Inspired by: >It doesn't matter what the "right" way of reading comics even is. The other user and I talked about why our friends irl have dropped these series. And they did because most Euros and Slavs and such, especially millennials, read manga, not comics. They aren't used to buy/read 20 series to understand one, they are used to single series that are 100% self-containing. Again you might prefer the US style, maybe it's even better. But it won't get any new fans and expand. It will only decline and is one of the big reasons for why comics sell worse than manga these days.
>Yes but as the anons above have said, that's still other stories you are forced to read only to be able to understand the one series you actually wanted to read. >When I start Optimus Prime or MtmtE then I want just that. Nothing else. I want to start with issue 1 and read straight to the very last one (in the latter case the last Lost Light). I might like it enough to read the tons of other materials about other robots because I like that world, but I don't want to be forced to read it and I especially don't want to be forced to google the order and switch back and forth between 10 different series.
Euro Slav millennial here. I agree with 99% of this.
Only some corrections. Back in the 90s and so comics are not sold in special stores they are sold in kiosks that have multiple other newspapers and even toys for children sold next to them. Welcome to Slav land!
I did read the Marvel transformers at the end and got a pretty great(story) Matrix/Unicron saga out of it. There was no needing to read other comics since there only was transformers and it was the series. I think all comics from the 80s (remember these comics are a reprint and translation of 80s US Marvel Transformers) operated like this not only was the story self contained in 1 series it was often self contained in 1 book. You can figure this out by reading old comics.
I totally hate the modern US cancer of needing to jump across 3 different series, I'm not doing that! And the story looks disjointed as fuck and often drags on forever.
Like the user pointed out Manga is far more accessible this way you pick up X series and only read that no need to jump all over the place. Who even was thinking this is a good thing???? Seriously when did this start? It was not like this before?! Why is the US comic industry insisting on killing itself? 2/2
So just buy the trade collections, you fucking idiot. Nobody is forcing you to buy single issues in the US market. People always make it out to be impossible to read US comics when this isn’t true at all. If fucking Gundam and Devilman, etc. can have so many different series with conflicting continuity due to reboots and retellings then how hard is it to go to wikipedia or whatever to look up info about specific collections if there’s confusion.
You’re also completely ignoring the fact that translated reprints in other countries back in the dsy often had an abysmal track record in publishing stories, as they could skip entire arcs or issues and arbitrarily picked and chose what stories were published, leaving out stuff that later was being referenced. And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that sometimes they might cut out individual pages.
I would know, they completely skipped the X-Tinction Agenda crossover in X-men reprints in Scandinavia, they skipped issues in Incredible Hulk reprints, they randomly chose what characters and stories they would reprint in anthology titles and often dropped shit if it wasn’t selling, etc.
Gabriel Fisher
JESUS CHRIST, ARE YOU STILL WHINING ABOUT THIS?
DIDN'T EVERYONE LAUGHING AT YOU IN THE LAST THREAD GIVE YOU A HINT?
Michael Hernandez
>If fucking Gundam and Devilman This literally makes zero sense. I don't know about Gundam however I know Devilman and there is literally not that much to it what is there The original Manga The 70s TV show (basically this of anime youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w) the 90s OAV The crybaby series
> can have so many different series with conflicting continuity due to reboots and retellings You have to explain this to me. This is literally nonsensical. Let me restate your argument
> SUPERMAN can have so many different series with conflicting continuity due to reboots and retellings youtube.com/watch?v=PXVjCkYOJz8
Here is the thing Literally no one is expected to NEED to watch the 1960s batman or the 90s TAS to understand anything these series are self contained. This is the thing they are SELF CONTAINED. Meaning that the 90s Superman TAS will introduce the characters in its own way same for the movies. Normies have no problem with this since the cycle looks like this: Series starts Series ends Time with nothing Go start a new series
Basically you are not expected to jump all over the place you simply take whatever is named "Superman" or Batman the cartoon at a given point in time and watch that.
No one has problems with retelings and reboots. Fuck most normeis and kids will have no idea that a different batman or supermen cartoon existed in the past.
You also notice that in the motion picture industry everyone is pedantic to not have 2 of the same cartoon at the same time so there are no 2 series named Superman like "Superman the amazing" and "all star superman". And no one is expected to go watch the batman series to understand what is going on in the superman series.
This is a normal thing.
You also realize that this was also the norm for US comics up until ~2000 go read some golden or silver age comics and prove me wrong. These comics even where self contained stories in only 1 book.
Carter Lee
That face when you know all of devilman and know that the 70s TV series omits the major hero girl who has monster tits who spit acid and she uses them all the time to melt other demons.
