Working as the manager of the Plainfield store for the last 4 years I have strived and worked at growing our manga section. In case you have never heard or seen what I am going to talk about today let me explain; manga is a graphic novel style, mostly black &white, and the largest stay away for most ready is that it is backwards in its reading style. I am sure many of you have heard about Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, and YU-GI-OH, these are just a few titles that are in manga form and have grown a cult following through the anime and collectible card games. Yet many avid comic readers stray from this literary form and avoid giving a shot to what I believe is on par with some of the current comic books out there today and here are some reasons why.
Familiarity is one thing every comic book reader is aware of, we know who we like and that is what we want to read. Changes happen for our characters sometimes for the betterment and sometimes for the negative (I am looking at you One More Day peter doesn’t make deals with the devil). We stick with these changes in the hope our characters or publishers will satisfy the hunger we as readers have for excitement or fulfillment of another amazing storyline. With manga there is no canon going back decades everything is new territory and you don’t feel betrayed at least not in the beginning and this is what makes it feel so open to any and all readers who want to give manga a try.
Many manga start the same way, and by that I do not mean that all manga are all the same but manga as a whole has subgenres just like any other source of material. If you want to read horror, action, romance, history, or even sci-fi manga you can find it. In that understanding many manga follow a formula for their genre. Action or adventure manga will follow the hero’s journey trope a call to action occurs that forces or entices our hero to accomplish a goal. Romance manga will follow the trope of the person falling in love with someone and then finding out there childhood friend also was in love with them. But those are just a couple examples as to what manga has to offer.
The reading situation, yes most manga reads from right to left and not left to right like what most of us have grown accustomed to. But in reality it isn’t so different; it starts off a little rocky because we have grown so accustomed to reading things in the standard right to left style. After awhile you grow more accustomed to it and it becomes second nature almost like riding a bike or playing a video game eventually you know what you’re doing even if the formula has changed.
My Final Reccomendation
With all this in mind I have to no doubt recommend the easiest manga right now to get into if you are a comic book reader and that is My Hero Academia. Picture a reverse x-men scenario, one day everyone starts to be born with some sort of power or quirk as it is known in the manga. We drop in on Midoriya Izuku a kid whose dream is to be like the heroes he sees on TV especially the greatest hero of them all ALL MIGHT (who is a carbon copy of superman but better in every way in my opinion). The caveat is Midoriya ends up being that small percentage of people who does not develop a quirk. How do you live in a world with heroes all around you and you can’t even come close to being by their side, on the verge of giving up Midoriya’s life is changed forever. You need to check it out to find out more!
If more people continued to give manga a try you would find that there is a whole other world of stories and characters to read about. So stop at your local Graham Crackers Comics today ask us for recommendations. My hero Academia volume 1 is on our top 50 TPB’s because how good it is!
