Quotes of the Day

If Wolverine the X-Man and Yugi of Yu-Gi-Oh! got into a fight, who would win? The conundrum isn't as tricky as the Superman-vs.-Batman debate that has divided comic-book readers for generations. Wolverine, an American superhero from the venerable Marvel stable, is a hulking genetic mutant with claws like knives. Yugi, a manga character from Japan, is a stunted schoolboy with a penchant for games and puzzles, low self-esteem and eyes the size of moon pies. When classmates pick on Yugi, girls jump to his defense.

Wolverine wins, right? Not if sales figures are a measure of superstrength. When Yugi and a bizarre cast of fellow manga characters debuted in the U.S. last month in the Japanese mangazine Shonen Jump, pre- and postpubescent consumers snatched up all 250,000 copies with a WHOOOSH! Not even the X-Men are a match for Shonen Jump; issues of the most popular U.S. comic books rarely see print runs of more than 150,000. "It's a crazy amount of sales," says Robert Bricken, managing editor of the New York-based comic fanzine Anime Insider. "By all indications [Shonen Jump] is the best-selling product in the history of American comic publishing."

KAAAA-CHIIING! How could U.S. publishers have been so blind? Before Shonen Jump, no one had thought to export translated versions of Japanese manga to the U.S. mass market, despite the fact that the genre—characterized by its fanciful stories and earnest, teardrop-faced heroes—has been a favorite in Japan for decades. It's not that American kids are clueless. They've been exposed to Japanese animation, or animé, for years—thanks to the success of manga-based TV cartoons like Pokémon and Dragon Ball, and the movies of Hayao Miyazaki. Yet no one thought manga would fly off the magazine rack.

No one except Seiji Horibuchi, president of San Francisco-based Viz Communications, who observed the popularity of animé among American kids and decided the country was ready. Two years ago he approached Japanese publishing giant Shueisha about exporting its popular teen-oriented Weekly Shonen Jump (shonen means "boy" in Japanese) series to the U.S. After a year of negotiations, Horibuchi convinced Shueisha's skeptical executives that American kids were an audience waiting to happen. It may have helped that Weekly Shonen Jump's Japanese circulation has declined by half, to about 3.4 million, since the mid-1990s, and the company was looking for new markets. Last December, Shueisha bought a 50% stake in Viz Communications, helping to finance the ambitious launch.

The venture is not without risk. Shonen Jump is up against the tried-and-true formula of American comics, which are traditionally based on red-blooded superheroes triumphing over evil in 36 pages or less. The five series that appear in the 300-page first issue of Shonen Jump—Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z, SandLand, YuYu Hakusho and One Piece—have nuanced story arcs that may not be resolved for years. For example, the archives of Dragon Ball Z—a tale of galactic war over a set of wish-granting orbs—run to 8,000 pages printed over more than a decade. But Shonen Jump may not need to appeal to hard-core superhero junkies. Anime Insider's Bricken says most people who bought the first issue were not regular comic buyers; sales came primarily from mainstream retail outlets, such as bookstores and newsstands. Japanese comics appeal to a wider audience because they "are more sophisticated, better drawn, the storytelling is more compelling and they're easier to get into," Bricken says.

Readers will still have to be open-minded. In the translated version of Shonen Jump, staple Japanese onomatopoeias like ZA!, DON! and GAGII! have generally been replaced with more familiar sounds such as WHOOOSH! and BONK! But some, like KIIIIN! (the sound of a superhero hurtling through the air), haven't been changed. To get readers up to speed, an editorial team (comprised mostly of American 20-something manga enthusiasts) assembles pages of interviews with cartoonists, background information on characters and story lines, and explanations of the comics' Japanese cultural aspects. The American comic reads in Japanese fashion—right to left—so the publishers have added operating instructions and signposts to guide people through the pages. Why not just reverse the pages to make the order familiar? "Retailers have told us that right-to-left comics actually sell better because kids think it's cool," says Shonen Jump's vice president of sales and marketing, Rick Bauer.

Some predict that Shonen Jump is just a fad. "If it becomes a mass publication it will only be for a very limited time," says Samir Husni, author of the annual Guide to New Consumer Magazines. "The audience for these magazines comes in waves." The mangazine's publishers don't buy that. "Animé has been in the U.S. for over 10 years now, and its popularity has been growing steadily," says Bauer. The circulation target: a million within three years, which would put it on a level with Business Week and Vanity Fair. Yugi's trouncing of Wolverine, it seems, may have just been round one.

• Ilya Garger
• The ultra-popular Japanese manga Shonen Jump is leaping off shelves in a new market: the U.S.