Why is western comics art so static compared to manga?

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Just compare these two action scenes

Spoiler: Hawkeye offing a bunch of mooks in Old Man Logan

Spoiler: Genos and Sonic fighting in One Punch Man

In a single panel the latter conveys far more sense of speed, motion and momentum than the former in five. The Hawkeye example has him essentially jump from pose to pose, with far less continuity or sense of how he transits between them aside from a few tiny speed blurs. In OPM like half the page is speed blurs.

At first I thought it was a coloring issue. Since western comics are usually printed in full color, putting the art to the same level with manga when it comes motion blurs might make it seem like a mess. But none of the black and white western comics I've read have used them either. Granted, stuff like Walking Dead isn't exactly the kind of hyperdrive action like Berserk or One Punch Man, but there's always scenes that would be far more effective with a greater sense of movement.

This is purely speculation, but another reason could possibly be the evolution of western superhero comics. Since the characters were designed to have striking, recognizable appearances and these often relied on their distinctive colours (Spiderman's red and blue, Fantastic Four's blue, Wolverine's yellow and black, Hulk's green etc.), blurring these could perhaps reduce their distinctiveness in a way... maybe?

I really can't come up with a good explanation for this. Compared to manga, western comics art in action scenes always tends to lose out, since they're more like a chain of individual paintings than a succession of frames that connect naturally into each other. Do you guys have any explanations or hypotheses for this?

 

[Avnger]

Yes and no. The distinctiveness might have something to do with it. There's the fact that while the manga image you have conveys more motion, it's also a rather blurry mess of the male fighter. It could also have to do with "realism." Realism as in what the fuck are the giant ass swooshes making up about 1/5th the frame and where did they come from?

edit: I don't read comics or manga so take this opinion with a bit of salt

 

[balladbird]

it's pretty much a stylistic thing, as was said. action scenes are actually one aspect of graphic art that I prefer western techniques for, actually. Manga fight scenes tend to be entirely too kinetic, resulting in a mass of incomprehensible speed lines and sound effects. Shonen titles are especially bad at this. When weekly shonen jump launched in the US, back when I was in high school, it was what made it so hard for me to get into Naruto.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Who knows.

Part of me wants to say that japanese artists simply have a greater understanding of motion. Because it isn't just comics, both in the realm of animation and videogames Japan generally excels at punchy and stylish action in a way the west has barely been able to compete with.

It might also be that western artists see comics strictly as comics, and that japanese artists see comics as an extention of animation. Maybe this is why some manga artists tend to do well in the director's seat, like Katsuhiro Otomo and Hayao Miyazaki. Western comics always tend to be clearly cordoned off by panels, while manga is a lot more free flowing with scenes and characters stretching outside of panels and across the entire page.

I guess it's just part of the craziness of the culture of japanese entertainment. The no holds barred, go for broke weirdness that for the longest time made manga and anime something the west didn't really want to touch.

 

[Saelune]

Cause western comics are in color.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Western comics always tend to be clearly cordoned off by panels, while manga is a lot more free flowing with scenes and characters stretching outside of panels and across the entire page.

This is completely off topic, but the Spider-Man comic "Brand New Day" had a fight scene that used the medium of comics very cleverly to convey a villain's special powers. I couldn't find images of it, but it was Spider-Man fighting an entity that was unbound form the constraints of time, making him able to strike Spider-Man several seconds from the future. The way this was done was that the villain stretched across the panels into the "past" and "future", even from a different page altogether.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Yes and no. The distinctiveness might have something to do with it. There's the fact that while the manga image you have conveys more motion, it's also a rather blurry mess of the male fighter. It could also have to do with "realism." Realism as in what the fuck are the giant ass swooshes making up about 1/5th the frame and where did they come from?

edit: I don't read comics or manga so take this opinion with a bit of salt

The swooshes are the afterimage of swings. Basically, in this one panel, a bunch of swings took place and to symbolize them all without having to draw a panel for each swing they add swooshes.

 

[Zhukov]

Are you joking with those examples?

