But I've never intended to come across like I think that manga readers would jump to The Incredible Hulk or Black Hole the second those books are published in little squarebound softcovers. My proselytizing for manga-formatted comics is more a question of removing unnecessary obstacles to readership than it is of creating some sort of tesseract that'll transport fans of Love Hina or Dragonball Z to Hellboy in the blink of an eye.

What do I mean by "removing obstacles"? Let's look at New Marvel for some for-instances. When Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada took over, they slowly instituted aesthetic and business changes that are now largely line-wide. Here are a few:

1) Stop writing continuity-heavy or continuity-dependent stories that require a familiarity with the characters unattainable to the casual reader
2) Stop doing multi-title crossovers that require readers to purchase and be up to speed on several titles
3) Start writing in 3-8 issue story arcs that will make for smoother reading when collected
4) Start publishing those collections as often as possible
5) Stop doing text-heavy, visually "busy" covers featuring tons of characters and replace these with simple, iconic images of the main characters
6) Start printing the books on high-quality paper line-wide
7) Stop using ALL CAPS lettering and switch to the same kind of mixed-case fonts that most publications use

Now, we've all got our opinions as to the overall character of the New Marvel regime, and as to the success of their initiatives. Certainly, no one (not even Quesada and Jemas themselves) thinks that every single book Marvel has put out since 2000 with these guidelines in mind is a rip-roaring success. Indeed, none of the above are guarantees of quality in anyway. But that's not the point at all--there not intended to be construed as guarantees. What these measures (and some others) actually did was remove several long-standing and frustrating obstacles to acquiring a larger readership for Marvel's books. They made the books easier to read, easier to understand, easier to find, easier to afford, easier to follow, easier to hold, and easier to look at. Even if you believe that 99% of what Marvel does is total dreck (and I don't, at this point not by a long shot), at least that 1% has a much better shot of attracting an audience.

This is what I'm getting at when I talk about the strength of the manga format. Manga collections look like--and read like--books. They're the size and shape of a regular old paperback novel, and since you're getting a couple hundred pages of story at a shot, they're pretty much the length of a regular old papeback novel as well. Even if what's inside is utter crap, at least someone who comes across it in a bookstore can say to herself, "Yep, that's a book, alright." (The price point is far more in line with regular paperback books than most trade-paperback American comic collections' are, too.) Moreover, manga companies go to great lengths to ensure uniform, attractive trade dress throughout a series' duration, meaning that they actually look nice when put next to each other on a bookshelf. In a bookstore, where you need to do whatever you can to catch the eye of the buyer, this simple step is a godsend. And you're never gonna see a manga collection that needed to be reissued after Volume Two came out because the publisher never bothered putting Volume One on its spine. (Folks, this isn't some act of hubris like Eddie Van Halen prematurely assuming he'd eventually be able to release a VH Greatest Hits Volume Two without people pointing and laughing at him--go ahead, put Volume One on the the first collection you publish! We won't mind!)