To qualify my opening sentence (using an off-putting brand of aesthetic elitism): while I'm selective in my manga consumption, I'm just as selective with Western comics, roughly 90% of which can charitably be described as sub-mediocre garbage catering to an idiotically mediocre majority. Besides, there's digital options - some of them free - for those who can't afford it. But make no mistake these titles, and others like 'Akira' & 'Domu', 'Uzumaki-Gyo-Shiver-Smashed-Frankenstein', and 'Tekkon Kinkreet-Gogo Monster-Cats of the Louvre', are absolute masterpieces of the artform, and will always be worth the sticker-price. not to mention a heavy investment with intangible currencies like time and emotion.

From a dull, practical perspective, this 'decompressed' approach means that getting hooked on 'Lone Wolf & Cub' or 'Blade of the Immortal' will require a lot of shelf real estate, as it means purchasing close to 30 volumes per series. The pacing and structure of manga is very different from American comics or Bande Dessinee, with the action unfolding in a cinematic manner that might spread a single action sequence over a dozen (or dozens of) pages, when an American comic would compress the same material to five, & Eurocomics might do it in one or two. 'Vagabond' is another series that demands a commitment at the outset of the relationship, but it's pragmatic, not pathetic. particularly since manga titles can regularly match the epic length - if not the narrative grandeur - of 'Lone Wolf & Cub', which meant drowning myself in 9000 sublime pages of bloody vengeance, the agonizing dilemmas imposed by devoting oneself to the code of bushido, and dragging along a toddler on the path to Meifumado (the Buddhist 'Hell'-analog) or 'Berserk', with >40 volumes * of weird, pseudo-European fantasy that cranks the gore to 11 and sucks you in with Kentaro Miura's incredibly detailed, virtuosic draftsmanship, and his idiosyncratic, occasionally soapy story-telling. I'm a fan of manga who remains very selective about the titles I read. Vagabond & the Sexy-As-Fuck Topic of Western vs.

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