How come Euro comics never caught on in the US?

Not enough capes.

>>94002317
Reptile agenda.

>>94002317
>Euro comics
>in the Us
go back to your country

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>>94002317
puritans

Jews

>>94002317
Racism.

Euros are more aggressive against scanlators, so the fan community has trouble building momentum. Anime and manga never would have gotten as big as they did without the years of obsessive work by fans (Crunchyroll grew out of fansubbers, most licensed manga first gets a following through fan translations). Most of the attempts that I've seen at doing the same for Euro comics get nipped by C&D orders pretty quickly.

>>94002317
We do talk about them if there's some ass and tits in it

Other then that it can fuck off

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Some volumes of Melusine got printed, but I think they deliberately avoided volumes with any cheesecake in and they seem to have given up.

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Some volumes of Wake (Sillage) got translated but they shamefully censored the lead's bare jungle titties in the first volume, literally with a black marker.

>>94002317
2000AD/Judge Dredd has a decent US following. I know one guy that likes Tank Girl too. thing is, those are the only two Euro comics I've ever seen get any marketing at all. My guess is the Euro comic companies just don't want to spend the money to translate the stuff and when they do they barely advertise it. So we end up liking a few British comics that are already in English, and are barely aware of everything else.

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>>94002317
The main reason people don't consume foreign comics is because the language barrier and the translation process gets rid of most regionalisms, killing almost all comedy and slang heavy books instantly. Big examples of great euro comics that would never make it due to this are Spirou magazine, Le hecho des savannes (where Gotlib often published his stuff), Bonelli Editore and A Suivre magazine.

What you refer to as "euro comis" was the european sci-fi-fantasy art wave of the 70s-80s that was spearheaded by France, followed by Italy and Great Britain. Not counting Italy*, there were 4 "big" euro publishers: 2000AD, Les Humanoïdes associés, Metal Hürlant and Dargaud.

There were attempts at US penetration. The most notable attempt was Heavy Metal magazine, which licensed and translated comics from Dargaud, 2000AD and Metal Hürlant (from which they got the inspiration for the name). For the most part, Brittish comics had the most penetratrion.

(cont.)

How come Tintin never caught on in the US?

>>94003572
Humanoids associated and Metal Hurlant were led by the same circle of artists, and Humanoids indirectly (or directly, can't remember) administrated by the legendary Moebius. Dargaud was an ancient BD publisher that (if i'm not mistaken) published the bulk of french comics in that period.

Metal Hürlant ended up licensing some of their comics to Heavy Metal and let them do their own translations, while Humanoids Associated greatly limited the availability of works (specially from Moebius) - French BDs often used handwritten dialogue which unlike american typesetting which cannot be imitated unless you convinced the original letterer to do the whole thing again with the translated script. To many French artists, dialogue was just as much part of the art as illustration - to modify it was a no-no.

I have no knowledge of why Dargaud's content never made it to the USA - perhaps it did and we just forgot.

Other euro-like efforts in the USA where Shooter!Marvel's EPIC comics imprint, that was supposed to publish BD sized graphic novels from american authors, however most of these stories where basically movie pitches or just not good enough. Some of their stuff was also highly underrated, and some of it (ie: Windsor Smiths attempts at making the first Elric of Melbibone comics) suffered from licencing issues

Moebius got world famous after Arzach and even got called to draw the art of some Marvel comics (Silver Surfer), Shooter** even sealed a deal with him to publish a compendium of his world of edena series and some other short stories. which became a profitable dead that kept publishing until 1992. Rumours said his wife Claudine was very adamant about how to translate and disagreed with the whole thing

* Italian comics are highly regional. Euro comic style publications they did where often sent to france to be translated the republished there, their influence was quite indirect.

** In fact, this was amongt one of the last thingss Shooter did as EiC

>>94003906
>>94003572
tl;dr translation problems, marvel failing to capitalize on the genre and francocentric hon hon hon dickery

>>94003714
not the faintest about that one. I guess i'd compete with Peanuts so it didn't have much market space to penetrate into.

