Historically, Marvel Comics has been the most trendy entertainment company and leading the American culture for a long time.
However, nowadays, it’s suffering from the lack of storytelling and stale hero characters.
Meanwhile, on other side of the US, there had been a lot of changes in storytelling, which began to challenge Marvel. The challenger is found in the popularity of other forms of storytelling - namely …
Manga.
Manga is a form of comic or graphic novel originating from Japan and is dominating not only in the Japanese book market but also has made a large impact in North America, as well.
Manga sales in the US have doubled from 2020 to 2021 and are on track to triple in sales in 2022, especially for the Agents of Change demographic. Crunchyroll, an American Anime streaming service, announced that GenZ’s awareness about Manga is at 96%.
The reasons behind Manga’s popularity are in within the multi-dimensional character development and complexity. Also, the majority of coming-of-age protagonists in Manga are forced into the adult worlds of social conflict and illustrate the hypocrisies through detailed descriptions of their inner turmoil.
Finally, Manga’s stylized design, big exaggeration, diverse drawing styles, and abstract depictions attract more audiences than realistic depiction and allow creators to draw freely regardless of real and physical identities, such as body and gender.
These creatives are experts at depicting characters in culture and stay away from monoculture representations.
Hence, Jaehyun suggested new forms of Marvel Comics in order to align with his team’s direction;
From Hero’s Stories to Heroic Stories.
Hora
is a Manga inspired from the streamers who has been heroic for entertaining many online viewers who had to self-quarantined during the pandemic.
Padada
is a Webtoon (Korean comics optimized for mobile phones) inspired from the delivery people who has been heroic for sprinting to deliver the best quality of food to people even taking risk of their life during the pandemic.
