Manga's First Century

2026 Eisner Award Nominee--Best Academic/Scholarly WorkA comprehensive English-language history of a beloved medium, Manga's First Century tells the story of the artists and fans who built a cultural juggernaut.

Manga is the world's most popular style of comics. How did manga and anime--"moving manga"--become ubiquitous? Manga's First Century delves into the history and finds surprising answers.

In fact, manga has always been a global phenomenon. Countering essentialist myths of manga's emergence from the deepest wells of Japanese art, author Andrea Horbinski shows it was born in the early 1900s, a hybrid form that crossed single-panel satirical cartoons popular in Europe and America with the Edo period's artistic legacy. As a medium, manga initially focused on political commentary, expanding to include social satire, children's comics, and proletarian art in the 1920s and 1930s. Manga's evolution into a medium embracing complex, long-form storytelling was likewise driven by creators and fans pushing publishers to accept new, radical expansions in manga's artistic and narrative practices. In the 1970s, innovative creators and fans empowered a new breed of fan-generated comics (dōjinshi) and established robust audiences of adult, female, and queer manga readers, while nurturing generations of amateur and professional creators who continue to enrich and renew manga today.