U.S. papers to add Japanese-style comics

The manga rage is spreading.

Papercutz, a New York company, bought the rights to The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries to bring out comic versions inspired by manga. Major bookstores in the United States now devote rows of shelves to manga.

CosmoGirl, the No. 1 teen publication in the United States, began running manga produced by TOKYOPOP in August. And the Harlequin Romance books are coming out in a manga version — something that’s already available in Japan.

Manga is more a storytelling style than a genre, spanning the range of novels or movies — including romance, horror, science fiction and comedy. Manga tales also tend to be more psychological and less action-oriented than its U.S. counterparts, such as Marvel’s superhero comics.

“Peach Fuzz” co-author Lindsay Cibos says she found manga “deeper and more fulfilling than cartoons on TV.”

Cibos, 23, is a self-taught manga artist who has never been to Japan and speaks no Japanese but grew up on the manga classic “Sailor Moon.”

Manga stories “touched upon girls issues, emotions and romance, that sort of thing,” she said in a telephone interview from Orlando, Florida.

Cultural attitude
Takashi Nakagawa, executive managing director of Softbank Investment Corp. in Tokyo, a financial backer of TOKYOPOP, says he saw a good opportunity five years ago in the company’s attempt to translate manga into English and offer it to the American market.

Founded in 1996, TOKYOPOP has operations in the United States, Japan, Germany and Great Britain, has an annual revenue of about $40 million and sells as many as 10 million books a year, according to Levy, the CEO.

Levy, 38, is a Los Angeles native who came to Japan in 1989 to attend university. He quickly realized manga was hot as a lifestyle statement, touching on fashion and music, in the same way hip hop has defined a cultural attitude.

“Manga is the core of this kind of lifestyle and culture, which is becoming a global trend,” he said in his Tokyo office. “I’d tell people Japan is such a creative place, and they would say, ’No, no. no. Japan is not creative. It just copies the West.’ And I said, ’That’s totally wrong.”’

Levy is now working on a musical film based on manga.

His next project: offering an English-language manga service on the Web that will allow people to view the comics online or download them onto their mobile phones to read on the go.

“This is getting so popular now,” said Levy, switching into fluent Japanese and displaying manga on his cell phone screen. “Japan is way ahead of the world in this.”

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