Eh, point taken. I don't really know much about it TBH. I pretty much just operate on broad categories. Must say though as looking in from the outside, so to speak, the word 'comic book' to me brings up only a few limited titles, whereas 'comic' in general gets much broader. Yes, Spiderman seems pretty kiddy/teen stuff to me, albeit I have never read one. I can see that stuff like Watchman and Sin City aren't though. Then again, aren't they 'graphic novels'? Then there's newspaper 'cartoons', which are def. for adults, so where do they fit in?

Probably there's some intuitive difference I neither get nor can readily describe. I think if you can call it 'manga' instead of 'komikku' in japanese and no one goes 'eh?' it's probably manga.

Isn't manga just essentially the Japanese word for comic? Also just out of interest, do they call American comics 漫画 (sorry when actually writing Japanese speech I refuse to use romaji)?

I think your terms are a little off, and I usually wouldn't say anything but that is what we are talking about.

"comic book" is a subcategory of "comics", which include 4-panel comics, i.e. newspaper funnies.

"cartoons" are animated shows.

"Watchmen" started as a comic book, but collected together it is a "graphic novel" which is a bit of a misnomer, as it should really be called an "omnibus" or maybe a "trade paperback". I don't remember if Sin City was a comic book first or graphic novel first.

"Spiderman" does have series for kids and teens, but also most certainly series for more serious and seasoned readers (i.e. "Spiderman Noir").

"Manga" is Japanese for comics, so by that notion, in Japanese "Spiderman" can be called both a "manga" and a "komikku". However the opposite isn't true in English.

Just as "manhua" is Chinese comics, and "manhwa" is Korean comics, "manga" is the word we have adopted in English to describe Japanese comics.

Yeah, I will fight tooth and nail to prevent weeaboos from importing Japanese words and using them imprecisely more than they already have.

With posts filled with nothing but sogoi, kawaye and other random, badly romanized adjectives. I've seen it before but I don't understand it :S.

Both Watchmen and Sin City were originally serialized as monthly releases just like Spiderman and Archie and such.

Wikipedia seems to indicate that コミックス is for US comics, while 漫画 is used for kanji-based countries' works (Korea, China, Japan): 漫画 - Wikipedia

Regardless, the term "manga" hasn't been imported to be a synonym for "comics" in the US.

I guess I should quit being a fogey about this, though. It's not like English speakers agree on what is the best English term, either. There's a movement toward "sequential art" and other less-elegant terminology. Probably to use "that cool weird mystic Oriental language use my kung fu and my chi and Kamehameha some groovy stuff EXTREEEEME."

Also, I think it's safe to say that "manga" was imported and used for a long time as a term for "Japanese comics/sequential art." However, recently people are trying to call their non-Japanese comics "manga" for some reason.