Ok, I decided that I was going to start a conversation about the Comics Vs. Manga debate right now, because I'd been thinking about the issue here: http://www.mangaviews.com/node/356

There seems to be hostility on both sides of the comics and manga fandom, but is it really as bad as people on the internet say it is? Why are people arguing about whether one graphic artform is better than another country's regional graphic artform? Why are people even arguing about it? I don't mean that in a "Uh, manga is better than comics" or "Comics are better than manga" sense, but the whole issue just infuriates me to the point of "Who cares?"

This article really spells out the cultural ghetto Western comics get placed in: http://www.dan-stryker.com/blog/?p=1223

Now wouldn't you say that manga, and to a greater degree anime, gets a similar shtick about 90% of manga being hentai, when really that's just not true. Only 90% of the manga and anime non-anime and manga fans picture in their heads when they think about both things is hentai. It's the same cultural ghetto Western comics suffers through, only reversed!

Western comics get slammed for being too immature in their storytelling, despite many Western comics being quite mature in their storytelling (Starman, Watchmen, The Sandman, The Punisher), whereas many manga series are downright family friendly (Yotsuba&!, Domo: The Manga, One Piece for older kids, and in Japan they have Chi's Sweet Home to read, dunno if it's been licensed here).

Enough is enough, the news story featuring a censorship of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was featured on comics and manga news sites alike, and the threatening censorship of Dragonball is something all manga fans have to worry about. Shouldn't we be working together instead of arguing which regional artform is better than the other by default?