Comic strips

Manga arrives at St. Paul Pioneer Press

Skip to comments

Alan Gardner February 6, 2006 1 minute 0 comments

In an introductionary article, the St. Paul Pioneer Press becomes one of 30 newspapers across the U.S. to run “Peach Fuzz” – a manga style cartoon about a young girl and her ferret.

Fred Basset and Hagar the Horrible beware. Manga has arrived at the Pioneer Press.

Minnesota’s first newspaper today rolls out “Peach Fuzz,” a comic strip drawn in the manner of Japanese-style comics known as manga. “Peach Fuzz” will run Sundays in the comics section. The first three strips run today in this section, with the fourth strip appearing in your Sunday comics.

…

Faithful comic strip readers seeing manga for the first time should be prepared for something different than the traditional four-panel gag.

Japanese-style comics are distinctive not just for waiflike eyes but also for sophisticated storytelling and a greater emotional and character-focused content, said Lunning, who helps organize an annual academic conference on Japanese comics and animation at MCAD. They are also traditionally drawn in black and white, eschewing color.

While American comics have historically been created mainly by men to be read by boys, Japanese comics have titles for adults as well as children, females as well as males.

“In Japan, it’s huge. It’s giant. It’s just vast. Everyone reads manga,” Lunning said. “I think they’ll change comics.”