1890s comics
2000s comics
A01=Eike Exner
Art
Art book
Author_Eike Exner
Category=AB
Category=AGA
Category=AKLC1
Category=DSK
Category=NHF
Category=XR
Coffee table book
comic art
Comic book artists
comic book writers
Dragon Ball
editors
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_fiction
eq_graphic-novels-manga
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Global popularity
Japan
Japanese publishing
Kodansha
manga readers
Sailor Moon
show don't tell
Product details
- ISBN 9780300280944
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 10 Jun 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A groundbreaking story of Japanese comics from their nineteenth-century origins to the present day
The immensely popular art form of manga, or Japanese comics, has made its mark across global pop culture, influencing film, visual art, video games, and more. This book is the first to tell the history of comics in Japan as a single, continuous story, focusing on manga as multipanel cartoons that show stories rather than narrate them. Eike Exner traces these cartoons’ gradual evolution from the 1890s until today, culminating in manga’s explosion in global popularity in the 2000s and the current shift from print periodicals to digital media and smartphone apps.
Over the course of this 130-year history, Exner answers questions about the origins of Japanese comics, the establishment of their distinctive visuals, and how they became such a fundamental part of the Japanese publishing industry, incorporating well-known examples such as Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, as well as historical manga little known outside of Japan. The book pays special attention to manga’s structural development, examining the roles played not only by star creators but also by editors and major publishers such as Kōdansha that embraced comics as a way of selling magazines to different, often gendered, readerships. This engaging narrative presents extensive new research, making it an essential read for enthusiasts and experts alike.
The immensely popular art form of manga, or Japanese comics, has made its mark across global pop culture, influencing film, visual art, video games, and more. This book is the first to tell the history of comics in Japan as a single, continuous story, focusing on manga as multipanel cartoons that show stories rather than narrate them. Eike Exner traces these cartoons’ gradual evolution from the 1890s until today, culminating in manga’s explosion in global popularity in the 2000s and the current shift from print periodicals to digital media and smartphone apps.
Over the course of this 130-year history, Exner answers questions about the origins of Japanese comics, the establishment of their distinctive visuals, and how they became such a fundamental part of the Japanese publishing industry, incorporating well-known examples such as Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, as well as historical manga little known outside of Japan. The book pays special attention to manga’s structural development, examining the roles played not only by star creators but also by editors and major publishers such as Kōdansha that embraced comics as a way of selling magazines to different, often gendered, readerships. This engaging narrative presents extensive new research, making it an essential read for enthusiasts and experts alike.
Eike Exner is a historian of graphic narrative. His previous book, Comics and the Origins of Manga, received the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work. He is based in Houston, TX.
