The news hook, as we say in the biz, is that Asterix is taking on manga, but this article in Bloomberg News is more about the European comics market than the venerable Gaul.
David Taylor at Love Manga, who is always skilled at reading the tea leaves, is interested in the European publishers’ attempt to jump on the manga bandwagon, including developing their own homegrown manga. What interested me, though, was the similarity between what happened in Europe and what happened here: Manga and manwha are dominating the market in part because they are serving an previously under-served customer base: girls. The article quotes a 14-year-old InuYasha fan from Germany:
`We never read comics apart from manga and manhwa,” van Loenhaut said. “Manga has female heroines, and that makes a big difference.”
Exactly. Give the girls comics, and they will read. And I don’t mean Asterix. Here’s what another teen had to say about that:
“I know Asterix, but only because my Dad has all the books,” said Bollin, peeking out from behind her glasses and straight, dyed-black hair. Visitors clustered around the Asterix booth nearby were mostly men over 40.
Touche!
That said, I think the article overstates the importance of girls. Overall, the French comics market grew 12 percent last year, and manga is 20 percent of the total market, which suggests that sales of other BDs have slowed or even decreased. That could mean that longtime comics readers are switching over to manga, or it could mean that they are leaving in droves and being replaced by larger numbers of girls (and manga-reading guys) who are reading comics for the first time. Either way, the problem seems to be that interest is flagging in BDs. Asterix should spend less time worrying about manga invaders from outer space and more time looking in the mirror.
Bah, France. Don’t know what they worry about. They have a strong comics culture (not like Germany where 90% of all comics are imports) and up to now their BDs and manga have coexisted peacefully for more than 10 years, being published mainly by the same publishing houses. And only now they start to notice people actually read manga? This is more media play than actual problems, I believe. But then… manga *is* awfully attractive… ;)