blog entry
| Manga Pipe Dream |
| Mar 24, 2008 9:19 am |
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Imagine if you will, a young, budding cartoonist, absolutely in love with comics. Imagine me, as a young boy. I’ve always loved comics, and wherever I go and in whatever store I step into, I have this subconscious urge to look for comics. As a kid, I devoured Garfield and Archie comics, then, as I grew, I got into superhero comics, and then I started reading some more underground comics later on. And then there’s manga. One of the reasons I went to Japan was for the incredibly healthy comics culture they have here. Old people, young people, girls and boys alike read comics. They have manga cafes, where you can rent a room and just read comics. They have giant manga shops full to the brim with all different types of comics and all different types of genres. Meanwhile, in America, I’ve had deal with small, struggling comic shops, and grumpy store clerks. So imagine my excitement when I got here and went to a bookstore, and saw the biggest comic selection I’ve ever seen. Then, imagine my disappointment when I realized that every comic was wrapped in plastic, and you were unable to browse. The Japanese have this astounding sense of presentation, an abundance of wrappers and tags and packaging. And now it was preventing me from gratifying a desire I’ve had since I was a child. But a couple days ago, some of my peers took me to a used book store. And in this book store was thousands of volumes of manga. And they had no wrappers, and they were available for browsing. And they were only one American dollar each. And I still giggle when I think about it. | 4 comments, Add Comment
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I\'m glad to see you guys are having fun :)