With his sharp wit and vast knowledge, Dark Horse Comics editor Carl Horn '91 has become a mastermind of ...
American Manga

By Krista Kapralos

During his Pomona days, Carl Horn ’91 served as campus' energetic ambassador of anime, those Japanese animated films that have since spilled over into American pop culture. He organized free showing, adapted the films' dialogue for subtitles and posted fliers around campus bearing his self-styled descriptions. To lure students to see one film, Horn wrote, "There are no explanations in Akira, only a frenzied spiral of a society in disintegration."

Then, he urged: “Take the ride.”

 Horn’s own ride into this animated world never ended, as he has gone on to become a widely-respected figure in the rising field of American manga—English-language versions of the comic books that inspire many anime films and today fill entire aisles at the big-name booksellers. An editor and writer, Horn is a frequent panelist at manga conferences and has been interviewed on NPR and quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

Among American manga devotees, Horn is known for his meticulousness, vast knowledge and unfailing politeness, says Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide. Fans at February’s ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference in New York City went so far as to wear “Obey Carl Horn” buttons bearing his mug. “‘Gravitas’ is an over-used word, but I think it applies to Carl,’’ adds Frederik Schodt, author of several books about manga.

Horn’s latest job is as an editor in the manga division at Dark Horse Comics, a company that spreads its offices and unorthodox wares over two blocks in Milwaukie, Ore., a Portland suburb seemingly more attuned to quiet streets and sidewalk cafes than the exploits of Belldandy, the divine creature in the longest-running manga in the U.S., Oh My Goddess!

But in Horn’s view, small-town America is exactly where manga belongs. “If it’s mass culture in Japan, why can’t it be here?” he asks.

When Horn edited his first manga edition in 1997, the Japanese creator insisted that the book be designed in Japanese fashion, to be read in what Western readers would consider back-to-front. That was the first manga published in the U.S. that was “non-flopped,” Horn says. Today, that right-to-left format is standard here.

“One of the stereotypes of Americans is that if it’s not done in the American way, well, forget it,” Horn says. “That was wrong. Readers don’t mind at all reading from right to left.”

Manga, he says, offers American readers something they can’t get anywhere else. American comics are often revered for their characters: Superman, Batman, the X-Men and others who have been drawn by vast armies of artists. Manga fans are more likely to follow an artist than a character. “We’re really interested in the merits of an individual title or an individual creator, rather than looking for a certain type of storyline or genre,” Horn says.

Dark Horse is known for “seinen” manga, created for older teen and adult readers. Once Dark Horse selects a manga for publication, they send the Japanese version to a translator, who reports back to Horn with an English text.

That’s when Horn begins to work the wit and attention to detail that has earned him a loyal following. Each edition Horn edits includes a glossary in the back that explains historical and cultural references, jokes, even sound effects that may not translate into English.

 “If someone in the manga mentions a Japanese pop star, we don’t want to have to change it into an American one,” Horn says.


In one edition of Oh My Goddess! Horn explained that the 1989 exchange rate was about 149 yen to the dollar. “However, with inflation, that’d be about $1,500 today, if you would like to put yourself through as close an experience as possible,” he wrote.

One note stretches over more than two columns to explain the workings of GPS satellites. When a manga character encounters a Buddhist monk, Horn offers details on different types of meditation. “Carl was one of the people who really brought the liner note to manga,” says Gilles Poitras, a manga guide author at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. “It used to be that just one company did liner notes, and now it’s becoming very common.”

Jason Thompson, who worked with Horn in his previous job at Viz Media, notes that he recently called Horn at 9:30 p.m., and the editor was still hard at work at the office. “He will not rest until the book he works on is completely perfect,” says Thompson.

But Horn has plenty of fun with his work, and his liner notes are also stuffed with hints of his personality. When a manga character considers buying a VHS player, readers discover that Horn owns Super Beta tapes of a Japanese version of The Simpsons (“Marge sounds strangely alluring in Japanese,” he wrote), but doesn’t have a machine to play them on.

Horn’s life has been full of cultural crossover. His father worked as a construction contractor for the U.S. government. The family moved 19 times before Horn enrolled at Pomona College. It was in Tehran of all places, “along the silk and opium routes,” Horn has written, that he first encountered anime.

The movies, created in and for a culture that was not his own, resonated with Horn, who spent much of his childhood as a foreigner himself. His interest in manga naturally followed.

Be Free, a manga that was first published when Horn was a teen, was about a renegade high school teacher who helped his students overcome adversity, much to the chagrin of the school’s administration.

