The second half of the 20th century and beyond: adolescence and maturation

A local comics industry in native languages has flourished wherever the United States and Great Britain have held sway—notably in Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, and India (where the often cartoonlike Bollywood, centred in Mumbai [Bombay], is dominant). Even some Islamic countries, where for centuries figural representation was problematic, by the 21st century had more or less government-supported comics. China, after the 1949 revolution, gave official support to lianhuanhua (literally, “connected images”) to retell the classics and opera-based histories, as well as uplifting revolutionary stories, in a highly refined, classically derived style. The late 20th century brought a freeing up of styles and subject matter.

Japan had by far the largest comics industry in the world—selling by 1984 1.4 billion and by 1995 2.3 billion copies of manga (Japanese comics; literally, “aimless pictures”) books and magazines per annum—and in the early 21st century comics constituted 37 percent of the overall publishing market by volume and 23 percent by value. In 2002 there were 278 different manga magazines. In that year the first-edition print run of a single volume from the manga series One Piece was 2.6 million. Thirteen of Japan’s periodicals that made more than 17 million yen ($160,000) a year were manga, which together employed 3,000 artists; one magazine, Shonen Jump, had a circulation that peaked in 1995 (when it ran such popular series as Dragon Ball, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Slam Dunk) at 6.5 million, with multiple readership reaching an estimated 20 million, or one in six Japanese. By 2000, manga had generated 5.4 billion yen ($43 million) per annum in sales (having doubled in the decade from the early 1980s to the ’90s), 75 percent of which was concentrated in the hands of only four companies. Nevertheless, by 2008 the market for manga magazines was clearly in decline. Still, comic books are a major cultural force in Japan, a fact of life. In translation and in the original, they have penetrated the American market ($110 million per year), where there is a considerable cult following; they have also inspired many film animations.

The manga style, with all the term’s connotations of the whimsical and risqué, can be considered to have originated with ukiyo-e prints of Hokusai in 1814. It reflects a long tradition in humorous art. As a narrative mass medium with serialized characters, manga started as early as 1902 under American influence. In the 1920s and ’30s manga were exclusively juvenile fare, but, in the economic boom after World War II and under renewed American influence, they soon broadened to encompass all ages and social sectors, with a wide variety of subject matter. The emphasis, however, remained on sports, large-eyed adolescents, and the adventures of samurai and gangsters, with much sex and violence often shading into the pornographic. Most manga titles contain an English word, and, as in the West, manga, animated cartoons (anime), and video games often exist in symbiosis.

At 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm), manga are much thicker than the American single comics. They typically range from 150 to 350 pages and are printed on poor-quality paper in black and white, with a few pages of colour. They usually contain about 15 stories and are very inexpensive. They are designed to be speed-read (at an average rate of 3.75 seconds per page), much faster than the text of a novel, and quickly discarded. They accordingly depend more on visuals than on text, and they use more minimal and abbreviated drawings than most Western comics. Manga stories are longer and their action is depicted at a slower pace than that of Western comic books; it is not unusual for a single sword fight to last over 30 pages. Some stories achieved extraordinary length: Kozure Okami, a samurai series by Kojima Gōseki, has run to 8,400 pages and 28 volumes. It was introduced to English readers under the title Lone Wolf and Cub in 1987 and was made into a television series in 2002.

Like comic strips in the West, manga have played a socially critical as well as an escapist role, the critical diminishing since the 1970s. Since the late 20th century there have been more manga by and for women, some showing feminist concerns. After a long period of depreciation and much serious opposition, again as in the West, the manga rose in social status. In 1989, when Tezuka Osamu—the inventor of the big-eyed look, who was known as “the God of Manga”—died, having drawn 150,000 pages in 40 years and sold some 100 million books in his lifetime, Japan mourned.

In 1987, 69 percent of Japanese teenagers read manga, as did many older people. The generational and gender crossover is much greater than in the West: businessmen read manga created for 10-year-olds; older males read manga aimed at girls. Manga are read on commuter journeys, much like and in lieu of newspapers (which in Japan do not include comic strips). Further, a manga was the basis of Japan’s biggest movie hit of 1988, Akira, a thriller by Ōtomo Katsuhiro. Manga creators have achieved celebrity status, and some even host their own television programs.

