Webcomics, non-superhero comics or Carl Barks´s Ducks are still "real" US comics and the biggest money maker right now is (Marvel´s) in-continuity Star Wars. More than 10% of the market fell to the dark side and every single issue has managed to stay at least decent to downright astonishing. Newspaper strip comics further count. Some of them should be more profitable than Superman´s current comics... His Rebirth line looks amazing btw. and The Phantom still hasn´t left the newspaper scene since February 17, 1936.
All sorts of great jumping on points exist for every long running comic, unless we are talking about Saga, Walking Dead or Sandman. These single vision works need to be read from the pilot onward, like a TV show or manga.
Every jumping-on-point is also a jumping-off-point to some. Continuity-free lines as DC´s Earth One (only Batman and Wonder Woman are good) / the defunct All Star line or Marvel´s "concluded" Ultimate Universe (all but Spider-man fell apart around Ultimatum) also exist. Or you can just stick to the shows. The majority of DC toons, from the forgotten Superman 1988 onwards, and 90s X-men / Spectacular Spider-man are all equally valid. The Flash, Gotham and all of Marvel´s Netflix are the best current life action offerings and even lesser shows as Supergirl or Agents of Shield fulfill certain quality standards (i still gave up on them), so the days of Birds of Prey and all the TV movie trash from Marvel are long gone. Let´s see about Preacher, Archie and friends and both cinematic universes are good, even if Cap3 (7,5/10) managed to disappoint and worry me due to the brain-dead script. The unfairly criticized BvS honored both sides (poor Ironman reverted to the vain man-child in IR2) and people need to remember how good the "off-brand" X2 and Spiderman 2 were. Oh well. I also 100% don´t believe that Singer´s new X-men can suck. Me and critics are starting to have vastly diverting opinions on the genre...
None´s first comic was a No.1 issue and look at how much baggage Star Wars brings.
The current and Legacy continuity + Infinities exist and i could go on. Hello D&D, The Fast and the Furious (Lol), The Simpsons, Star Trek or now Dragon Ball. One Piece at least settled on only having kidZ spinoffs and anime fillers/originals but look at the page count!
The continuity debate is thus a vapid one.
Event Fatigue is what it is and i went over it in my DC vs Marvel thread but fresh approaches as DC´s Multiversity (Morrison´s Seven Soldiers was the blueprint btw.) can still excite.
How can you not love Obama Superman, TMZ Batman, Nazi Superman (adopted by Hitler!) and no-copyright-infringing Australian Thor. The included Watchmen deconstruction is probably the best single issues of all time but it also spend at least 5 years in the cooker. Delays can be your friend... Grant Morrison, Mark Miller or Alan Moore are actually Scottish so you don´t have to be ´Merican to be a US writer. That´s the main reason why i consider manga to be the "lower" art form. You just can´t argue against diversity.
US writing has always been social conscious, Windstrom´s / DC´s Midnighter is my favorite gay comic character btw., unless we are talking about the (comic)book burnings in the 50s. The goddamn Comics Code managed to 100% derail the industry and the after-effect can still be felt to this days with borderline dead genres and so on. BUT independent comics have been picking up the slack since the 80s on that front. The rising cost may have been arrested for a while and the usual production value are at least way higher than with notoriously cheap manga. Double shipping though is another debate entirely...
US comics are 100% easier to pirate than manga. By a mile even, that´s why the industry is hurting right now and why merchandising and adaptations became so important.
Wanda is still a functioning character after the retcon but my beloved Quicksliver is now left without a purpose, yet we still have Polaris and the reveal that Magneto is their father was a retcon in itself too. The X-men will be fixed soon enough, due to the misfire of the Inhumans. The married Pre-N52 Superman is back (and actually closer to 40 than ever due to his son) and all "broken" characters as Bitgirl II / III or Robin III can be made whole again but let´s not start a refrigerator debate. #MakeBaneGr8tAgain!
Western Fatigue never truly came and they were a higher percentage of the TV / film market than superhero films can ever be, so the genre will forever remain save on some level. Good for me!
Modern Asterix has my permission to be cancelled but that is for another poll, i do read a lot of EU comics too.
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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb
Contrary to what one might think, there are plenty of other genres represented by them than just action and superheroes. Jellaby, Anya's Ghost, and Pandemonium are some that I've enjoyed, among others. I read webcomics on occasion as well. And like some other people have mentioned, I appreciate that American comics tend to be more socially conscious. Of course, sometimes that can go way too far in the other direction and come across as trying too hard and being extremely, painfully transparent. I had to drop the exceedingly cringeworthy Princeless series for that reason after only a few pages. (I think it was around the part where the princess was accusing the knight she just met of being a racist, despite having no reason to believe that he was except for the fact that he was white, and then telling the dragon to eat him. The whole thing was played for laughs and was quite... disturbing, especially considering it's a comic for middle grade readers. Yeah...)
