Continuing its team coverage of SDCC, the San Diego Union-Tribune offers and the most useful and yet arbitrary guide to comics term ever. Sample entries:

Costumed athlete: An adventurer in sartorial splendor who has no enhanced abilities or superpowers.

Cyborg: A living entity melded from human and machine.

Dumb fun: A name for amusing anime that’s not too deep.

Ectoplasm: An intangible and vaporous substance that forms astral phenomena.

Imprint: Smaller publishers either created or acquired by the bigger comic corporations. La Jolla’s Wildstorm, for example, was bought by megafirm DC Comics in 1998 and continues to thrive under that corporate umbrella.

Manga, Manhua, Manhwa: A comic book or graphic novel. The Japanese manga is the most common to Westerners; manhua (Chinese) and manhwa (South Korean) are less known.

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