Reprint This!: osamu tezuka

Showing posts with label osamu tezuka. Show all posts

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Reprint This! Update on The John Stanley Library

Drawn & Quarterly have released the first two books in their John Stanley Library, a planned multi-volume series reprinting much of the beloved cartoonist's work for Dell in the 1960s. Drawn & Quarterly have apparently obtained the rights to all of Stanley's Dell work except for Little Lulu (a multi-volume collection of which has been in stores for some years now), and the first two books in the series are available now.

Finances have forced me to leave the first of the Nancy books on the shelf for now, but I did pick up the first collection of Melvin Monster, which was released in the summer. It's a $20 hardcover which collects all the stories from the first three issues of the title. The series is sort of the spiritual antecedent of Akira Toriyama's Cowa, set in a small suburban town populated by monsters and beasties, but just next door to an oblivious middle American city. Melvin is the exasperating son of two gruesome parents, Mummy and Baddy, who wish only the worst for their offspring, but he confounds them by wanting to do insensible things like go to school and not get eaten by his pet crocodile.

The strip would be huge fun in anybody's hands, but Drawn & Quarterly has really made this book shine. It's designed by Hipster Pad fave Seth, who was apparently looking to emulate those half-forgotten books you used to find on odd old relatives' shelves. I think he really tapped into a something neat here. The book looks a little more, shall we say, prestigious than the material might warrant, but it really evokes its time all the same. The plan is to reprint Melvin in three $20 editions, each collecting three issues of the original comic. The slightly larger Nancy book lists for $25 and the 336-page first volume of Thirteen Going On Eighteen, due later this month, retails for $35. Second volumes for each of these titles are expected in 2010.

Normally, I suggest that you read more of what I've written about the creator or character or publisher at A Journal of Zarjaz Things, but in this case I have not.

Read other reviews of the Melvin Monster book:

KC Carlson at Westfield Comics
Rod Lott at Bookgasm
Jason Sacks at Comics Bulletin
Frank M. Young at Stanley Stories

In other news from the last month, following the success of recent hardcover repackagings, DC has added an annual collection of Bill Willingham's Fables to their lineup, with the first edition released earlier this month. The six-issue trade paperbacks have been perennial sellers for Vertigo, so going the deluxe hardcover route has been a foregone conclusion. You can read Willingham's introduction to the new collection at Vertigo's blog. Although, I honestly have to say that DC could easily release two or three a year to get started. With close to 90 issues of this ongoing series, it will be a long, long while before this line of hardcovers gets concluded.

Webcomics! There are far too many out there for me to keep up with what might, or might not, ever get a collected edition, but when something as entertaining as Randall Munroe's xkcd gets a bookshelf treatment, it's a given that I'll be telling you about it. Here you go, eighteen bucks, with a portion of the sale going to charity.

A very strong rumor from last month's Anime Weekend Atlanta: Vertical, who've been publishing all those lovely editions of Osamu Tezuka comics, are planning a 2010 release of Ayako, a dark, if not downright depressingly bleak, postwar family drama which originally ran in 1972-73.

Meanwhile, Dark Horse, who proved with their three Herbie Archives that they know how to manage the repackaging of somebody else's old comic books very well indeed, have struck a nifty-sounding deal with Archie Comics. 2010 will bring you the first in a series of nice leather-bound $50 volumes reprinting every story, chronologically, across four lines, one each for Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica. And here's the wild part: they're planning to release a new book every month. I'm sure that's the best way to get all this old stuff republished quickly, but I also think that I don't have $600 a year to spend on old Archie Comics.

I was either ignorant of or dismissive towards the superhero titles from Marvel UK in the late '80s and early '90s, but with a creative team like Dan Abnett, John Tomlinson and Gary Erskine, I think Knights of Pendragon, the story of a present-day incarnation of the knights of the round table, might turn out to be interesting. The series ran for 33 issues from 1990-93, and John Freeman has reported that Panini's releasing a collected edition of the first nine later this month. It has a new cover by Erskine, and you can read more about his contributions over at Scotch Corner.

