Page 31 Up!

Page 31 is up in color! LW has been explaining the color pages on her site, but I should probably mention it here as well. Typically the first few pages of a new manga are done in color and printed in color in the large manga compilations. When you buy the manga printed in volumes (tankoban), they are converted to grayscale. We had so many things going on for this project that we really didn’t get a chance to do that for chapter 1, so we are doing it for chapter 2. Manga rose as an inexpensive form of entertainment in post-war Japan, so unlike in the states where comics were printed in color on pretty good quality paper, manga were printed on rather inexpensive paper in black and white. This was and still is the reason why manga can be produced in such enormous quantity, because while you still need to do a good job inking lines and adding background effects, color adds a whole level of complexity (and time) to the art creation process. By doing things in black and white, artists can produce more art faster, with smaller teams (yeah yeah, single manga-ka…that’s mostly true, and while everyone talks about the Japanese system as being just one artist versus the writer/artist/inker/colorist/letterist here in the states, the reality is that for a lot of weeklies the manga-ka actually has to pay out of pocket for assistants to help them keep up with the brutal work schedule that manga production requires). Nowadays, the paper quality is exceptional and the black and white has produced a style all its own, but its still a lot chepaer to produce and print in black and white. That being said, computers are helping modern manga artists do work in color…only in most cases there just is no TIME to do so, particularly for weeklies, or for individual artists doing monthlies. There are a few exceptions. Gelatin, a quarterly, being my current favorite example, is done with a lot of color…and they obviously take far more time and tend to have a lot fewer pages. I really appreciate all of the extra effort that Wolfie (a solo artist, I might add) has put into these color illustrations. I think they look awesome!