Manga in America ─ Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics

Japanese comic books have attracted a devoted global following. These books, called manga, are even said to have "invaded" and "conquered" the United States, and they are held up as a quintessential example of the globalization of popular culture and multi-directional cultural flows which challenge American hegemony in the twenty-first century.

In Manga in America, Casey Brienza explodes this assumption in the first ever book-length study of the history, structure, and practices of the American manga publishing industry. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews with industry insiders about licensing deals, processes of translation, adaptation, and marketing, new digital publishing and distribution models, and more, Brienza shows that the transnational production of culture is an active, labor-intensive, and oft-contested process which she terms "domestication." Ultimately, this book argues, domesticating manga rearticulates the very same imbalances of national power that might otherwise seem to have been transformed by it. This leads to the paradoxical-and controversial-conclusion that Japanese manga in the United States actually serves to make manga everywhere more American.

Casey Brienza is Lecturer in Publishing and Digital Media in the Department of Culture and Creative Industries at City University London, UK. A freelance journalist, columnist and critic, her work has appeared in such periodicals asAnime Insider, Anime News Network and Graphic Novel Reporter.