There's definitely a different visual language in manga -- it uses its own storytelling shorthand, just as, say, superhero comics do, and switching between different kinds of comics, it usually takes me a little while to get back into the flow of it. (Lately I've been reading Ex Machina -- Western superhero comic -- and FMA, and in both cases it took me a volume or so to start responding to the visual stylings properly, since I hadn't read either type in a couple of years.)
I do really love Fullmetal Alchemist and recommend it. The series takes a little while to start bringing in the plot twists and emotional scenes, but wow, once it does, it really delivers!
Another manga you might want to try is Planetes -- it's a near-future, realistic sci-fi series, and the visual style is more like Western comics than a lot of what gets translated and exported, so it might be a good gateway manga. :D (One thing I find frustrating about manga, or rather I should say the manga translation industry, is that most of the ones that get picked up outside of Japan, at least here in the US, are the actiony, pop-culture-ish ones, which tend to be really frenetic and abstracted and are probably not nearly as appealing to people outside the Western anime-fan crowd as the more visually quiet and slice-of-life titles. I recently downloaded scanslations of one called "Otoyomegatari", set along the Silk Road, which looks absolutely gorgeous -- check out (http://precur.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/otoyomegatari1.jpg) the art (http://www.mydailymanga.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/otoyomegatari-chapter-1-01.png) -- but most of what you find on the shelves here is basically teenagers in spandex, same as American comics.)
no subject
I do really love Fullmetal Alchemist and recommend it. The series takes a little while to start bringing in the plot twists and emotional scenes, but wow, once it does, it really delivers!
Another manga you might want to try is Planetes -- it's a near-future, realistic sci-fi series, and the visual style is more like Western comics than a lot of what gets translated and exported, so it might be a good gateway manga. :D (One thing I find frustrating about manga, or rather I should say the manga translation industry, is that most of the ones that get picked up outside of Japan, at least here in the US, are the actiony, pop-culture-ish ones, which tend to be really frenetic and abstracted and are probably not nearly as appealing to people outside the Western anime-fan crowd as the more visually quiet and slice-of-life titles. I recently downloaded scanslations of one called "Otoyomegatari", set along the Silk Road, which looks absolutely gorgeous -- check out (http://precur.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/otoyomegatari1.jpg) the art (http://www.mydailymanga.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/otoyomegatari-chapter-1-01.png) -- but most of what you find on the shelves here is basically teenagers in spandex, same as American comics.)