Although there is a growing American audience, most of the titles I read, and recommend -- and thousands more I don't read or know -- aren't available in English. If you're lucky enough to know Chinese, you might have a chance to get around not knowing Japanese, but otherwise it's a necessicity.

While my own level of Japanese isn't anything to be impressed with, in an attempt to help out others, I've made some basic (as in very basic) introductions to Japanese. I might have made some mistakes without even recognizing it, so please don't take this as the be all and end all. If you seriously want to learn it, I recommend taking an actual class, or at least purchasing a book. But, for the purpose of just looking up words and getting the drift of whats going on in a comic, this should be OK.

Pronounciation

Hiragana

Katakana