Well, that's why I specifically referred to anime. The anime audience is already conditioned to check out the source material of their favorite shows, and they're more likely to get into the manga (or light novel, visual novel, et al.) to read ahead of the story and/or skip the filler. Obviously, if you want your book to have its name in the cultural zeitgeist, Hollywood is the way to go, but to build the comic book industry, I think appealing to the anime crowd will get more eyes on the books.
We already know the MCU movies do not cause any noticeable increase in comic sales, and for every successful comic book adaptation like The Boys or Umbrella Academy, you have several failures like Vagrant Queen, Happy, or Deadly Class, who definitely see even less of a bump. Or you get shows like Walking Dead and Runaways, where the producers look at the first trade, go, "Yeah, that'll make a good storyboard for our pilot," and then go in whatever direction they want with the show. So the TV and comic book audiences are entirely different.
A faithful anime adaptation of an American comic would potentially be marketing for the book, especially if the trades are reprinted around the same time. I posted about this on Reddit, and someone responded how Demon Slayer graphic novel sales exploded after the anime debuted, and even mediocre animes see their source material get a decent sales boost.
I'm just thinking in terms of how to grow the industry. We've seen Marvel produce graphic novels that are the same size and price as a manga volume in the past, and DC is trying to appeal to that crowd (at least tangentially) with their YA books. And with shows like Castlevania, God of High School, and Tower of God, the anime audience doesn't have any sort of purity test about the shows not being solely made in Japan. They grew up on shows like Avatar and Teen Titans, so I don't see any reason these shows wouldn't appeal to that audience.
The only issue I see is the comicsgate crowd, who moved to anime and manga specifically to get away from western comics.
if that writer was Ewing.
