Features of editing Russian manga-style comics

Manga (Jap. US, "Ч - funny pictures) is a graphic work in black and white which is a series of drawings on a specific topic with a single plot and a brief narrative or dialogi-cal text, created by Japanese artists with a special graphic-symbolic language, which has a distinctive genre structure. Today, there are adapted manga-style comics in many countries; they combine the tradition of Japanese manga comics and plots and artwork unusual for the original. Russian manga-style comics have a large circle of interested readers, but this segment of the publishing market is practically free. The main reason for this situation is the lack of criteria for editorial evaluating of manga-style comics production. They are identified and characterized in this article. The peculiarity of the main text in a manga edition is the presence of graphics and text elements with the former dominating. Through illustrations (pictures) the story unfolds, the characters are revealed, the time and space of the action are described. The literary editor is to evaluate the inner world of the graphically represented product. Each picture usually has a character and a background. The editorial analysis starts with these elements. The image of the character performs several functions: it creates a person's portrait, characterizes their internal state, reports of action and indicates the genre of the manga text. The editor is to assess individual details of the portrait of the character: the eyes (their narrowness / wideness, position of the eyebrows), the nose, the face shape, the hair style, and on this basis draw conclusions whether the author was able to describe the character, to convey its meaning in the episode, to show the character development, etc. It is important to take into account the tradition of the comics of the particular manga genre. Then the editor evaluates the background. Most often, it is the space of action. Without a detailed drawing, space objects should be recognizable and iconic for a certain place, repeated in pictures with the same place of action. A different type of background is graphical: white with stokes of different thickness and shapes. To evaluate it, the editor must know the symbolic language of hatching. Another component of manga-style comics is text. First, it is phrases of the dialogues of characters. This text is placed around the image in speech bubbles - selected areas of different shapes. When editing, it is important to evaluate how bubbles are drawn and how they graphically indicate who the words in the bubble belong to, the proportionality of text and image, the correspondence of the content and emotional elements. If the dialogue is between three or more characters, it is important that the text in the bubble also has a schematically depicted face of the speaker. Second, the text fragment may contain an internal monologue of the character (which is very important for its description, for the plot development in the absence of the narrator). The editor should evaluate whether the picture with an internal monologue on the strip is appropriate, whether it is directly related to the storyline. Special types of text in manga-style comics include additional text, the purpose of which is to explain what is happening in the picture, to strengthen the emotion. It can be of two types: "sounds" and the words of the author. "Sound" in the comics is the auditory text; it has a special place and design in the picture: a sign in a small size next to the image of the character or object. The following groups of mini-texts can be distinguished by the form of use and by the relationship of sound to reality: sound imitation ("tic-tac", "boom"), conceptual sounds ("explosion", "knock on the door"), sounds indicating the actions of the characters ("opens the door", "turns around"). General criteria for editing them are as follows: the sound should not exceed 2-3 words, the volume of the sound can be expressed by the size of the font (the larger the size of the letters, the louder the sound), sounds should not distract the reader's attention to the image, dialogue and thoughts of the character. The editor's task is to determine the sound recognition and its factual accuracy. Text elements are also words of the author. Depending on their functions in the plot, design and location, they can be divided into two types: words of the author-narrator (directly related to the plot of the work, briefly explain what is happening in the picture) and words of the biographical author (placed at the end of the edition or chapter, tell about how the writer worked on the story, show examples of failed options for pictures, character design sketches, etc.). Editing manga-style comics requires consistent interpretation and analysis of their graphical and textual parts. The recommendations given above will help to orient the editor to work on them, and thus improve the author's work, taking into account features of the edition and traditions.

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