Hi!
Just to avoid confusion: For one thing, I am more focusing on the history of manga. Secondly, of course there was anime and manga before Tezuka Osamu and Disney. The point that I was making was that the main stream of manga production until recent times, at least, has been heavily influenced by the ideas of Tezuka Osamu, who himself was inspired by Disney (however, he surpassed Disney by far content-wise). And you can believe me one thing: If I could deny the influence of Tezuka Osamu on modern manga, I would do so in a heart beat, and only if to annoy Susanne Phillips (not that she would care, though).
As for outsourcing, I recommend checking the staff list for Gargoyles - either Disney did some racial profiling among their American staff, or it was drawn in Asia. Interestingly enough, even though the person in charge did not sound particularly Asian, Gargoyles showed at least a little bit of ambitions to move beyond the usual Disney fare as far as depth was concerned. At least in my personal opinion, it was the best Disney production I have seen (if we ignore their movies aimed at very small children, of course, which do work for their target audience).
Since it was hinted at, I may point out that the main stream seems to be dominated by female manga artists - in a peculiar twist of fate thereby giving them back the seat of creativity. Not only do they dominate shoujo manga (which makes additional sense as these are aimed at a female audience), but they are also quite successful in shounen manga (e.g. Takahashi Rumiko).
Smigenboger: As I hinted at before, I think there are weird people within every fandom or community (I know, I know, I shouldn't be talking :) :) :) ). It is just because anime do currently have some influence on main stream American and European popular culture (Japanese shows shown on European TV, animation shows in a fake "anime" style, etc.), the spot light is on them and they get more media coverage. And media always focus on the extreme. It won't do to tell about all the normal people who enjoy this, you need the freaks and weirdoes, such raising expectations among the population that everyone in that subculture belongs to those extremes.
Deathworks