There’s a surprisingly well researched article on Marvel right now at the Motley Fool website. Perhaps not so surprisingly when you realize that these people, unlike 99% of us online oundits, actually make their livings through researching and investing in various companies. The article looks at Marvel’s licensing, publishing and other lines of income and lays out a potentially not-so-rosy outlook, though they do state that there’s always a chance for Marvel to cover their asses and step towards the positives again if they play their cards right.

In direct-market comic shops, Marvel and DC are nearly neck-and-neck as the top dogs of market share. Marvel commanded more than 41% in June 2005, with DC right behind at just over 36%. But in big chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), manga is eating the mainstream publishers’ lunch. According to the Nielsen BookScan ratings of bookstore sales, in early August 45 of the top 50 sellers in the graphic-novel category were manga. In the first half of 2005, DC’s graphic-novel sales grew by 13%, and Marvel’s increased by 9%, while manga publisher Tokyopop notched 40% sales growth, including 81% growth in the first quarter.

Marvel has made some halfhearted, occasionally disastrous efforts to adapt to the new medium, mostly by aping manga’s look and digest-sized format. Its few successes thus far tend to feature Japanese-influenced art, high school romance, rebellious teens, and giant robots.

The real reason Marvel should fear manga is that it’s becoming the primary influence on a rising generation of young male and female creators. Manga comes with an entirely new visual vocabulary and its own way of telling stories. It’s as different from traditional American comics today as Marvel’s flawed heroes and snappy dialogue were from DC’s stodgy offerings back in the ’60s.

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If Marvel wants to stay relevant to readers young and old, and ensure that there will still be an audience for its licensed products in the decades to come, it can’t afford to let its publishing efforts wither. It needs to create comics that are just as risky and genre-busting today as Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four were back in the ’60s. And it needs to encourage its writers’ and artists’ best efforts by sacrificing at least a trickle of its current revenue streams to give them a bigger financial stake in their creations.

The News, Comics