We went over to Tampa this weekend to visit Christine's parents and to do a little BBQ/picnic (oh it's so nice to be able to go outside during the weekend!). While there we ended up over at a mall in the area and I found myself in Waldenbooks.
I bought a copy of Watchmen, happy to find one that wasn't beaten up, I've noticed most comic shops have the book but the book usually isn't treated well.
While I was perusing the store one of the things that shocked me was the manga section, in this particular store the section was near the front, next to the registers in a highly visible area. Sadly I'm not a manga fan so I couldn't tell if the selection was any good, but the books! There were so many of them, it must have been one of the biggest sections in the store, 7 foot tall bookshelves, 10 foot wide filled from top to bottom with books. I was very impressed, now the graphic novel section (it was labeled this way) was next to all this manga. I'm guessing they decided that graphic novels were pretty much anything in the world of comic books that wasn't manga. That section was pretty sad looking. Only two shelves of books, most of them being Marvel and DC with some Hellboy thrown in. And underneath the graphic novel section? Books on how to draw manga.
I picked up a couple of the manga books, and they're just not my thing, nothing I was truly interested in. I don't really like most of the art or the storylines. But there's obviously a huge market for them. Someday I'd love to figure out the love affair folks have with manga. Maybe it's just consumers taste, some say manga popularity is a "flavor of the week" type thing, but I really don't think so.