>>94004009
Peanuts and Tintin are wildly different. I can't imagine the popularity of one shutting out another.

>>94003572
thank you for the lengthy explanation charlesposter

>>94002317
because 90% of US comics didn't catch on, and in case you missed it EURO comics are dwarfed by US comic numbers. So it's like a small state trying to make it big in a whole continent when in reality there's no money to support it.

>>94003494
I typically think of Brit comics as their own group rather than lumping them with mainland Europe. Aside from the English language, they also tend to be visually more similar to American comics.

>>94003714
It caught on well enough to influence and inspire some cartoonists, and even had a (mediocre and largely ignored) Hollywood feature film. That's usually about as good as foreign media can do in the U.S.

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>>94004071
I guess I sense they have similar looks. In my head they fit the same "adult friendly kid's book" niche. But my gut also tells me Tintin must have been popular in the USA at least for a time.

>>94004127
Factually Untrue. Before the 60s, or during the pre crash 90s, I'd agree with you. But nowadays, France alone publishes almost half as many pages as the USA, and it's sales numbers are comparable with Spiderman and Batman. If you sum britain, italy and spain, the american industry gets quite small.

Here is a list of newest bds, reprint and original. https://www.bede.fr/nouveautes-bd

Pic related shows number sales for two BDs in 2011 and 2012 (Book name: Comics in French - Laurence Grove - I'm totally downloading this). Hell, it's big enough for Les Nombrils - a canadian french comics - to be noticed and form a fandom there.

The american market has been shrinking since the 70s save for famous cape comics. Top notch indie comics may average at 30k - which is just about what the brittish beano ships nowadays, and only the movies have been starting to turn that around - we are actually seeing growth these last years, both in sales and the amount of published comics.

Currently, the european market is bigger than the american one, I don't know the exact numbers - personally I estimate that on France your average famous BD may sell around +100k copies and a magazine like Spirou on the 50k or maybe more. I'd say France and Italy perform at somewhat close to the USA's level,

Sadly I haven't been able to get my hands of currrent decade sales numbers. I believe, however, that euro comic sales have stagnated for some time now and the american market may eventually surpass the euros again.

On a side note, from what I've been told and read, to this day Italian comics and Bonelli Editore in particular sell like hot cakes, how or why these numbers are sustained is beyond my understanding, and I'm not too keen on attributing it to comic reading tradition.

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>>94004948
Just found this for further reading:

https://wessweb.info/wessimages/9/99/01.The-Rise-of-the-BD.pdf

>504 new BD titles were released in 1994, whereas in 2014 the figure was 4,877 ― almost ten times the number released 20 years previously.

Jesus H. Christ

france stronk

Also I just realized OP made the mistake of posting this on the most active hour of wednesday when everyone's storytiming new comics

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>>94004948
http://bookriot.com/2016/02/01/3-bestselling-french-comics-2015/

>Asterix and the Missing Scroll by Ferri and Conrad
>sold over 1. 6 million copies.
>It was actually the best-selling book in the country
>-significantly more- than what Star Wars #1 sold in North America.

I may have grossly underestimated the size of the French industry.

>>94002317
To much tits?
Both in the comics themselves and in the comics code authority.

>>94005512
Asterix is pretty damn big in the UK, in France it's gigantic.

>>94005512
Yes, the Us comic market is a classic example of "We Wuz Kangz".

>>94005512
damn

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>>94003572
There aren't just language barriers to overcome, there's cultural ones aswell. There are heaps of nordic comics that, even if the dialog was perfectly translated, the jokes and stories wouldn't come across as their comics are like their food - minimal spicing, you must hunt for the subtle flavors in the ingredients.

>>94007113
I can understand why a lot of stuff doesn't translate well, but stuff like Tintin is popular pretty much everywhere (including other English speaking countries) but unsuccessful in the US.