“I wouldn’t have liked it so much if it had been a total fantasy,” he says. “There were all these adventures, yet they still had to be back in school on Monday. You have an appetite for things you can relate to.”

His first visit to Japan, at the age of 16, was a “pilgrimage.” Planning began with a trip to the Kinokuniya bookstore in San Francisco, where he found a book called Japan Unescorted designed for solo travelers, and searched out a cheap hotel that sounded suitable. Funding came from his part-time job at Jack in the Box, so the budget was lean. Hearing how expensive Japan was, he brought a duffle bag full of rations—Kudos bars, Ritz crackers, sardines. “I can still remember the bewildered look on the face of the agricultural inspector at customs as I displayed these wares, although he passed me through without seizing anything,” says Horn.

The teen-aged Horn, who was already working for an upstart anime fan magazine based in Berkeley, convinced an executive from a top Japanese anime studio and an anime magazine editor to sit for interviews. Dressed in suit and tie, armed with a notepad and pen, Horn discussed with them the possibilities of anime and manga in the U.S.

“Just the fact that such a conversation could happen gave me great encouragement,” Horn says. Later, as a history major at Pomona, Horn wrote his senior thesis on the U.S. occupation of Japan while reading Barefoot Gen, a manga that describes the aftermath of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in vivid detail.

Horn’s success today may be due to the fact that he immersed himself in the art long before he knew he could ever make a living in the industry, says Poitras. Poitras recalls attending a showing of the first official version of The Wings of Honneamise with English subtitles in the early 1990s. It was Horn who had secured the official VHS tape. “He walked down with a FedEx envelope, opened it up and put it [the tape] in the machine.” Poitras says. “And when it was over, it was Carl who was right up on stage, taking out the tape and sealing it up again. He just had so many connections so early on.”

Today Horn remains just as devoted to manga, still arriving at work each day at Dark Horse wearing a pristinely-knotted tie over a dress shirt—the world of manga is his church, he says— while his co-workers wear jeans and graphic T-shirts.

He sits in his office with his back against a wall painted the bright red of the rising sun on the Japanese flag. But he insists that the future readership of manga lies outside Japan. “The Japanese are an aging population,” he says.

Horn adds that Dark Horse is currently working with a very successful group of Japanese manga creators, known as CLAMP, to release one of their new titles simultaneously in Japanese and —through Dark Horse—in English. “If you like the artists, this is a journey you’ll want to take.”

Horn is also working on a book about anime film, and he hopes to lure Quentin Tarantino, who used anime effects in his Kill Bill movies, to write the introduction. He plans to ask Hollywood actors to write about how anime has affected their lives and work. He hopes the book will attract more fans to manga, an art form that was once relegated to comic book stores. Now, one of Horn’s great joys is seeing manga fans huddled around volumes of Oh My Goddess! and Barefoot Gen at the local bookstore or the library.

 “When I go to the library, I see (manga) books that are totally trashed because so many kids are reading them,” Horn says. “These comics deserve acceptance because they’ve proven themselves time and time again.”

What’s Behind the Manga Craze?
Offering her first class on manga in 2006, Pomona College Professor Lynne Miyake received a quick lesson on just how popular these Japanese comics have become on this side of the Pacific. “By the second day at 9:30 a.m. it closed,’’ says Miyake of the small seminar class.

“I only could have juniors and seniors. I had 10 people who were just begging.” What’s the big deal about manga? “The sophistication, the breadth, the variety of storytelling and the art itself,” says Miyake, a professor of Japanese. “They’ve really perfected the black-and-white genre in ways that are mind-boggling.”

While manga sales peaked in Japan more than a decade ago, Miyake notes that the genre continues its growth in the U.S. Sales here reached $200 million last year, according to pop culture tracking firm ICv2. That compares with $60 million in 2002, when tracking began.

Miyake, meanwhile, will teach another manga class in the spring. She also is seeing increased interest in Japanese language classes. The rise of Japanese pop culture may play a part. “We have quite a few students who take Japanese because they want to be able to read manga,” she says.

Krista Kapralos covers religion and minority affairs for the Daily Herald in Everett, Wash.

A Manga Mini-Glossary
Anime: Japanese animation. Sometimes, but not always, based on manga.
Manga: Japanese comic books and printed cartoons.
Shonen: Manga intended for boys. Often characterized by action-based plots involving sports, fighting and adventure.
Shojo: Manga intended for girls. Often characterized by romance, romantic comedy or fantasy.
Seinen: Manga intended for men from late high school to adulthood. Generally features more explicit content than shonen manga, and more mature themes.
Josei: Manga intended for women from late high school to adulthood. Typically, they consist of mature relationship stories.

SOURCE: Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide