I'm of the belief that Marvel comics, until recently, were written for, marketed to and read by teenage boys near exclusively. Is this what puts them in one catagory or the other or is it the fact that the protagonists are adult(ish)?

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

To further elaborate on the cultural differences referenced above, in Japan comics, aka Manga, is a billion dollar industry in print alone with the medium being widely accepted throughout society. As such, with the luxury of such broad readership they have the ability to promote broad ranges of material to various demographics that span age groups as well as gender. Each of these demographic categories is further defined by numerous conventions of style, structure, content, themes, character archetypes, etc. In the United States, with a significantly smaller population of comic readers, there is the necessity for broader appeal throughout titles. This disparity makes it difficult to place an American title within the manga demographics. The above was an honest attempt based solely on my limited knowledge of certain conventions of the two primary male manga demographics. In reality mainstream American comics would fall somewhere in between the two in terms of subject matter, but without (much of) the flamboyance found in the younger demographic and far less graphic than the older demographic.

I believe you are somewhat correct in your estimation of the target group that American comics are written for, but I would submit that the age range is a bit broader. Mainstream American comics contain the action and excitement that appeal to younger readers, but are also laden with weightier concepts and ideas that appeal also to older audiences. At the same time, though very rarely successfully marketed to female readers, they nonetheless contain characters and material that attempt to draw in a female readership (A statement, which compresses the subject of women in comics into a single, and far to simplistic summation, but that's not the conversation we're having here).

As a disclaimer, I have read very little Manga of any kind. Much of the above is drawn from what I remember from a text I read for a class I took my freshman year, History of Animation or something like that. I believe the above is fair and mostly well informed, but if someone with more perspective on or experience with Manga thinks I've missed the mark, please speak up.

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I would agree that American comics are targeted at a broad(er) range of people these days but early on it was entertainment for children almost exclusively.


Interesting points though. I'm learning!

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

When do you think that changed. Reading through the horror books, Werewolf by Night specifically, It does not read like it is written fro children. Its not written well, but the verbage and word choices would be difficult for most kids.

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I'm really speaking to mainstream Marvel super-hero comics here, but I don't think that they truly switched until after 2000- during Joe Q's reign as EiC.
There is a definite shift in tone and style around then.

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

But was that kid to adult? Or just crap - ie people who just wrote comics and for the longest time and not truely experience writers, into quality writing?

I would agree that in the 60's and part of the 70's comics were kid targeted. But by the end of the 70's. A lot of superhero plots took the form of racism, alcoholism, and to a lesser degree drugs. Not exactly kids topics.

So was it writing for a audience that changed in 2000, or just a change in who they hired to write?

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I think Marvel from the get go was trying to draw in an older crowd. I mean Stan was pretty much beating people over the head with that claim from very early on. There was even that point when they ceased being "comics" and instead became "pop art productions". But he was also smart enough to realize he had to do it in a way that didn't alienate the younger crowd.

Also, I think it's important to note that Marvel left the Comics Code Authority in 2001, a switch which allowed them to apply appropriate ratings to content rather than being forced to regulate it. It's not surprising that their line began to include more mature content around that time. That said, I submit that the change simply allowed them to overtly address themes and issues that had been previously relegated to subtext, but which had nonetheless been present all along.

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I am not sure how much affect leaving the Comics Code Authority had to the change in writing. By 2001 they had all but stopped effecting the editorial or writing decisions of their members.

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That's not entirely true, part of the reason they dropped it when they did was because the Code refused to approve an issue of X-Force (116, I believe) due to the violence depicted therein. Even then, it's less about the code so much as the format of their own rating system. If you decide that you are going to have clearly delineated rating categories like Explicit Content and Parental Advisory, then you can use those labels to attract specific readership and creators to those titles. This period sees the simultaneous introduction of the MAX imprint as well as the expansion of Marvel Knights line from a single ongoing title (Daredevil) to several in a short period of time. My point was that those changes gave creators a forum in which to present content of a specific variety more freely, and in a way that they could write for a specific audience. This in turn presents an opportunity for fans to access the content that is written for their specific demographic. In essence you no longer have to pussyfoot around violence and other depravity if you know your product is being directed to an adult audience.

So it's not that comics all of a sudden stopped being written for kids and started being written for adults. But rather that those that had been previously written for a broader nebulous readership, which was "safe for young teens but interesting to adults" has now been split into two separate things. One of which, is obviously going to be more sophisticatedly presented and will undoubtably attract creators of not necessarily higher but certainly different calibre.

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I like anime, but can't do manga. I have a real block about reading black and white comics. This is why the Marvel essentials line is not good for me.

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This was the world that I had created. I know what I have to do to fix it...to make things right. There's no problem that can't be solved.