>JESUS CHRIST, I'm not him to your surprise most people are not interested in needing a university education in "how to read US comics" to get into them.
And you needing to hunt down web pages to know in what order to read this shit.
Eli Thomas
Trade collections are also self contained and usually collect all the necessary stuff. So just go read comics and stfu.
James Robinson
Devilman has nearly a dozen different manga series at this point, at least one that is some kind of a retelling of the original story, iirc.
Brandon Diaz
Does it need you to go to a different manga to read who this character is or what the characters are referring to? See the point? >dozen different manga series at this point
Logan Sanchez
When did US comics turn into this?
Aaron Rivera
Some of them are prequels so kinda, sort of.
Austin Ortiz
anglo sjws think slavs are nazis lol. unironically. this is a true story. the two evil nazi racist groups on resetera which is an anglos biggest sjw video game forum are japanese and slavs.
Caleb Taylor
>anglo sjws think slavs are nazis lol They are not wrong you know. t. Slav.
Gavin Perez
Ok, minor objection. >prequels By definition don't require you to read the things that happen after it.
When did the US comic book scene turn this cancerous and why?
Tyler Ross
Another euro here. Yeah, I always have preferred european comics and manga for this reason. There was one series to follow and that's it.
American comics were fun, but the translations would leave some comics out and if you wanted the whole story, you'd have to try to hunt the original comics and wait for a month for them to arrive. Sometimes the editor would flat out state that the rest of the comics in the crossover were of poor quality and that's why they didn't publish them all. The inconsistent quality is the reason why I still try to avoid books that do crossovers.
Brody Allen
>Sometimes the editor would flat out state that the rest of the comics This is a good thing. Be me and read transformers as a kid it ends with the destruction of unicron and all transformers looking hopefully into the future. Get the complete collection to read all of them and maybe get into modern ones. Turns out there was another ark that quickly got aborted because Marvel transformers was ending and it literally was shit.
The editing improved the story I got as a child.
Colton Hall
>Another euro here. Yeah I don't understand how Americans operate how do they live? Do they check daily some wiki on how to read comics? Do they buy one series and go >Aw shit it says here to read this other thing better buy that other comic Do they buy all the DC stuff blind and read it?
How do they operate? And why do they think this is normal?
How did they get used to this?
Jace Wright
Nagai writes so bluntly and frantically that any concept he introduces requires additional material to be fully developed.
Benjamin Morgan
Comics are made in our capitalist economy, of course the producers are going to try to get you to buy more product. But there's no reason you actually have to do that. In most cases a story continued into another title is just a loop, primarily affecting only that titles' character. You can safely ignore it, stick with the book you're reading, and the exposition of the next issue should catch you up about what happened. You and every faggot who makes this point are too stupid and uncreative to exist without being spoon-fed every piece of information.
Brayden Watson
>to buy more product >Comics are made in our capitalist economy Did you just imply >Manga is not made in a capitalist economy and >Manga does not want you to buy more product ????
No its only US and the trend is 100% cancer. The micro transactions of comics.
Daniel Bailey
>dude just try to manage a story that is disjointed and feels crap.
Lincoln Rodriguez
>Comics are made in our capitalist economy, of course the producers are going to try to get you to buy more product You realize manga is made for profit too... Manga publishers also want you to buy more manga If anything they're better at it
Andrew Myers
I don't know what this discussion about american comics has to do with Transformers since you can read only the Transformers comics from IDW it is not necessary to read comics from other Hasbro franchises.
Jordan Garcia
JAPANESE COVER FOR IDW MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE VOLUME 3
Totally agree see Looks like DC/Marvel operate on a lets milk the whales policy where they fuck over 99% of the readers and concentrate on milking the 1% whales who will make up 99% of their profits.
A extremely cancerous business practice and if the whales disappear or dry up they are truly fucked.
Cameron Smith
>I don't know what this discussion about american comics has to do with Transformers I'm OP and I admit its complicated 1) The discussion is mainly about DC/Marvel policy = bad. 2) This discussion was started in a transformer thread 3) I'm remembering Marvel transformers that did not have this practice and contrasting to Marvel/DC of today
It makes sense if you look at it this way.
Nathan Powell
fair point The story's not disjointed. It's purposefully bloated to tie in ancillary characters. There's no NEED to buy crossover issues except for autism and completionism.
Andrew Robinson
>completionism That's like my kryptonite and weakness and pathological sickens rolled into 1.
Zachary Allen
>There's no NEED to buy crossover issues except for autism and completionism.
No, but it's really annoying to read comics that introduce plots that never get resolved in that book, or get constant references to things that you haven't read about. It just wastes pages that could be used better, and I don't watch TV shows that pull shit like that either.