The first one shows a coherent sequence. It's hardly the greatest thing I've ever seen, but I can clearly tell what's going on and how it all fits together.

The second one shows what looks like someone performing the apex of a pole vault in front of a blurry fucking mess half covered with what I assume are "swoosh" lines.

Western comics may well be static compared to Japanese ones, I wouldn't know, but those examples are not making your case whatsoever.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Stylistic differences and emphasis on realism,

Manga is (generally) more stylistic, it can afford to easily overexaggerate, which tends to work better for conveying motion, because you can break the characters in a way that doesn't look uncanny.

Western comics (generally) try to be more realistic, so the usage of excessive, giant speed lines would come off as cheesy. The downside though is, whenever you're drawing realistic poses, unless you're really, really exaggerating, you're going to lose some of the motion in the end and the final product can end up looking more static than you anticipated

It takes a great amount of skill to draw a realistic person in a way that is exaggerated enough to convey full impact, but doesn't also look uncanny. The solution is to either, become a better artist, give fewer fucks about realism or draw less complex looking characters.

 

[Winnosh]

Stylistic differences and emphasis on realism,

Manga is more stylistic, it can afford to easily overexaggerate, which tends to work better for conveying motion, because you can break the characters in a way that doesn't look uncanny (and use speed lines).

Western comics try to be more realistic, so the usage of speed lines would come off as cheesy. The downside though is, whenever you're drawing realistic poses, unless you're really, really exaggerating, you're going to lose some of the motion in the end and the final product can end up looking more static than you anticipated

It takes a great amount of skill to draw a realistic person in a way that is exaggerated enough to convey full impact, but doesn't also look uncanny. The solution is to either, become a better artist, give fewer fucks about realism or draw less complex looking characters.

I completely disagree with this. Western and Manga both have so many wild and varied styles that it's rather impossible to pin them down. There are incredibly cartoony Western styles and incredibly realistic manga styles You can't really say one has more examples of realism than the other.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I completely disagree with this. Western and Manga both have so many wild and varied styles that it's rather impossible to pin them down. There are incredibly cartoony Western styles and incredibly realistic manga styles You can't really say one has more examples of realism than the other.

In this particular example, you have One Punch Man

Spoiler

and

Spoiler

While the entire genre may very in style, there are recognizable trends and in these two particular examples, it's pretty obvious one is more stylized than the other.

There's even My Hero Acadamia that uses the contrast in its own story (very cleverly)

It also makes sense if it can be reasonably anticipated that the manga will be animated (happens more often between manga and anime than comics and western animation), because the easiest way to give an animator an aneurysm would be to ask them to draw Hawkeye up there like that.

 

[DoPo]

I'm by no means knowledgeable in comics, so I'll withhold commenting on that, however this topic did remind me of something I watched: it was about different cutting techniques in action movies, particularly the difference between Hollywood style cutting and Chinese style cutting and what difference it makes for action scenes. It was something about how in Hollywood you would show a character swing but cut right before the hit and then camera and show the effect it has on the opponent, while the other style would show the hit and the reaction.

Slightly off-topic but I'm interested to see this again. I can't seem to find a video and I can't remember if I happened to watch it on TV or something. I think it was somewhere on the internet, though.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Are you joking with those examples?

The first one shows a coherent sequence. It's hardly the greatest thing I've ever seen, but I can clearly tell what's going on and how it all fits together.

The second one shows what looks like someone performing the apex of a pole vault in front of a blurry fucking mess half covered with what I assume are "swoosh" lines.

Western comics may well be static compared to Japanese ones, I wouldn't know, but those examples are not making your case whatsoever.

This is because the One Punch Man example is only three frames of a several pages long sequence, the complete posting of which would require many more images. The point was to exemplify the illustration of motion and speed, something which IMO is hardly present in the first example.

I'm by no means knowledgeable in comics, so I'll withhold commenting on that, however this topic did remind me of something I watched: it was about different cutting techniques in action movies, particularly the difference between Hollywood style cutting and Chinese style cutting and what difference it makes for action scenes. It was something about how in Hollywood you would show a character swing but cut right before the hit and then camera and show the effect it has on the opponent, while the other style would show the hit and the reaction.

