I like the part where they blow up the planet.
February 29, 2008 10:02 AM   Subscribe

Turning Star Wars Japanese -- Manga Scenes Done Better: StarWars.com writer Pablo Hidalgo explores the differences between the American and Japanese comics adaptations of the original trilogy.
posted by beaucoupkevin (28 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
A great read so far.

I love this page so much.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:06 AM on February 29, 2008 [1 favorite]


Ironically, the version from the supposedly ultra-logical, conformist Japan does a better job of exploding frames. The most striking thing is how boxed in and repressed the US version looks.
posted by DU at 10:11 AM on February 29, 2008


Er, so how can Vader lift up Obi-Wan's cloak with his lightsaber?

Or is this one of those times that a "wizard did it"?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:17 AM on February 29, 2008 [1 favorite]


This makes me really want to read all of the manga adaptation. It, unlike the Marvel adaptation, looks like it might really make a valuable artistic contribution.
posted by Muttoneer at 10:17 AM on February 29, 2008


For the Marvel adaptations, produced during each film's post-production period, the artists had not seen the films -- they were working merely from the script, with some key photography and maybe some concept art. Also, they had to conform to the page and printing standards of newsstand comics from 1977-1983. This meant that all the action of a Star Wars film had to be crammed into six issues (or, in the case of Return of the Jedi, a mere four).

Given those qualifiers, I'm surprised that the Marvel version looks anything like the films.
posted by dubold at 10:18 AM on February 29, 2008


Er, so how can Vader lift up Obi-Wan's cloak with his lightsaber?

Or is this one of those times that a "wizard did it"?


That wizard's just a crazy old man. I don't think he exists anymore. He died about the same time as your father.
posted by dubold at 10:21 AM on February 29, 2008 [2 favorites]


Given those qualifiers, I'm surprised that the Marvel version looks anything like the films.

Yeah, their sight-unseen comic version of Turkish Star Wars was really, really off base.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:28 AM on February 29, 2008


That wizard's just a crazy old man. I don't think he exists anymore. He died about the same time as your father.

NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:29 AM on February 29, 2008


Of course, some of this is just having more space - you have to wonder what a Howard Chaykin version with the equivalent number of pages would have looked like. Maybe not that much better, the US version a distinct air of just jobbing it whereas the Japanese one seems to have a lot more character and energy to it.

These days a lot of the japanese techniques that the greater page count made availble are pretty common in US comics, to the point where I almist miss the old, compressed style - at least you got a decent amount of story for your 22 pages.
posted by Artw at 10:36 AM on February 29, 2008


NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Your adoptive family dies, nothing, a planet full of people blows up, not a peep, but some old man cops it and it's all wah-wah-wah.
posted by Artw at 10:37 AM on February 29, 2008 [3 favorites]


Come off it... comparing the American comic style of 1977-1983 (and PRE-movies) under a great many constraints (tight deadlines, little or no access to source material, the American Comics Code Authority) to the Japanese comic style of 1997? Seriously?

Just how different do you think it would look if done by an American artist today?
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:40 AM on February 29, 2008 [4 favorites]


It probably look a bit like it was done by a manga artist, probably.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:50 AM on February 29, 2008 [2 favorites]


It'd probably probably.

Probably.
posted by Dr-Baa at 11:02 AM on February 29, 2008 [1 favorite]


Also, what GhostintheMachine said.
posted by Artw at 11:08 AM on February 29, 2008


Really interesting... but when they say this:

A very cinematic graphical convention encountered time and again in the manga adaptations is the complete absence of backgrounds when a dramatic moment demands all attention to the foreground.

they're astonishingly, exactly wrong. Dropping backgrounds can be a really effective technique in comics and manga, and one of the reasons it's so effect is that you can't do it in cinema.* It's exactly as "cinematic" as a thought balloon.

*ok, sure, it's possible with special effects, but it's hardly a cinematic convention...
posted by COBRA! at 11:10 AM on February 29, 2008 [1 favorite]


The original American comic is 30 years old, and wasn't considered "good" art-wise even then. If the gave it to a current US main stream artist, it would look very different.

