Comics pages make room for manga

The doe-eyed characters from the Japanese-style cartoons known as manga are infiltrating another segment of American culture.

Newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer begin carrying a manga strip called Peach Fuzz in their Sunday comic sections on Jan. 8. Other newspapers in the USA expected to follow suit with manga strips in the coming year.

Manga is one of the fastest-growing genres in U.S. publishing. Bookstores devote entire sections to the distinctive digest-sized, mostly black-and-white, often right-to-left formatted paperbacks.

For newspapers, the strips offer the potential to reach readers - especially younger ones - who might otherwise turn to alternative online news and entertainment.

"We hope to attract new readers and entertain our existing readers," says Janet Grimley of the Post-Intelligencer.

Adds Sherry Stern of the Los Angeles Times: "Newspapers are always looking for ways to attract younger readers. Nobody knows what the magic solution is, but comics are always one way to reach people. That's how a lot of people, including myself, first started reading the paper."

The Los Angeles Times is marketing the strips with TV ads during Saturday cartoon shows and fliers at comic book stores.

"If you go into any bookstore, you see so many teenagers and even younger kids bunched around the manga section," says John Glynn of Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes comics to newspapers.

Besides Peach Fuzz, Universal also is offering Van Von Hunter. Both strips, drawn by Americans, come from manga publisher TOKYOPOP Inc.

Peach Fuzz, by Lindsay Cibos, is about a 9-year-old girl, Amanda, who harbors delusions of becoming a princess. She has a pet ferret, Peach.

Van Von Hunter, by Ron Kaulfersch and Mike Schwark, is a horror spoof about a warrior in Gothic-inspired costume who fights evil.

Newspapers are not the first to get on the manga bandwagon. CosmoGIRL! magazine now carries a manga strip. Harlequin Romance novels are available in manga form.

TOKYOPOP founder Stuart Levy acknowledges that manga is not yet as popular in the USA as it is in Japan, but he expects that will change soon.

"It's like sushi," he says from Japan. "There's a pretty good chance everyone has heard of sushi.
"In a few years, everyone will know about manga."