Superheroes are our modern myths. They’re cultural icons, vessels for generational values, endlessly reinterpreted and repackaged. And right now, their stories dominate the box office. You’d think comic books would be riding that same high, right? But they’re not. Despite superheroes being more mainstream than ever, comic book sales in the West have been steadily declining. Meanwhile, manga—a once niche import—is steamrolling the market and capturing the next generation of readers. It’s not even a fair fight anymore.
What happened? Honestly, a lot. But picture this first. A 13-year-old kid walks into a comic shop after watching the latest Superman movie. He’s hyped. He wants more. He wants to dive deeper into the character he just saw fly across the screen. But as he looks around, he sees a wall of Superman titles. Different suits, different art styles, different storylines, different universes. The omnibuses on the shelves have conflicting versions of the same character. He doesn’t know where to start. It’s overwhelming. It’s frustrating. But then, on a table nearby, there’s a 180 page manga volume. A complete story, start to finish, from one creator. It’s approachable. It’s clear. So he picks that up instead. That, right there, is what happened.
But it mostly comes down to one word: canon. Or, more accurately, the lack of one.
Comic books used to have a shared universe. There was a time when Marvel and DC readers knew where their favorite characters stood, what they’d been through, and where they might go next. Sure, there were retcons and alternate timelines, but the core stories mattered. They stuck. These days, not so much. Reboots are constant. Universes collapse and reboot like seasonal events. Batman dies and comes back. Spider-Man is replaced, rebooted, or rewritten depending on the month. Every five years, the slate is wiped clean and readers are asked to reinvest from scratch. That’s exhausting. It’s confusing. And it’s not something general audiences want to navigate.
That’s the irony. While the comics themselves are a fragmented mess, the movies—the adaptations—are expected to play it straight. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example, built an empire on a cohesive timeline. You watch Iron Man in 2008 and Endgame in 2019 and you’ve essentially experienced a single continuous story with emotional payoffs fifteen films in the making. That kind of narrative commitment doesn’t exist in most Western comics anymore. But in movies, it has to. The cinematic audience demands clarity. Studios demand franchisability. You can’t build a ten year franchise on lore that contradicts itself every other issue.
This is where things get really messy. When fans criticize a character change or plot inconsistency, comic diehards often respond with some variation of “read the comics.” It’s not really an invitation. It’s a flex. A kind of gatekeeping. But even if a casual viewer wanted to dive into the source material, they’d find themselves swimming in a sea of convoluted timelines and reboots with no clear starting point. Comics have become an inside joke that only the most dedicated are in on. And yet, the movies borrow liberally from these same comics. They cherry pick the best arcs, mash them together, and streamline them into something palatable for mass audiences. The 2019 Hellboy reboot, for example, pulled from multiple arcs in the comics but it still flopped, because none of that mattered if the story didn’t land. It wasn’t canonically faithful or narratively coherent. It was just a mess.
There’s a strange contradiction at the heart of all this. Movie studios have to play by storytelling rules that the comics no longer respect. In film, you need structure. You need beginning, middle, and end. You need continuity. You need to earn emotional payoffs. In comics, the endless sprawl and constant revisionism has replaced storytelling with brand management. Characters are legacy assets. Continuity is a guideline, not a rule. It’s no wonder readers have checked out.
And then you look at manga. Cohesive. Accessible. Mostly creator driven. You know when a manga begins and when it ends. You know who made it and what they intended. There’s no editorial shuffling or multiverse hijinks needed to explain away inconsistencies. It’s easy to follow. It’s affordable. It’s everywhere. Manga doesn’t just respect its audience. It trusts them to stay with a story to its natural conclusion.
That’s why manga now owns over 75 percent of the comic book market in the U.S. It’s not a trend. It’s a response. A response to bloated, inaccessible Western comics that refuse to meet readers where they are. The movies may still be printing money, but they’ve created expectations that the comics can’t meet. And fans—especially younger ones—are voting with their wallets.
So here’s the hard truth. If Western comics want to survive, they need to decide what they are. Either rebuild around a clear canon with stable, creator led stories that respect readers’ investment or accept that they’ve become a niche product. Because right now, they’re coasting on brand loyalty while the competition is building actual storytelling loyalty. And that’s a battle they’re losing.
Canon isn’t just a nerdy argument for continuity’s sake. It’s the foundation of trust between a story and its audience. Manga gets that. Movies get that. Western comics used to. It’s time they remembered.
Hollywood After Dark 