Does all Amerimanga suck?

|287x400px|Art from Svetlana Chmakova's DramaconI recently received a message on YouTube, asking: "How do you feel of americans making there own somewhat manga's?...many ppl are hating on it because its not really manga and or think its not good because it didn't came out in Japan." ...okay, lemme edit that a bit. "How do you feel about Americans making their own manga?...many people hate them because they're not really manga or think they're not good because they didn't come out in Japan." First off, let's address the obvious logical fallacies:


 * A work's original country has no bearing on the work's quality.
 * While manga is originally Japanese, there's no law against non-Japanese creating works using the same or a similar style.

But more importantly, this "American-made manga generally suck" attitude is worth addressing.

I've read a handful of American-made manga ("Amerimanga"). Most of the time, I'll flip through a few pages, then put it back on the shelf. Uninterested. The plots are cliched, the characters simplistic, and the art inconsistent. Interestingly, mostly my complaints have been about the mediocrity of these works. For the record, the exceptions have been Chynna Clugston's quirky Blue Monday and Svetlana Chmakova's amazing Dramacon.

However, when I flip through any random manga, I have the same reaction. I'm uninterested. I know what I like, and I'll go for that and get a higher return on my investment. But there are plenty of Japanese (or Korean) manga that bore me.

Also, I (and most American fans) are seeing only a small slice of the Japanese manga market. We're seeing the popular stuff. What does the rest of the Japanese manga market look like, the stuff that's not good enough to make it over here?

Overall, I suspect that if you compared all Amerimanga to all Japanese manga, you'd see a similar distribution of quality.

(I'm also glad that we have a commercial market for Amerimanga, which creates an incentive for American manga-ka to improve. How else will we get great Amerimanga some day?)