Why is western comics art so static compared to manga?

[Cowabungaa]

Part of me wants to say that japanese artists simply have a greater understanding of motion.

These examples sure as fuck don't show that though. In the Western example you can clearly see which way the attacker pushes people, how he uses that momentum to further his attacks, you can see the choreography despite the fact that it stands still.

That Japanese example? Just flail your fists wildly! What even is actual choreography, just draw speed lines! And honestly manga/anime boils down to "it's so fast it's a blur!" all the damn time, the instances of actual choreography are rare as hell. Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Guardian Of The Spirit, Darker Than Black sort of? But most action shonen? Nope fuck choreography it's all about the wooshwooshwoosh.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

The thing is, it's hard to tell what's happening in the manga image.
The "motion, speed and momentum" is covering half the picture.
They could have drawn the same thing on the Western comic images but they chose not to obscure the images.

 

[Kaimax]

I'm not gonna bother getting into this, but the manga example is not a good example.
It lacks context of its 2 previous page of that chapter.
in short, you're not putting the "wind-up" scene into the equation, hence why it's not a good example.

 

[gsilver]

'ya know, in a lot of circles, they make fun of excessive speed lines.
You can't even tell what one of the characters looks like in the manga example.

 

[Casual Shinji]

These examples sure as fuck don't show that though. In the Western example you can clearly see which way the attacker pushes people, how he uses that momentum to further his attacks, you can see the choreography despite the fact that it stands still.

That Japanese example? Just flail your fists wildly! What even is actual choreography, just draw speed lines! And honestly manga/anime boils down to "it's so fast it's a blur!" all the damn time, the instances of actual choreography are rare as hell. Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Guardian Of The Spirit, Darker Than Black sort of? But most action shonen? Nope fuck choreography it's all about the wooshwooshwoosh.

Well... subjectivity I suppose.

I could claim the western example is just still frames with stilted poses, which I guess sorta makes sense for an old character. But even then there's no flow to the sequence of events.

But then I'm not familiar with the western comic in question. I am familiar with the manga in question, so I know who these characters are and what their relation is toward eachother, which makes this panel instantly make sense to me despite the insane motion. And this is exactly what this panel is showing off; insane speed. Not every page in One Punch Man is 90% speed lines, just when it concerns these two characters since that's sorta their thing.

 

[The Madman]

I'm not really into either, so comparing just from the pictures provided I have to say I prefer the western example as at least I understand what's happening, whereas in the manga example I have no clue what's going on. Can't say I'm super fond of the art style for either example though.

Incidentally...

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

Why is Geralt of Rivia trying to rescue 80's punk Spider(girl? woman?). Is this yet another one of those alternate reality comic universe things?

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Incidentally...

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

Why is Geralt of Rivia trying to rescue 80's punk Spider(girl? woman?). Is this yet another one of those alternate reality comic universe things?

Yes. As mentioned, it's from Old Man Logan which served as the inspiration for Logan earlier this year. It's a sort of Marvel gone the way of Mad Max type story set 50 years into the future (whatever that means in the Marvel timeline), where superheroes are practically extinct, the US is a wasteland ruled over by villains like Dr Doom and Red Skull, and the rest of the world is implied to be completely annihilated. Wolverine is retired under the name Logan, and leaves on a road trip with Hawkeye to be able to pay his rent. The 80's punk rock Spider-girl is Hawkeye's daughter.

I'd say it's worth reading, but nothing amazing. It's written by Mark Millar, and if you are familiar with his work you probably know what to expect: gratuitous gore, darkness, edginess, and extreme nihilism bordering on annoying. It tends to rely on shock value and little else, though the backstory of why Wolverine retired is quite disturbing. The artwork's decent though, and there is a certain fascination in just how grotesque and depressing its version of the Marvel universe is.

 

[lacktheknack]

Because western comic artists actually care if you even know what's going on.

Urgh! Trying to read manga gives me a headache. Even the gentlest winds bring excessive clouds of movement lines all over the joint.

