is drastically higher than the number of US comics, there are inevitably going to be more great titles (along with more bad ones, but those fall by the wayside)