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How manga freed American comics from being so focused strictly on superheroes to be successful, according to James Tynion IV
The rising popularity of manga has allowed American comic companies like Marvel, DC, and Image to experiment with non-superhero books
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For a long time comic books were synonymous with superhero stories, but in recent years that’s changed. Non-superhero stories have always been published by indie creators, but these types of comics have become more mainstream in the past decade. Comics like Something is Killing the Children, Ice Cream Man, and Paper Girls don’t involve capes, tights, or secret identities.
According to James Tynion IV, the Eisner Award-winning writer behind Something is Killing the Children, none of this would’ve happened without the rise of manga.
“The interesting thing to me is the fact that moving from that niche audience to a wider audience that was sort of happening in the early 2000s, which set the stage for the industry that I entered,” James Tynion IV says during a 2024 Library Con panel. “More people were reading and absorbing this material, and a huge part of that was manga coming into the scene, and all of a sudden there being a much wider breadth of types of storytelling.”
“To sell a book in the direct market, even if you were something really mature, you kind of had to make it a little superhero-y to sell a copy. And suddenly there was a huge breadth of material and different ways to do it, and different places you could see yourself in, and really connect to the characters on the page, and the different stories you could tell.”
The next time you read a compelling comic book like Kill Your Darlings or The Department of Truth, remember that it never would’ve happened without manga.
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