Global Manga: “Japanese” Comics Without Japan?, the new essay collection, edited by City University London’s Casey Brienza, on the “global cultural phenomenon” of comics that may be presented as manga but are not actually created in Japan, is now available for purchase in hard-cover and e-book formats.
*** Special discount: 50% off (hard-cover only) ***
Dr. Brienza introduces the essays with Manga Without Japan?, an overview of the emergence of “original” (i.e., non-Japanese) manga, largely in response to market pressures and conditions. This essay provides working definitions of both “global manga” and “manga” in general, surveys the current state of “cultural production” of global manga around the world – in the U.S. and Canada, in Europe, and in South America, and approaches the underlying question of how to consider manga/global manga – as styles, as marketing functions or labels, or even as “tools” deployed in support of particular activities. Ultimately, as she points out, just some of the questions this book highlights – and that should be involved in any discussion about manga, whether in Japan or elsewhere, include:
- What do the fields of cultural production of “global manga” look like?
- Why and under what sorts of conditions do they arise and flourish?
- Who gets to decide what counts as “manga,” and who benefits from that decision?
- What are global manga’s implications for contemporary economies of cultural and creative labor?
- What does it mean…for manga to be “authentically” Japanese and what, precisely, is at stake?
