Manga in America Sources & Notes

Sources:

Manga Manga by Frederik Schodt
Watching Anime, Reading Manga by Fred Patten
堀淵清治,『萌えるアメリカ』
Brian Hibbs Tilting at Windmills Sales Columns from 2003-present
Amazing Heroes 181, July 1990 (Toren Smith Interview)
https://web.archive.org/web/20130311114117/http://alldaycomics.com/2013/03/07/toren-smith/
https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2010/07/golden-age-of-scanlations.html
The Comics Journal No. 259, April 2004



Notes on Intro Stats

Anyone paying attention will realize these statistics are imperfect, but I still believe they are representative of the overall market. The initial chart comes from Wizard Magazine 18, and covers comic sales for March 1992. These, I believe, are specifically periodical (floppy) comic sales, given that the graphic novel business was virtually nonexistent at this point.

The data for 2004 comes from Bookscan via Brian HIbbs’ blogpost. Bookscan generally tracks bookstores and a handful of comic shops, but probably fewer comic shops in 2004 than it does today. This data only covers the top 750 titles, so there are lots of titles that get cut off. I don’t think if we had the rest of that data the numbers would move that much. The piece we are missing is the periodical comic sales during this same period, which were still a significant portion of the business in 2004. This would boost up the Marvel, DC, and other numbers a bit, but I think the overall picture - that from 2004-2008 or so, manga was dominating, would not change.

The final data comes from 2021, once again via bookscan via Brian Hibbs. Now we have the full data set, not just the top 250, and I believe Bookscan by this point covers much more of the comic shop market. Given that we are missing periodicals, there’s a case to be made that Marvel and DC should be slightly higher, but we are also missing book fairs and libraries, which I imagine would push manga higher. Sadly, I have to work with the data I have, but I think the story is accurate - in the 90s, marvel, and to a lesser extent, DC, dominated, by 2004 manga took over everything, in the years since, manga floats around 50% of the market, kids stuff makes up a lot, and Marvel and DC hold onto a small slice.

Intro Animation Sources
Wizard Magazine No. 10, March 1992
https://medium.com/the-black-list-blog/foreign-films-at-the-domestic-market-9858f75447cf
https://web.archive.org/web/20050222120902/http://www.newsarama.com/pages/Tilting/Tilting14.htm
https://www.comicsbeat.com/looking-at-npd-bookscan-2021-and-its-a-doozy/