This is why I have to have a strict book budget.
I try to take my time and appreciate each panel, but I can’t seem to slow myself down.
This is why I don’t have a lot of graphic novels or comic books – I just go through them so fast. There is one exception, and it is of course a Batman book.
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. This is the graphic novel that the Arkham Asylum game was (very) loosely based on
Manga are much easier to read than Grant Morrison’s beautiful insanity, but they are the literary equivalent of Pringles – I just can’t stop with one. So far I have been able to control myself (sort of) but my resistance is crumbling. I’ve been catching myself scrolling through eBay looking at collections and doing math to figure out if I can afford them.
:sigh:
I am just so very, very weak. I will drive three miles out of my way to save ten cents on a loaf of bread, but put a book in my hands and I become a Ghostie-shaped pile of jelly.
Maybe another trip to the used book store is in order …
Do a search for “Scanlations.” It might save your pocket-book a bit.
There is a huge community of manga enthusiasts who import Japanese manga, scan it into their computer, translate it into English, and post it free online.
The lawfulness of the practice is a bit dubious, but the great majority of it consists of Manga that will probably never be translated and localized to North America, so it’s one of those gray areas where there’s Manga you would gladly pay for, but the companies have no plans to make it available for you to purchase.
Some of them are even packaged so you can download them to a kindle…
I’ve seen scanlation sites mentioned on some of the fora I’ve been browsing through, but I’ve been hesitant about trying them out; partially because they’re a grey area and partially because I’m sure they would wind up being ginormous time-sucks. Given the choice I’d rather pay for a book I can curl up on the sofa with, but I might have to give them a try before I start going through withdrawl.
I’ve mostly used them so that I can read the mangas that inspired some of the anime I’ve watched. There’s a pretty poor track record of certain branches of anime actually localizing the accompanying manga to the US (specifically anime released in the 90s). And really, most of the Mangas that inspire great Anime have a heck of a lot more going on in them (often enough they explain plot points that are glossed over or simply ignored by the show).
I’ve noticed that, too. Any time I find an anime I like I usually start searching for the manga (there always seems to be one) that goes with it so I can find out all the good stuff the anime skipped over. It gets kinda frustrating when I can’t find the less-popular ones because they haven’t translated them.