Robert Kirkman walked into ComicsPRO 2026 this week and explained why manga is eating American comics alive, and how Invincible already proved the fix works.
Japan has a pipeline of amateur writers who self publish web novels on a handful of well known websites. The manga and light novel publishers pick up the ones that grow popular with readers and adapt them, secure in the knowledge that there’s already a built in audience. If those do well, then there’s an anime adaptation.
American publishers have ignored the American equivalent and tried to force their preferred writers and artists down customers’ throats. Plus, unlike Japanese manga, Marvel and DC have these legacy universes that they are trying to keep going. One Piece has a single author in control of his creative direction. Marvel and DC are messes by comparison; there’s no overall creative vision, and publishers keep picking subpar talent and driving unpopular storylines for diversity reasons.
I predict we’ll see traditional book publishers picking up these kinds of talents (like Matt Dinniman) and then go straight to streaming, bypassing comics altogether.
Yep! Also a LOT of Light Novels started as webnovels in sites like syosetu.com (syosetu.com doesn't have cover feature that's why a LOT of webnovels there have ridiculously long titles that practically spoil the plot). There editors scout the hottest webnovels around, contact the authors, offer them a deal to have them edited and printed, and BOOM! There you go! A Light Novel! (Although some other Light Novels are still pitched to editors directly or are competition winners tho)
Didn't Kirkman genderswap one of his characters to "fix" the comics? I don't think the American version of the manga-to-anime pipeline will be as successful, just based on the talent running it.
For anything to be successful, it has to very closely replicate the original.
The reason Marvel and Disney don't succeed is because they throw away what made the original good.
Disney had over 100 books for Star Wars that they could have used to make content, but they chose to throw that away.
Paramount had the same problem. They caved into what "Modern" audiences wanted, forgetting that fans weren't built on Modern Audiences. Giving the mentally ill crowd what they want, but not paying attention to what your original fans want is a sure fire way to lose everything.
My daughter really liked the Avengers movie, but what she loved was the cartoon series, "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.". (Excellent series, just below Batman TAS and Fox's X-Men cartoon.)
I once asked her if she wanted some Avengers graphic novels for her birthday. "No thanks," she told me. She'd already looked into them herself and was very disappointed that they were nothing like the cartoons.
Her interest ended there more than a decade ago.
The strangest thing about it was that I was initially perplexed by her argument. Of course the comics weren't anything like the cartoons, those were just an adaptation. Didn't she realize that?
But then it hit me: I had become so accustomed to unfaithful, inconsistent, watered-down, incomplete, adulterated, studio-noted, ego-stroking changes to the source material that I just accepted it.
Even when an adaptation was good, it almost seemed an accident with dozens or even hundreds of projects in-between hits. (Look how long Batman TAS has stood, no worse than top 3 in any good-faith debate.)
What took a little longer to realize was the way the source material itself was changing, but oh boy, that's a beast of an entirely different nature.
Manga and their respective manga magazines are sold even in 7-Elevens in Japan.
American comics were used to be sold in newsstands in spinner racks but then the direct market destroyed that distribution method. The direct market practically turned comic book reading into a seemingly nerdy thing to do that normies won't do
No, because the problem is the talent.
Japan has a pipeline of amateur writers who self publish web novels on a handful of well known websites. The manga and light novel publishers pick up the ones that grow popular with readers and adapt them, secure in the knowledge that there’s already a built in audience. If those do well, then there’s an anime adaptation.
American publishers have ignored the American equivalent and tried to force their preferred writers and artists down customers’ throats. Plus, unlike Japanese manga, Marvel and DC have these legacy universes that they are trying to keep going. One Piece has a single author in control of his creative direction. Marvel and DC are messes by comparison; there’s no overall creative vision, and publishers keep picking subpar talent and driving unpopular storylines for diversity reasons.
I predict we’ll see traditional book publishers picking up these kinds of talents (like Matt Dinniman) and then go straight to streaming, bypassing comics altogether.
Yep! Also a LOT of Light Novels started as webnovels in sites like syosetu.com (syosetu.com doesn't have cover feature that's why a LOT of webnovels there have ridiculously long titles that practically spoil the plot). There editors scout the hottest webnovels around, contact the authors, offer them a deal to have them edited and printed, and BOOM! There you go! A Light Novel! (Although some other Light Novels are still pitched to editors directly or are competition winners tho)
Didn't Kirkman genderswap one of his characters to "fix" the comics? I don't think the American version of the manga-to-anime pipeline will be as successful, just based on the talent running it.
For anything to be successful, it has to very closely replicate the original.
The reason Marvel and Disney don't succeed is because they throw away what made the original good.
Disney had over 100 books for Star Wars that they could have used to make content, but they chose to throw that away.
Paramount had the same problem. They caved into what "Modern" audiences wanted, forgetting that fans weren't built on Modern Audiences. Giving the mentally ill crowd what they want, but not paying attention to what your original fans want is a sure fire way to lose everything.
My daughter really liked the Avengers movie, but what she loved was the cartoon series, "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.". (Excellent series, just below Batman TAS and Fox's X-Men cartoon.)
I once asked her if she wanted some Avengers graphic novels for her birthday. "No thanks," she told me. She'd already looked into them herself and was very disappointed that they were nothing like the cartoons.
Her interest ended there more than a decade ago.
The strangest thing about it was that I was initially perplexed by her argument. Of course the comics weren't anything like the cartoons, those were just an adaptation. Didn't she realize that?
But then it hit me: I had become so accustomed to unfaithful, inconsistent, watered-down, incomplete, adulterated, studio-noted, ego-stroking changes to the source material that I just accepted it.
Even when an adaptation was good, it almost seemed an accident with dozens or even hundreds of projects in-between hits. (Look how long Batman TAS has stood, no worse than top 3 in any good-faith debate.)
What took a little longer to realize was the way the source material itself was changing, but oh boy, that's a beast of an entirely different nature.
Another thing:
Manga and their respective manga magazines are sold even in 7-Elevens in Japan.
American comics were used to be sold in newsstands in spinner racks but then the direct market destroyed that distribution method. The direct market practically turned comic book reading into a seemingly nerdy thing to do that normies won't do