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context: comics > why so successful?
Buddhist/Zen art
You'll find some art that doesn't look far from comic art in some of the narrative Buddhist art linked in the narrative art section a couple of pages backwards of here, but I think it's very arguable that the most admired painting of Japan's history, and the most definitively and proudly Japanese, has been Zen painting. This has always been dominated by monochrome outline depictions, usually produced very quickly on paper, with a brush and black ink. Visually, it's really not so far from many comics, and it means there is no sense of outline drawing being inferior to more 'realistically' modelled and shaded oil painting; no sense of there being something by-default worthless about art produced quickly; no sense of more being better, of wanting to see oodles of overt craft before the artist can be given respect. It all makes it easier to see comics as simply a current offshoot from, and a form in keeping with, many of the major currents of Japan's artistic history.