The difference between most Manga & Comics is "message"

https://youtu.be/FnqXIqzkVBE?feature=shared

With American Comics, it suffers a political zeitgeist sickness due to matriarchal sensibilties not being kept in check, and yet its not hard to find good reads, the issue & advantage is different writer visions. 

With Manga, its not a patriarchal mindset, its a PeterPan syndrome, writers refusing to grow up. You have one writer at the helm, one vision, GREAT ..until we realize that vision is ass. So stoll you have to hunt for a competent story because if that one author is good, then its good, but if majority of mangaka are bad writers but good artists then the story will be bad despite how it looks. 

Thats the price, you get a complete, crap story vs an amalgamation of different minds per few issues (good & bad) making one character great or mid, but rarely ever bad. 

Why? Because theres ALWAYS a writer(s) that did it right at some point in history vs all the chapters being shit because one author couldn't get it together. 

Example: a Superman Joe Kelly run vs that crappy Bendis run 

If it was manga rules, Bendis would've had Superman at his mercy for 4 decades. 

Thats why My Hero failed before the turn of Kamino arc, the entire story was at the mercy of a bad writer. 

For Manga, all people care about is optics, Mangaka are great artists moonlighting as authors. You're lucky to get competent these days let alone "good" or great or new standard. 

Zack is right, some of the best Manga are more closely Western in concept. (ex. Gundam, The Hard, Desert Punk, Vinland Saga, Berserk (first few arcs), GITS, Blue Gender, & some Kamen Rider) 

Manga & Anime is majorly a child mindset genre, suspension, few evolution of story. 

You get titles like this these days: "It's Fun Having a 300,000 Yen a Month Job Welcoming Home an Onee-san Who Doesn't Find Meaning in a Job That Pays Her 500,000 Yen a Month" 

What the actual hell, thats an every other average manga. 

Comics are the step up because they have both complete books (TPB editions), What-Ifs, Elsewords, and interconnected stories. Variety of storytelling. 

People saying comics aren't complete have never read Watchmen, a hard cover edition,  or a single Annual and they're full of horseshit & need to sit down. 

You wouldn't have gotten My Hero if it weren't for American /western comics. And the west takes some notes from Japan, but there's a reason why Japan keeps copying the wests homework and when they dont they make another fetish simulator, they're creatively bankrupt and frankly pathetic sometimes.

Japan made My Hero Academia copying the west & badly; America made JL: Kingdom Come. Its not a contest. 

The difference is one writer was immature & making shit up on the fly and the other was a mature mind that had something to say, but didnt preach to the audience to say it.

Manga is generally mediocre to bad because the vast majority of mangaka are inexperienced or sex manic children with no substantial life experience to pass on, & the struggles they do have that they're projecting they dont seem to realize its not a good thing; whose biggest resource is women, children, fetishes & self-inserts. Same with anime, and why its also trash.

American Comics have a double edged sword called "message", for Stan Lee's Spiderman its responsibility, for Watchmen its mainly (but not exclusively) the state of man, and the governing powers that puppet your lives; for a woke writer its men are bad, politics, girls rule, or trans visibility. 

Fact is, for better and worse, what makes Manga semi-preferable to woke narratives is also why Manga sucks: 

Mangaka have something to show, much to display but nothing to say- no experience to share, no message, no real story. Just safe mode formula, projecting fetishes 24/7 rehashing whats been done. No message, no theme, just escalation of plot with no story, rule of cool or depravity.

Ideal for pandering to children and Man-children. 

Its why your Vinland Sagas are flukes instead of the standard. And its also why "Makina Sans a love-bot?" garbage gets pumped out by the week, Japanese media industry is not totally lost, but its garbage, people on both sides are too lazy to look deeper to find the diamonds. 

Theres just more diamonds in the west,  there's a reason why Japanese copy the westerners even in filmmaking.

Some to few Manga is a good time, but its not vintage. No one's looking to Japan to make a All-Star Superman, Superman 755, 300, Kick-Ass, or a Spawn, Infinite Crisis, Inifinity Saga, Flashpoint, a Jaws, or a Robocop, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park novel, Alien. 

West West West. 

The bar for Manga/Anime Japan is actually pretty low, its why they oveework their teams but they produce the same crap over & over again. They know foreigner NPCs will settle for anything that aint woke, even if its bad. 

See Japan knows how to polish old property like Shin Gojira (god tier practical effects & lore), they know how innovate animating drawings in autistic fashion, acting aint half bad, but they don't go hard like that in the story department. 

The criticism for the wests obsession with politics is warranted but Japans Manga/anime game is brutally overrated.