 

[The Madman]

I'd say it's worth reading, but nothing amazing. It's written by Mark Millar, and if you are familiar with his work you probably know what to expect: gratuitous gore, darkness, edginess, and extreme nihilism bordering on annoying. It tends to rely on shock value and little else, though the backstory of why Wolverine retired is quite disturbing. The artwork's decent though, and there is a certain fascination in just how grotesque and depressing its version of the Marvel universe is.

Thanks for the clarification, but nah. Not only does it sound depressing but as mentioned above I'm not too fond of the art style. Plus I suspect I'd just be lost most of the time anyway since I'm not familiar with the universe much.

The only comics I've ever really gotten into as an adult have been Sandman and Fable, neither of which are particularly 'comic-booky'.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I'd say it's worth reading, but nothing amazing. It's written by Mark Millar, and if you are familiar with his work you probably know what to expect: gratuitous gore, darkness, edginess, and extreme nihilism bordering on annoying. It tends to rely on shock value and little else, though the backstory of why Wolverine retired is quite disturbing. The artwork's decent though, and there is a certain fascination in just how grotesque and depressing its version of the Marvel universe is.

Thanks for the clarification, but nah. Not only does it sound depressing but as mentioned above I'm not too fond of the art style. Plus I suspect I'd just be lost most of the time anyway since I'm not familiar with the universe much.

The only comics I've ever really gotten into as an adult have been Sandman and Fable, neither of which are particularly 'comic-booky'.

Yeah, you won't miss out much. It does feel very wanky and juvenile at times. Like the whole setup is just an excuse to overindulge in the "grizzled old badass" tropes, except it's also post-apocalyptic, and also like a western, and also it's Wolverine instead of Clint Eastwood ("Phwoar! Wolverine's wearing a duster and a cowboy hat! Keeeeewl!"). Also his backstory of

Spoiler: Since you are not interested, I don't feel bad about spoiling this

slaughtering all members of the X-Men himself when Mysterio cast an illusion to make them look like various supervillains, then committing "suicide" on train tracks after he realized what he'd done, therefore essentially "killing" Wolverine,

while effective, pushes the grimdarkness and shock factor to a degree where it just feels gratuitous. "Phwoar, I'm gonna give Wolverine a tragic backstory! Except it's gonna be like, super grim and tragic. Like, super duper tragic! The tragicest thing since the beginning of tragicky tragedies!" There's lots more things like that that just feel icky and pointlessly gross, like

Spoiler

- Hulk having turned into a supervillain overlord, and leading a clan of his sadistic children he inbred with She-Hulk (ew)
- This future's version of Kingpin feeding the respective versions of Daredevil and Punisher alive to Velociraptors
- Red Skull gouging Captain America's eyes out and wearing his cap, straight up referencing ancient humans wearing the skins of their defeated enemies

 

[Cowabungaa]

snip

This isn't as a subjective as most things are. You can't honestly deny that there's flow in the fight of that first comic, you can clearly see the moves, you can see the momentum employed by the character, the character is actually professionally fighting. Yes they're still frames, but they capture actual combat. From frame to frame you know what's going on, how each character is hit, how the fight progresses. There's an obvious sense of time progression between those panels. Each panel clearly follows on the other and you can clearly see how. And isn't that what flow is? Hawkeye clearly moves forward, with more bad guys falling behind him with each panel. You don't have to be familiar with the comic to see that, I haven't read it either.

Genos? He's just flailing. Where's the 'understanding of motion' in what we see there? It doesn't go any further than "punch lots" and each little panel on that page could follow on the other in whatever order. Which is why I scratch my head at OP saying that manga action panels 'follows more naturally' on each other compared to Western ones. These examples are the worst to show that as it's the exact opposite here. Like, switch around those first three Hawkeye panels. The fight suddenly makes no sense any more. But whether you look at the zoomed-in eye first, the fist or the bigger punching panel it doesn't matter, any order is at least possible.