>tfw Arzach never got translated

>tfw manga was what caught on in the US instead of Euro comics
>tfw we'll never have the Euro equivalent of Tokyopop churning out release after terrible release

>>94002317
There is a complete absence of good taste amongst Americans.

If were being honest with ourselves I blame on the lack of Movies and Cartoons adaptions. Look you all can on about how well they sell over there but if they are going to sell in the American market without some indie publisher bringing it over you need other media to help get the word out about the works in questions. One of the big reason manga got bit over here was the anime that were adaptations of manga. If France comics are going to be looked at over here we better hope Valerian gets Dragonball z popular.

>>94007630
Is Valerian worth reading?

>>94007661
I think so but and I say but it's a very old book that a new reader might scoff at, does not help that a lot of the imagery was lifted for Star Wars. I think it's a good series that is fun and some great art but it does not get great till the third story. So I recommend it as a important historical book and a starting point to a Star Wars fans who want to see a visual influence on the series.

>>94007419
>>94007419
I think you're really really underestimating how popular Tintin was and is in the US. Growing up most kids I knew had some of the collected editions. There was the cartoon on every morning before/after school. There just wasn't much Tintin merch to advertise your Tintin fandom, but almost everybody I knew who read comics (and many who didn't) knew Tintin.

I suppose the ones who didn't were my more white trash friends with uneducated parents.

>>94007661
It's a good series, but it became kinda terrible after the Cold War was over for good.

>>94007630
>One of the big reason manga got bit over here was the anime that were adaptations of manga.

The other reasons were immigration, ethnic communities, asian stuff having negro cool due to the US being very fucked in the head about race and japanese publishers being large enough to make a successful effort at gaining market entry.

>>94002317
Distribution and marketing. It always comes down to these two factors.

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>>94007513
At least it's something other than capes (they make me narcoleptic), it shows them that there is a world outside the States. Once outside the box, I think potential readers would eventually find their ways to Europe. The worst outcome is that they're reading any comic at all, itself a step up from not reading.

I understand France to outsell the USA in terms of manga. And as far as I know, feeding german kids manga for a decade made them to grow their own comics scene where there previously was none.

>>94007766
>And as far as I know, feeding german kids manga for a decade made them to grow their own comics scene where there previously was none.

That's a real shorthand. Main thing that happened was that attitudes towards comics in general shifted massively during the 90s.

Manga mainly filled the previously long, empty teenage year stretch between children and gainfully employed adult consumers that used to gobble up pretty much all potential readers in the past.

>>94002317
'Muriclaps have shit taste.

>>94007661
Yes. The english translation however.

>>94007723
Where on earth did you grow up in the US?

Too kino for ameriplebs.

>Get hyped that Dark Horse is printing Moebius libraries
>The World of Edena
>The Art of Edena
>Inside Moebius Part 1
>Inside Moebius Part 2
>Inside Moebius Part 3
>The Art of Moebius.
>that's it
Fuck outta here.
Even Manara library was better.

So if I want to get into Euro-comics that don't have translations what language should I learn aside from French.

>>94007661
very much yes.

>>94007630
That's a point of contention friend

In fact, french comics got as many adaptations as american comics do - they just weren't hollywood movies, so they didn't have the budget to look good

Valerian being licensing for a hollywood flick is a nice thing, but modern hollywood isn't exactly something that creates fandoms either.

In truth, carton adapations should be more popular, both in france and in the USA.

>>94002317
Too expensive and publication pace is terrible.
I don't know if it is that, i am just guessing.

>>94007113
I don't know to what extent that's true. Compare Japanese comics - the cultural humour is still there (and in scanlation circles, often achieved by keeping some key words unstranlanted) - people can pick it up by reading.

>>94007419
>>94007723
It was the same thing here. Tintin may not be read anymore but it's recognize as a cultural icon by most comic readers

>>94007766
jo. i shouldn't be surprised, but I often hard time believing manga hasn't overtaken most markets like it did in my country.

>>94010111
I'd pick Italian or Spanish at first, then Swedish or Norwegian to understand the surreal bullshit.