And the first post of 2006
Is a linkblog. What a letdown!
I link to this because Tom's a) sharp and b) discussing exactly the sort of thing I was trying to get to with my post of last night. He's addressing the fallacy of comics as a mainstream media, as well as a bunch of related fallacies/follies including:
Manga as instructive to western comics, whether in format or presentation. The two rise from such different native media that surface emulations are at best moot. Yes, there's a wealth of storytelling techniques in manga worthy of study, but you can't graft western comics onto the manga audience so easily.
Comics, as an industry, face huge and intrinsic structural deficiencies that prevent mainstreaming with things being the way they are now.
Well worth a read, but the above is not a permalink. I figure he'll make a semi-permanent link to it in his commentary section, but you can see it in the entries for the 1st of January.