Mangaman Shows the World Between the Panels
RSSBrigid Alverson
In Mangaman, written by Barry Lyga and illustrated by Colleen Doran, a manga character suddenly finds himself in the "real" world of a Western comic-and things quickly get hilarious. Willowy, long-haired Ryoko has trouble fitting in at an American high school. And whenever he's startled, speedlines appear around him-and then fall to the ground. When he looks at the lovely Marissa, his eyes literally turn into hearts. Yet, because he's a stranger to this world, Ryoko can see boundaries that are invisible to his classmates. The medium is the message in Mangaman. We talked to Lyga and Doran about the challenge of creating their story. And just so you know we're not cheating, Mangaman is Lyga's debut graphic novel. How'd you come up with the idea of depicting the world within panels that we can't see—until someone points them out to us? Colleen, what were the challenges involved in making Ryoko convincing and yet visibly different? Barry: We decided that he would have that long "beautiful boy" hair at first, and then cut it later. Which solved a story problem and also made for a nice little character bit at the same time. Colleen: Some manga fans seem embarrassed by the classic shojo look and always seem to be apologizing for the visual tropes: big eyes, long eyelashes, all legs and fluffy hair. But I love it. I'd throw a lot of modern manga down a chute for one really cute guy from a classic CLAMP comic. I love that look. I tried to keep the line work on Ryoko delicate, as if he had sharp, paper edges. But when Marissa embraces Ryoko, his edges are softer. I wanted it to look like holding him was a pleasant experience. I didn't want the reader to think she was about to get a paper cut. So sharp edges were reserved for his clothes. And then I had to consider whether or not to use tones. You see a lot of people slapping tones all over their work, but classic manga doesn't really use it much. Back in the day, they didn't have the easy computer tones, they had to apply those suckers by hand. Artists were far more economical with their use of tone. Now people use it so much the art looks muddy to me. I kept it very light and clean. And I thought it would have more impact if they were primarily restricted to effects, instead of used all over the book. How did you work together to develop the visual concepts, such as the sight gags about speedlines and the characters' ability to reach outside the panels? Barry: To me, that was the heart and soul of the book—the sight gags. I mean, it's a comic book, so you have to maximize the visual elements, right? Otherwise, there's no point to it. When I first started working on it, I just made a list for myself of all of the visual elements I could think of and then tried to imagine which ones could be played for comedic effect in the "real" world. Colleen: We spent a lot of time discussing it, working it out. Sometimes Barry went full script, sometimes Barry went Marvel style, which gave me a lot more freedom to play around with the look of a scene. Barry: Yeah, there were parts of the story where I realized, "Colleen's been drawing comics for a long time. She doesn't need me to explain this in detail." So it was a mix of writing styles, which I guess is sort of apropos for this project! A lot of comics for teens don't mention alcohol, drugs, and sex. Why'd you include a drinking scene and a (censored) sex scene with a manga-style sight gag? Barry: It wasn't a conscious decision to get into those issues. I just thought, "Well, they're going to a party. Kids drink at parties." Bang. There it goes. And Colleen just drew the hell out of that party, which made it perfect. And as to the sight gag you reference... Well, in that case, the boundaries were the point of doing it in the first place. We were able to have our (no) sex scene, plus make a funny comment about Japanese censorship laws, plus make a further comment about American Puritanism. Because even though there's no law in America against showing what you can't show in a Japanese comic, people would have come after us with pitchforks if we hadn't censored ourselves, even though no one has sex! The kids specifically decide to abstain, and if that scene had been written in prose, no one would have a problem with it. But because it's artwork, there are already people up in arms over it. That one scene—that one bit—works on a bunch of different levels. Colleen: We howled with laughter working on that scene in which, for all intents and purposes, nothing actually happens and nothing is seen. I must be naive, because yes, we did get some hyperventilating about it already. The prude brigade is already out. For a scene in which nothing happens. People are weird. This article originally appeared in School Library Journal's enewsletter SLJTeen. Subscribe here.
Barry: I've always been fascinated by the nature of stories and by metafiction, going back to the old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Daffy realizes he's in a cartoon. In the 1980s, Keith Giffen did a lot of funny comic book stories with the character Ambush Bug, where he would mock certain comic book conventions and tropes. So the idea was always bouncing around in my head as a kid that there were these rules to comics and that you could have fun with them. And if Ryoko was from a Japanese comic book, then it just made sense that he would travel to another kind of comic book, one that looks more "real" to Western eyes, but at the end of the day, turns out to be just as artificially constrained. Somewhere in there, there's also a wink and a nod to an old Grant Morrison story, where Animal Man realizes that he's just a character in a comic book.
That was tricky. First off, there was the pivotal decision of what kind of look Ryoko should have. Barry leaned toward Rumiko Takahashi style, but I wanted full out shojo. I think it's the only thing we really had any problem working out between us. I just couldn't see a girl like Marissa wanting to romance one of those cushy Takahashi boys. So I took it shojo.