Slightly off-topic but I'm interested to see this again. I can't seem to find a video and I can't remember if I happened to watch it on TV or something. I think it was somewhere on the internet, though.

Might you be talking about this? It most certainly covers action film editing in the east vs. the west.

 

[stith27]

So, to add my opinion to this fight. I am an avid reader of comics and manga, have been for years. As many posters have stated, there are so many different illustrators working in manga and Western comics that each work has to be taken separately. Not every action scene in a superhero book is that boring static pose you were talking about. Not every manga action sequence is a mess of lines and sound effects. For example, Scott McDaniels, the original penciller for Nightwing in the 90s was able to create very fluid and dynamic panels of Nightwing moving from rooftop to rooftop by creating a trail of poses in the panel. Kentaro Miura, the creator of Berserk, tends to have more static poses with his fight sequences. So, ultimately it's a stylistic difference, it really has nothing to do with adapting for animation. That's the first reason

The second reason is that manga chapters have less pages than an American superhero comic. Most weekly series only have 11 or so pages to each chapter. With those kind of page constraints you can't have long flowing action scenes, they need to quickly get to the point of the chapter. This is also why a fight scene will drag on for multiple chapters. Whereas American comics typically have 30 pages, the creative team has more room to play with the action. Very rarely will a fight in a Superhero book stretch across multiple issues, assuming it's not a big event comic. For example it took 4 issues to reach the climax of the first Superman/Doomsday fight in the 90s; granted at the time, Superman had 4 books a month, each one coming out a week after the other.

Ultimately it comes down to the differences between how Western comics and Manga are produced. Manga that has to be published each week (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, One Punch Man to name a few) is under a severe time constraint. You have to storyboard, write the script, do the rough pencils, do the finished pencils, ink, and typeset everything in 5 days, then rush it to your editor for final approval, THEN get it to the Publisher so you can have your work featured in the next issue. Compare that to American comics where you have the writer, illustrator, inker, colorist and typesetter have 6 months to get everything done before their first issue of a book hits shelves. Granted they do have to work quickly, but it's not the time crunch you see with the Japanese manga system.

 

[DoPo]

Might you be talking about this? It most certainly covers action film editing in the east vs. the west.

Yes, that's the one! Thanks, for finding it.

 

[sageoftruth]

Speed lines. That's pretty much it. The Hawkeye one has no speed lines. It has flecks of blood hanging in the air to convey that something cool just happened less than a second ago, but that's it.

Meanwhile, One Punch man has a bunch of speed lines following Genos to give the sense that he's in motion. Also, his image is drawn blurry to give the impression that he's going too fast to be seen clearly.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

At least western comics color their work.

 

[cleric of the order]

companies tend to snatch up cheap where they can find them, generally i've found leads to subpar quality that a very flash and bang style doesn't really hold up to.
mind you, I don't know enough of Steve McNiven's work to say he is a comparable if his is comparable to Yusuke Murata (I don't really like marvel all that well either).
but one look at Nu-judgedredd erks me greatly
I'm not an art critique, and I'm not pretentious enough to pretend but something there reminds me of squirrel girl and the writing staff seem much more amateur and unskilled. also seeing "meme king" and a store involving memes just fucking threw me out.
note everyone can be mignola but still

upon some meditation i prefer the logan one a bit, the colours give it a good feel to tit you know

 

[Casual Shinji]

Western comics (generally) try to be more realistic, so the usage of excessive, giant speed lines would come off as cheesy. The downside though is, whenever you're drawing realistic poses, unless you're really, really exaggerating, you're going to lose some of the motion in the end and the final product can end up looking more static than you anticipated.

I think this gets pretty close to it. There's plenty of western comics that have a nice sense of motion, but they're generally all of the cartoony variety. As soon as you get to the superheroes things get pretty stiff.

It's the same for character expressions. Even when you see western comic book characters screaming it still looks relatively stone-faced. You compare that to manga where even if the style is pretty realistic the artist won't shy away from drawing someone like a shrieking banshee. *looking at you Guts*