More Manga in America

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Is North American manga mania a generational thing?
"Kids think this is their art form," Kleckner says. "If you take out a white piece of paper with a young adult in America and ask them to draw you a face, I guarantee you half of them will be a manga (face) with spiky hair and big eyes."
...They also like the way manga cover a wider range of themes than U.S. comics are traditionally known for. Some manga are just innocuous "save the world" fantasies, he says, "But a lot of them are rather deeper and they're not condescending. I mean they treat teenagers as people...What's the future like when computers are humanlike? You know, that's a pretty sophisticated story for a 13-year-old."
..."It's generational," Kleckner says. "I think part of it is, they get it and their parents don't." Parents aren't the only ones to have been puzzled. "Two years ago, I remember calling a book chain in the South in the United States called Books-A-Million...You start selling them manga (and they say) 'Main-ga? What the hell is that?' (But) now we have a 4-1/2-foot (1.35-meter) section in every Books-A-Million store in the United States. They love manga.