Greetings and welcome to the final instalment of The Occidental Tourist. After seven months of reading right-to-left and checking the glossary at the back (or is the front?), it will be a relief in a way to not spend an entire month thinking about the socio-economic significance of Keichi's bloody nose.

Yet, as I began this column, my enthusiasm was in no small part due to what I saw as a rising wave of interest in Anglophonic manga that had been many years in the making. Since that time, the Manga revolution has become more tangible as chain bookstore sales, which now represent the big money to everyone in comics both here and abroad, reflect the idea that people (meaning the mainstream audience who only visit their local comics stores by accident if at all) are favouring manga largely to the exclusion of comics.

Inside the Direct Market itself, the landscape is rapidly changing as well. While the idea that a comic store that was completely unwilling to carry manga or cater to its readers could still succeed and thrive is not impossible, the growth rates don't favour it. Macrocosmically, the audience is shifting to graphic novels as a favoured means of transmission, and no one category/genre has even come close to showing the growth within that market that manga have, consistently, over the last few years.

'In the last eight months the Manga revolution has become more tangible.' The infrastructure of the superhero/Western comics market is largely still invested in pamphlets that most publishers would tell you are firmly locked in cycles of attrition, and some might say terminal ones at that. As monthly numbers continue to dwindle (and believe me, they continue to dwindle monthly) the price of the pamphlets will inevitably creep ever upward to recover lost profits, resulting in a literal Ragnarok yet to come for that segment of the industry.

In contrast, manga have turned the conversation back to value; their own audience recently expanded wide enough to support what I believe is the price-point-to-page-count ratio we've all been searching for, somewhere around 200 pages for $10. It's a price point that appeals to buyers, provided that they are familiar enough with a given series, perhaps from seeing an anime derived from its pages on television.

These hordes of new readers don't care that manga are printed in black and white, especially if they've seen it animated in colour. They don't care if the books are printed right-to-left, though some actually prefer it that way, feeling more "Japanese-y" taking them in that way. They like the fact that the stories are often epic, stretching across several volumes, often evolving in unexpected ways, and also that they generally have little numbers on the side, telling the prospective buyer in what order to read them.

There is, in fact, so much heat on manga these days that non-manga publishers are trying to get into the act, evidenced by questionable product from the MARVEL MANGAVERSE trade paperback and ongoing series to Charlton reprint master ACG Comics recently reprinting a slew of South Korean artist Sanho Kim's work from the late 1960s and early 70s under titles like MANGA HORROR and MANGA ADVENTURES, when a mere three years ago they would have downplayed his ethnicity to sell the title (at no doubt smaller numbers) if they'd have mentioned it at all.

'Are retailers facing economic woes in the future by investing in manga today?' In addition, solicitations are starting to show up within the Direct Market for sequential product from various other Asian markets, including Korea manwha like THE ISLAND and PRIEST from Tokyo Pop or the recent slew of pamphlets like PSI and EXTREME from CURTIS COMICS and Chinese comics-epics like Wing Shing Ma's STORM RIDERS and the upcoming HEAVEN SWORD, both released through Comicsone. Whether these markets can indeed find their footing within the expanding-imploding Anglophonic comics audience will probably have more to do with the relative business acumen of their publishers than anything, but any relationship to this unprecedented manga boom can't hurt at this point.

The final question remains. Is it a fad? Will Americans and other more capable English-speaking peoples of the world look back on pictures of themselves decked out in cos-play gear with the same nostalgia that we do bell-bottoms and dashikis today? More pertinently, are retailers facing bubble-burst economic woes in the future by investing in manga today?

In the 1980s, retailers suffered the first implosion of the Direct Market during what is sometimes known as the Black and White Glut. Unexpectedly high sales and the development of ludicrous secondary market prices on a handful of independently produced black and white titles like CEREBUS, ELFQUEST, and, most importantly, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES caused retailers and audiences alike to over invest on similar product, creating a situation where supply radically outstripped demand.

Seemingly overnight, orders on these titles fell dramatically, erasing the fortunes of many a retailer and publisher alike and wildly restacking the Direct Market landscape in favour of mainstream companies. There was a lot more involved, but essentially, the secondary market, which assigns value based on complex voodoo algebra, proved early on to be a dangerous bet when it came to paying the rent consistently.

'The manga boom is more than the comics equivalent of the Latin-music revolution.' Every rapid expansion and subsequent contraction of the Direct Market that has followed has essentially followed this model. The Image "revolution" of the early 90s, complemented by Marvel and DC's labyrinthine publishing strategies developed to compete with this unexpected new competitor, generated a lot of short term income for retailers but literally bled the life from the outstanding body of Direct Market comics readers. In the wake of the fallout, Western comics lost literally 85% of their readership to skyrocketing costs and largely pointless storylines.

The current manga revolution certainly possesses the volatility to end up similarly. Yet, as superhero pamphlet sales - the bedrock of 90% of the Direct Market retailers' businesses - reach their terminal phase of unsaleability (and it is coming), manga will possess the dominant market share as stores are forced to adapt or close down. The other alternative is that comics stores will not ultimately be able to compete with chain bookstore discounts on manga collections, which will continue to increase beyond the Direct Market's as sales in that sector grow, and the audience will leave the Direct Market altogether.

Check out The Complete Occidental Tourist at the Rob Vollmar page for columns on sex, women's manga, Osamu Tezuka and more. So, while it seems somewhat bizarre to concede, it seems likely to me that Japanese-produced manga will be more than the comics equivalent of the Latin-music revolution of 1998. Without a similarly invested product to compete, it seems that manga are poised to capture America's attention for a generation, if not longer.

Given that neither of the big two American publishers are going anywhere anytime soon, either their particular strategies will miraculously evolve to compete with this juggernaut, or they will begin to import manga of their own to capitalise on the reprint value and the public's unyielding hunger for the form.

Thanks for your collective interest and feedback during the run of this column. It has been both a pleasure and a privilege to share my thoughts on manga with you all, and I look forward to returning to the pages of Ninth Art in a couple of months, looking at something completely different, but, hopefully, equally satisfying to you, the reader.

Rob Vollmar is the Eisner-nominated writer of THE CASTAWAYS and the recently released BLUESMAN: BOOK ONE.

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