Manga!

Manga... hugely popular and vastly disliked. At the same time! It's kind of the American Politics of comics, as far as I can tell - 50-50 in terms of north american fandom loving it and hating it and at least to those extremes. For myself, I'm somewhere in the middle - as a westerner, I'm a little confused by the cultural aspects often associated with the format and definitely have a hard time reading it unless it's "flipped". Also, I find the artist conventions applied to manga difficult to accept - to my western sensibilities, it seems "cartoonish" and poorly drawn. As an example take the new one, Peng. I think it's sort of Canadian Manga (if there is such a thing) but while everyone is raving about this book, I personally can't get into the art. I'd almost go so far to say that I hate it. Now that doesn't mean you have to think it's bad too, that's just my opinion. You are more than entitled to your own, if you happen to be a fan of this particular volume. You may not like the art of Bryan Hitch or Alex Ross and that's ok too.
This is not to say that I dislike all manga. I was a huge fan of the (apparently horribly edited, although it didn't make a difference to me as a kid) anime for Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind and consequently I enjoyed the manga (even if I did struggle trying to read it backwards!) and when I mentioned to my local comic retailer Chris Butcher at the beguiling that I had problems with unflipped manga, he turned me on to Benkei in New York, which I discovered was an amazing book. Also, I am loving Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series (while not technically manga perhaps, it certainly shares some attributes with manga, at least to my gaijin eyes!) and breathlessly anticipating the next installment. So some of it appeals to me.
You know, I find that comic fans are so often defensive about what they read, they forget to let other people enjoy things that aren't exactly the same as their tastes. I think it'd be a way better world (and maybe more people would read comics) if you read what you like and buy what you read, and let other people do the same without critisizing or complaining. But hey, that's just one guy's opinion...