I think a more honest comparison is that there's a difference in intention in both comics. In the Hawkeye example care is given to the fight choreography, the action itself is the star. In the Genos example it's not about that at all. What matters is that Genos feels completely overwhelming to Sonic, the zooms on Sonic's eye and Genos' fist conveying a feeling of surprise. It doesn't matter all that much what the time progression between those three panels is, it doesn't matter that the fight is kept relatively abstract. What matters is that you feel that Sonic is fucked. Most shonen manga and anime seems to be focused on that, which is little surprise considering the strained resources of many artists and studios.

The only comics I've ever really gotten into as an adult have been Sandman and Fable, neither of which are particularly 'comic-booky'.

There's so much interesting shit out there once you move away from the superhero crap from the 'Big Two.' Vertigo, Image, Black Horse, IDW, so many good publishers. I'm especially fond of Image because of the sheer variety of stuff. Are you a fan of Scorcese and film noir movies? Criminal is an amazing little series. Did you like Stranger Things? Read Paper Girls. Trippy sci-fi? ODY-C. Historical action? Black Road. A-typical fantasy? Shutter. The list goes on and on.

Other greats of Sandman and Fable's publisher Vertigo; Transmetropolitan, DMZ and Northlanders.

 

[Casual Shinji]

snip

This isn't as a subjective as most things are. You can't honestly deny that there's flow in the fight of that first comic, you can clearly see the moves, you can see the momentum employed by the character, the character is actually professionally fighting. Yes they're still frames, but they capture actual combat. From frame to frame you know what's going on, how each character is hit, how the fight progresses. There's an obvious sense of time progression between those panels. Each panel clearly follows on the other and you can clearly see how. And isn't that what flow is? Hawkeye clearly moves forward, with more bad guys falling behind him with each panel. You don't have to be familiar with the comic to see that, I haven't read it either.

I can tell that he's going from one goon to the next, stabbing one at a time, and then kicks a door down. But there's no appropriate energy to accompany it. It's similar to watching stillframes from an action movie. I can follow the action, there's never any argument about that, but the action that I'm following does little to give me any impression of force or motion. And the staging from one frame doesn't propel my attention to the next.

Genos? He's just flailing. Where's the 'understanding of motion' in what we see there? It doesn't go any further than "punch lots" and each little panel on that page could follow on the other in whatever order. Which is why I scratch my head at OP saying that manga action panels 'follows more naturally' on each other compared to Western ones. These examples are the worst to show that as it's the exact opposite here. Like, switch around those first three Hawkeye panels. The fight suddenly makes no sense any more. But whether you look at the zoomed-in eye first, the fist or the bigger punching panel it doesn't matter, any order is at least possible.

The understanding in motion is there in that he looks like he's presently moving. Very, very fast and going all over the place, but moving. It's not just a bunch of speedlines that make no sense. There's a clear indication of where he's coming from, where he's going, what area he's covering, and that Sonic is barely able to dodge it. And whatever little digital tricky the artist used, along with the background lines, even gives it some nice space.

 

[The Madman]

There's so much interesting shit out there once you move away from the superhero crap from the 'Big Two.' Vertigo, Image, Black Horse, IDW, so many good publishers. I'm especially fond of Image because of the sheer variety of stuff. Are you a fan of Scorcese and film noir movies? Criminal is an amazing little series. Did you like Stranger Things? Read Paper Girls. Trippy sci-fi? ODY-C. Historical action? Black Road. A-typical fantasy? Shutter. The list goes on and on.

Other greats of Sandman and Fable's publisher Vertigo; Transmetropolitan, DMZ and Northlanders.

Oh I know there's other good stuff out there, I didn't mean my comment as a slight against comics in general, just that there's only two I've ever really gotten into. I also prefer to binge my reading, which kinda doesn't work well with comics unless the series is already finished and I'm reading an anthology, so perhaps one day I'll get around to reading those.