Manga or Bust

Inspired from the manga, Bakuman which was created from the folks behind Death Note. A rather interesting look at what goes when your trying to get your creation printed and serialized.

Gotta admit sometimes I envy Japan, you'll hardly if ever find comic competitions that aren't online down here. And even more so of getting it published. Plus the whole weekly comics in a magazine format just seem so intriguing to me since it has a better chance of getting noticed. Plus hey if you do good, your a shoe in for an animation. This hardly ever happens in the U.S. nowadays which really sucks due to the shortage of animated programs (course the fault of that can be blamed on the networks).

On the flipside trying to keep a tight schedule doing around 15 pages weekly as opposed to monthly does seem daunting (then again most of Japan comics are B&W with only one or two pages colored every now and then. So that helps.) and indeed keeping people interest is an challenge in itself since thats what most manga magazine based it on. (Hell am surprised Hunter x Hunter is still allowed to be published provided all the "breaks" its author has).

Still though U.S. comics have it just as rough trying to put a book out on a monthly basis and they have to color them too while keeping their sales up. Newspaper comics have it easier, only four-five panels to work on with the occasional colored page (mostly Sundays though I do see some comics that do this weekly) though I kinda consider that media not a good place if your trying to do a story arc. (Shrugs) But that just me.

Either way, its a tough media to keep up and make a living from but if you got the passion theres a good chance you'll go far.

Happy Drawing to all out there.