Women and minorities: from minor characters to creators

In the West there was no successor to either the woman-developed comic character—i.e., Marie Duval’s Ally Sloper in the 1870s—or a major female comic character such as Wilhelm Busch’s Fromme Helene (1872). As there were relatively few women artists until the 20th century, so there were few—relatively even fewer—women cartoonists and comic strip artists, even in the 20th century. Until the 1940s men created the female figures—such as Wonder Woman (begun 1941)—and the many comics designed for the teenage girl (such as Real Romance) and for the preteen girl, but Wonder Woman has since been embraced by feminist theory, which sees it as liberating. The first popular comic by a woman about a woman was Dale Messick’s Brenda Starr, Reporter (begun 1940); until that point, women in comics had by and large been seen only in relation to children.

Not until the second wave of feminism broke in the 1960s and early ’70s, and partly in reaction to the often sexist and misogynist male-dominated underground comics, did women become conspicuous, both as creators and as strong and central characters. As creators they launched controversial feminist issues into the public arena. A key event was the founding of Wimmen’s Comix magazine (1972–92; later spelled Wimmin’s Comix) by a group of female cartoonists including Trina Robbins, also a chronicler of the topic.

Since the founding of Wimmen’s Comix Collective, women have been featured in a number of newspaper strips. Sally Forth (begun 1982) by Greg Howard details the life of a woman coping with children, husband, and a career outside the home. Cathy by Cathy Guisewite (begun 1976) follows a young woman obsessed with her weight and shopping. Canadian Lynn Johnston’s loosely autobiographical For Better or For Worse (begun 1979) treats a typical contemporary nuclear family. In 1997 Johnston became the first woman to be inducted into the William Randolph Hearst Cartoon Hall of Fame, a part of the National Cartoon Museum (formerly the International Museum of Cartoon Art). Nicole Hollander’s text-heavy but socially astringent Sylvia (begun 1976; not truly narrative) features a cynical unattached middle-aged agony aunt who dispenses her wisdom also on greeting cards and calendars, as do the main characters of many of the more popular comic artists.

In France, long hospitable to women artists and writers, Claire Bretécher specializes in cruel, Feifferish (non)communication. Active since the early 1960s, she has appeared in the elite political magazine Le Nouvel Observateur since 1973. A number of other women, including the radically political Annie Goetzinger and Chantal Montellier in her strip Julie Bristol (begun 1989), which features a female investigative reporter, have foregrounded feminist concerns. In Germany Franziska Becker’s Feminax und Walkürax (1992) is a feminist response to Astérix (see above) and to macho Hollywood epics. The Finn Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll stories have been translated into 34 languages. In Japan, where more women are active in comics than in the United States, Takahashi Rumiko is the best-known woman working in women’s comics. Known as “the Princess of Manga,” she is reportedly one of the richest women in the country. Other women working in comics in Japan include Takeuchi Naoko, most famous for her series Sailor Moon, and Arakawa Hiromu, known for Fullmetal Alchemist.

Gay and lesbian characters entered the comic book in the later 1980s, becoming main characters by the following decade; Trudeau and Johnston were among the pioneers of this subject matter. In the newspaper strip this topic was often censored, although the tendency was to assimilate these figures into the everyday “straight” world. For the most part, depictions of the “gay world” as such were to be found only in small-circulation comic books, alternative newspapers, and online. Yet lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel, author of the ongoing Dykes to Watch Out For, in 2006 made Time magazine’s list of 10 best books of the year with her graphic autobiography Fun Home.

Schulz in Peanuts first introduced an African American character, but his Franklin was a minor figure. Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks (1997–2006), which was syndicated in some 300 newspapers and transformed into an animated television series, featured a black child of the inner city named Huey Freeman as its main character. This character was the only consistent voice of dissent in American comic strips regarding the war in Afghanistan.