How popular are Manga in the US? 1 1

[Sof]

Manga have not had (yet) the same success as comics in terms of collectible items. It may only be a question of time or it may due to some fundamental reasons, an interesting discussion on this topic in cgccomics - is manga collectible? Time will tell ...

What I am interested to know, in the meantime, is how popular are the Manga in the US? US is usually driving the market, so my guess is that for Manga to become a big thing (as a collectible), it will probably have to pick up in the US market at some point. That's why I am interested in hearing the views of people living in the US about the popularity of Manga. Are Dragon Ball, Naruto or One Piece popular over there? In France for example, these three manga are very popular among kids, teenagers and adults (maybe more than Marvel/DC). But France may be an exception ... 

Finally, assuming that Manga becomes popular as a collectible item, would an US collector favor collecting the Japanese version or the English version? Taking the example of Dragon Ball, could Dragon Ball #1 published by Viz in English in 1998 become more valuable than Weekly Shonen Jump #51 published in 1984 in Japan?

[Bart Allen]

Well the Japanese versions are the first editions; so I never got the appeal of collecting the English reprints ~

Dragon Ball #1 will never be as valuable as Shonen Jump #51 (1984) due to the fact it's rarer due to the print run and the fact a lot of Japanese manga is thrown away and not stored as American comics due to their size (and has a lot of cultural significance) -- a NM copy went for a little over $5k recently (but beware of the fake versions); we'll see much of a surge with Manga as CGC is currently looking for a manga expert ~ Here's my copy of Naruto's first appearance, for the sake of the thread: