Superman vs. Goku

     As promised, here's a little light-hearted but deep-minded follow up to that horrible political drama from earlier this week. But first, as always, allow me to bore you with an exposition-dump of background information (and also a cover illustration to tie the title in to the rest of the post):

This is only tangentially related to the meat of this article. 

     So, the above image, for those of you who were born and raised on Mars or at the bottom of the ocean, is of Goku, a Japanese character famous for his incarnations in the Dragon Ball manga/anime and its spinoffs and remakes fighting Superman, who is perhaps the single most influential fictional character in history. So, why, exactly are these two superhuman characters duking it out with their otherworldly powers? 

      Well.... 

     ...To be honest, I don't have the foggiest. The whole "Superman vs. Goku" thing was more of a symbolic metaphor for the East vs. West shenanigans that go on in the world of pen and ink. Superman and Goku are both prime examples of their country's respective taste in comic books (known as manga in Japan), and are therefore suitable as a jumping off point for the rest of this soapbox-standing discourse. 

     Comic Con featured heavily in a few posts about a month ago, and with its date rapidly approaching, the Creepy Cranky Comic Convention Crawlers that I drag around with me (no offense, guys, should you read this) are spending an even larger portion of their time discussing Eastern vs. Western graphic mediums. When walking through Comic Con, you tend to see lots and lots of Western comic books and their related action figures, movies, posters, and parodies. If you venture deeper though, you wander into the Anime/Manga section: a terrifying place by American standards. 

     My droogs and I, when hanging about the milkbar in search of a spot of the old ultra-violence (I swear, that reference was supposed to stop at the word "droogs," but I got carried away) frequently discuss the pros and cons, the ins and outs, and the ups and downs of Japanese Manga and Anime as opposed to Western (which is to be read as "American") superhero comic books. 

     I, invariably, fall on the side of the American. 

     The realms of the Japanese are far to weird, even for me, and I wrote that article a couple weeks ago about giant alien squid God's created by a white-supremacist atheist basket-case. My peers, on the other hand, seem to have no trouble wrapping their sick little heads around the whole "From Japan" thing. Among the more prevalent animes/mangas that those fortunate to call themselves my friends partake in are One Piece, Naruto, Soul Eater, Bleach and Deathnote. 

     Let's run through some of the topics covered by these wonderful foreign artifacts: 

• A pirate captain eats a gum-gum fruit and turns into a human-shaped piece of rubber. 
• A magical notebook that, when you write a name and a cause of death, the person you write about dies in the way you write. 
• A 12 year old boy who holds his pistols upside-down and hangs around with personifications of death (or, perhaps, he is death. From what's been described to me, it's rather ambiguous). 
• A 12 year old boy (again) shoots lightning from his hands and displays mind-warping ignorance while trying to simultaneously avenge the death of an entire village and rescue the murderer of said village.
• A person who can see ghosts and who must help these ghosts into the next life, but there are also bad ghosts (that are also sometimes demons) and there are other people who can do this, too, but the ghosts have this parallel spirit world that some mortals can go to (but sometimes maybe not) and then.... Hey, wait a minute! 

Godammit, Jennifer Love Hewitt! Get out of my 

analysis of Manga vs. Comic Books! 

Why do you always show up at the least opportune moments?

     Anyway, the point is, Japanese stuff is just too weird for me, not just in subject matter, but in execution. It's typical for an animated adaptation of a Manga to be released simultaneously to the Manga, but with episodes in between installments in the plot proper known as "filler," which typically involve a full half-hour of nothing but characters winding up their fists in preparation to throw a punch. 

     Why, Japan? Why? 

     All of this isn't to say, though, that American comic books haven't had their weirdness about them in the past. I doubt anybody will try to deny that characters like Groot and Arnim Zola are just as weird as Monkey D. Luffy and Death the Kid (undoubtedly, their names are of equal preposterousness).  

Here's Groot. 

Here's death the kid. Honestly, which would you

be more afraid of in a dark alley: a sentient tree

in a U.S.S. Enterprise uniform, or a 12 year old with

skunk hair and a stare that pierces your very soul?

     In conclusion, and with a swelling ironic sense of national pride- a my fictional super-humans are waayyyy cooler than those other guys'- American comic books are da bomb and Japanese stuff can stay in Japan where it can't infect the influential minds of little girls who will grow up thinking Sailor Moon is an apt role model. 

     (A disclosure: I am not a bigot; publishers can do what they will and readers will read anything. Manga has its merits and Anime isn't all that abysmal. Superman and Batman will never be rivaled by the straw-hatted pirate captain teenager with arms like latex gloves who can't swim)  

     Next time, I'll return to that wretched political droll, if only because I enjoy the sound of my own voice- and if somebody else listens to said voice, perhaps that someone will leave a more cynical, jaded misanthrope than when they entered. Until then, though, Stay Tuned, true believers.