And besides, manga-Luke looks like a little girl, bleh.
posted by doctor_negative at 11:28 AM on February 29, 2008


If you want to see a western artist doing some awesome Star Wars work you should track down Cam Kennedys work on "Dark Empire". It's all very nicely chunky and the tech has that indefinable Star-Warsy quality to it.

(The story is a bit balls though)

I'd say when discussing manga effects, "cinematic" is more likely to be used to describe the effect of something on the page rather than the actual visual representation - so speedlines indictating some kind of sudden zoom might be a cinematic effect, even though you'll never see a bunch of radial lines over a cinema screen.

Not really sure that leaving out the background really fits within that though.
posted by Artw at 11:53 AM on February 29, 2008


And besides, manga-Luke looks like a little girl, bleh.

There's a reason for that.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 12:10 PM on February 29, 2008


Just how different do you think it would look if done by an American artist today?

Most movie adaptations still suck. They still use too few pages and panels.

Anybody remember the rooftop shootout from Superman Returns? It went something like this.

(I pieced together a comic from crappy YouTube footage)

Here's the same sequence, in its entirety, from the official comic adaptation.

Now, my version is hardly ideal (If I'd have drawn it, I would have been able to use other angles, other panel shapes/sizes, and various cartooning tricks to suggest motion, for example), but the scene was just pointless in the official adaptation. It had no weight.
posted by martinrebas at 12:11 PM on February 29, 2008 [2 favorites]


Manga Leia is certainly more attractive than Carrie Fisher.
posted by sonic meat machine at 12:11 PM on February 29, 2008


Oh good, no dianoga tentacle porn

We're safe!
posted by SentientAI at 12:42 PM on February 29, 2008


I'd say when discussing manga effects, "cinematic" is more likely to be used to describe the effect of something on the page rather than the actual visual representation - so speedlines indictating some kind of sudden zoom might be a cinematic effect, even though you'll never see a bunch of radial lines over a cinema screen.

Yeah, sure, that's what they mean. But my (admittedly pretty trivial) beef is that "cinematic" refers by name to a completely different art form where this effect isn't really possible. it's just a really poor choice of words, and I've got a running gripe with the comics world's unhealthy obsession with co-opting language, technique, and limitations from film (which, ironically, isn't as big a problem in manga).
posted by COBRA! at 12:50 PM on February 29, 2008


TBH when you get comics writers talking exclusively in filmic terms and getting all deferential to cinema like comics are some kind of lesser medium that they really don’t want to be bothered with it kind of bugs me too.
posted by Artw at 2:09 PM on February 29, 2008


Manga Slave Leia > Slave Leia.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:32 PM on February 29, 2008


This panel is brilliant.
posted by flatluigi at 8:46 PM on February 29, 2008


A very cinematic graphical convention encountered time and again in the manga adaptations

Actually, this is an interesting point. Movies like Star Wars changed cinema. There's a very real way in which the modern blockbuster uses irritatingly melodramatic conventions stepped up from spaghetti Westerns and old war movies with high production values and pricey film.

None of that could have been known to the artists working on the Marvel adaptation. The manga adaptation, on the other hand, not only operates from the knowledge of the films, as assimilated into collective memory, but within the cinematic conventions that Star Wars itself honed to a tee.
posted by dhartung at 10:26 PM on February 29, 2008


Manga slave Leia looks like a ten-year old with tits.

I had all those Star Wars comics. I remember my mom buying them for me at Target when they came out. I really loved them, and read them over and over along with the novelization of the first movie.

My affection for comic adaptations of movies ended with the Raiders of the Lost Ark comic because the art was stinkin' terrible.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:15 AM on March 1, 2008


Flatluigi says "This panel is brilliant."

What struck me is how much that panel looks like Dave Sim's Cerebus.

Thanks for this great link, by the way, beaucoupkevin.
posted by jscott at 7:26 AM on March 2, 2008


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