Rumor has it that the "Skinny Showcase" line from DC has been successful enough to warrant a third volume. The sixties feature Dial H for Hero is tentatively scheduled for the spring. Fans of the line have probably noticed by now that the cover price for the regular Showcase Presents editions has gone up by a buck. 500-odd pages for $18 is still a pretty good price. Marvel has been a little tight-lipped about their similar Essential line. Surely the third Moon Knight collection, due in December, won't be the last, but the company does not seem to have announced anything definite.

Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon found this fascinating one: WW Norton is publishing a mammoth collection of Herblock's editorial cartoons. The $35 hardcover will contain 250 images in print, with a more expansive collection of 18,000 on an accompanying DVD. Wowza. Paging Mike Luckovich, get your originals cleaned up...

I discovered Erika Moen's delightful webcomic DAR last month. The artist assembled a collected edition of the work earlier in the year, but it was delayed several times thanks to problems with bluenosed printers who didn't appreciate the sometimes explicit nature of the bawdy, no-holds-barred comic. Joanna Draper Carlson has a full interview with Moen at her website this week; you can order the book direct from Moen at DAR's site.

Lastly this time, Rebellion has had some disappointments this year in actually getting Diamond to solicit their wonderful collected editions of 2000 AD, so we are pleased as punch to see that two have made it into the distributor's latest catalog, and could be in US stores by the end of the year. Continuing their line of popular "phone book" reprints of 300 or more black-and-white pages, these are the first volumes of my all-time favorite comic Robo-Hunter by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Ian Gibson, and Anderson: Psi Division, written by Wagner and Grant, and with several artists including Gibson, Brett Ewins and Barry Kitson. Rebellion has shown with their complete, warts-and-all collections of Ace Trucking and Ro-Busters that they can really do a great job of collecting both the main series along with ephemera and easily-forgotten one-offs, so I'm hoping that the Anderson book contains the remarkably weird and wonderful "Mind of Edward Bottlebum," which previous collections of the character have routinely skipped.

That's all for this month! See you in November!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Reprint This! Update on Sam's Strip

Sam's Strip was the third newspaper comic devised by Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas, the team better known for Hi & Lois and Beetle Bailey. It ran for a little less than two years before the creators, unable to make much headway selling it, pulled the plug. It really is an odd little strip. Sam is a well-meaning grouch who's very much aware of the fourth wall separating his four panels from the rest of the newspaper funnies, and periodically interacts with his peers, with cameos by everybody from Charlie Brown to the character who'd later become Grandmama on The Addams Family.

Naturally, the strip became a fast favorite of comics afficionados, who enjoyed the in-jokes and what we might term as "metatextual commentary" if this blog was any more po-faced than it actually is. With regular asides to the readers, light commentary on current events and trips to a prop closet stocked with a variety of word balloons, Sam's Strip was lost on many comics page editors, and the strip never had more than 60 client papers.

Well, it might have been a failure in its day, but Sam's Strip has grown into a cult classic over time. Fantagraphics recently released a very nice paperback edition which compiles the series in its entirety. It includes annotations to explain some of the topical references of the early 1960s and commentary by Jerry Dumas. This may not be a book worth going too far out of your way to sample, but if you enjoy newspaper funnies, then this might be a very nice addition to your bookshelves. Give it a try!

Read more of what I've written about the publishers at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of this book:

Chris Barat at News and Views
KC Carlson at Comics Worth Reading
Allan Holtz at Stripper's Guide
Chad Nevett at Comic Book Resources
Andrew Williams at Den of Geek

The biggest news of the last month comes from the good folks over at Titan, who have finally confirmed the rumors - hardback editions of the terrific Johnny Red are in the works. The long-running series by Tom Tully and, initially, Joe Colquhoun, ran for a decade in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly. This is a big favorite of mine, and one of BPW's best series. I've been rereading the John Cooper-drawn era lately and it's a consistently wonderful strip which you should all check out. The first in what we hope will be an annual collection is due in September.

The second biggest news of the month - and any other month, it'd be the biggest - is that Steve Holland of the wonderful Bear Alley blog has formally announced he's going into the publishing business with Bear Alley Books, looking at doing small print-run, complete editions of classic British comics, done right. Holland has the knowledge and the commitment to make certain his collections are as comprehensive and good-looking as bookshelf editions can be, and I wish him all the success in the world with his new venture. First up from Bear Alley, later this summer: complete collections of the time-travelling war yarn The Phantom Patrol, with art by Gerry Embleton, and the excellent late sixties occult thriller Cursitor Doom, with art by Eric Bradbury and Geoff Campion. Steve's commissioned new covers by Chris Weston and John Ridgway for the titles.

In other news, as if you didn't have enough books to buy this year, the long-rumored Groo Treasury has finally been scheduled by Dark Horse. This 336-page collection of the earliest episodes of the comedy strip by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier is due in October, which is nice, because I was not keen on filling up on those little 80-page collections of the old Epic Comics series. That'd get a little expensive.

DC has announced they're releasing what might be the first-ever collection of Mike Grell's weird 1970s swords-and-lasers fantasy The Warlord, a title I enjoyed for about seven weeks when I was twelve, in their Showcase Presents line. The 528-page book, scheduled for September, reprints the character's debut in the anthology 1st Issue Special and the first 28 issues of his own book. If I was still in touch with a couple of guys I went to middle school with, I'd let them know, but I'm not, so I'm telling you.

So ten days ago, I was talking about how somebody needs to release more old Osamu Tezuka comics in the US. Well, the company Digital Manga Publishing is way ahead of me; there's a complete, done-in-one omnibus collection of Tezuka's 1968-69 serial Swallowing the Earth due in July! Great news, I am looking forward to seeing it. For more Tezuka, the wonderful Helen McCarthy is putting the final touches on a big, image-heavy coffee table biography of Tezuka for Abrams, the company that brought you Mark Evanier's wonderful tribute to Jack Kirby last year. The book is due out in October. And speaking of Abrams...

In another example of what's either a late April Fool's gag or definitive proof that everything that ever appeared in a newspaper is going to end up in a hardcover collected edition before much longer, Abrams is bringing out a collection of Stuart Hample's Woody Allen comic strip. No, I never knew there was a Woody Allen comic strip, either. It ran in the 1970s. The book is entitled Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as a Comic Strip and is due out in November. With an introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Oh, now I know this is a gag!

Finally this time, a couple of interesting Judge Dredd collections from Rebellion are in the pipeline for November. The 14th volume in their Complete Case Files series will include all the 2000 AD strips up to prog 700, including the epic "Necropolis" and all of its lead-in stories, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra. The collection won't include the separate serial The Dead Man, which ran for a few months prior to "Necropolis" and dumped readers on their heads with the beautiful revelation that the two strips were intricately connected. Happily, The Dead Man is getting its own trade collection alongside CCF 14, so new readers can enjoy all of its beautiful John Ridgway artwork and read it at the same time as the main Dredd strip.

That's all for this month! See you in July!

Friday, June 5, 2009

Reprint This! Ambassador Magma

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected several titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Obviously, the Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka is a big favorite here at Reprint This! headquarters, and the good folks over at Vertical have done a lot in the last year or so to increase his presence on English-language bookshelves, adding his classic series Dororo and Black Jack to their lineup. This is really just scratching the surface of all the wild array of comics he worked on over his forty-year career. One missing gem is AMBASSADOR MAGMA, a terrific comic in which humanity gets caught in the middle of a war between a galactic conqueror and his army of dinosaur-like monsters, and a kindly wizard and his trio of super-powered robots.

Ambassador Magma's central characters were the Murakami family, news reporter Atsushi, his wife Tomoko and his son Mamoru. In the first episode of the comic, the villainous Goa transports their home back to prehistoric Earth in a demonstration of his power, demanding that Murakami tell the world to surrender or be destroyed. Young Mamoru snaps pictures of Goa before he returns them to the present day. As he's developing the photo, a rocket lands outside and transforms into a fifty-foot robot called Magma, who takes Mamoru and the camera to a remote volcano. There, the wizard Earth confirms that his old enemy Goa has returned and enlists the Murakamis as his new allies.

The series is remarkably fun wish-fulfillment for kids, particularly when Earth creates a new "boy robot" called Gam in Mamoru's image as a surrogate son for Magma and his wife Mol. Gam is just about the greatest best friend character in all of comics: a super-powered buddy who can turn into a rocket and take you anywhere, and then beat up legions of evil henchmen with his magma-fueled super strength. In each of Ambassador Magma's first two lengthy comic storylines, the heroes confront alien duplicates along with an array of terrifying giant monsters as Goa crafts new plans for his conquest of our planet.

Ambassador Magma first ran in the monthly magazine Shonen Gaho from May of 1965 until February 1967, by which time a well-remembered live-action TV series was running. After Tezuka concluded his work on the comic, his studio continued it for another six months, along with a companion tie-in feature (six-page illustrated episode recaps, apparently) that ran for a year in the pages of Shonen King. The TV show, known in the US as The Space Giants, is a downright terrific program. It beat the better-known Ultraman to the air by about a week, and made the most of its shoestring budget by telling its stories in four-part serial format so that they wouldn't have to build so many sets and monster costumes. This resulted in stories that have aged very well, with believable characters and downright fascinating imagery. If Ultraman was Japan's Thunderbirds, low on plot but high on spectacle and explosions, then the TV Ambassador Magma was its Doctor Who, where intricate storylines and character development made for a far more rewarding experience. When The Space Giants finally got a decent run in American syndication more than a decade after it finished in Japan, it gained a huge audience of kids who would have sold their younger brothers for some merchandising, but practically nothing was available back then, least of all the original comics.

In fact, the program seems to be caught up in one of those interminable trademark disputes between a company which has no visible intention of making any money from it, other than suing anybody else who tries, and people who've made efforts to obtain a license to make comics with the better-known American name on it. This probably shouldn't impact any potential English-language release of the original comics, which should be called by the original title anyway and not get embroiled in the squabble over trademark, but it's a real shame that the characters have faded from the public view since nobody other than us nostalgists have seen the gang except in passing for better than twenty years.

Many, many moons ago, I did some research into the production of the TV series and my job would have been a lot easier had SciFi Japan been around. There's a terrific guide written by Bob Johnson on their site now which focusses more on the program, but also has some background about the comic and the various configurations of the reprints available in Japan. I'm of the opinion that the whole series could easily be collected into a pair of large-format volumes, and they'd make a great companion to Vertical's Black Jack books. So how about it, guys? Then you could get started on Jungle Emperor and Vampire and Cyborg Big X and Princess Knight and Amazing Three and...

Monday, November 17, 2008

Reprint This! Update on Black Jack

I finally had a chance to read the first of Vertical's new collections of Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka, and I am really pleased with the work they've done. If you've not been paying attention, this is one of Tezuka's best known series, an over-the-top but nevertheless very effective melodrama featuring a surgeon-for-hire called in to assist with the most bizarre medical cases on the planet. It originally appeared in the pages of Shonen Champion in an eleven-year run from 1973-1983.

In 1987, Tezuka's Japanese publisher compiled Black Jack in an incomplete series of seventeen oversized volumes. (This replaced an earlier, 20-odd volume collection; that's kind of standard operating procedure over there, but it makes tracking down books awful confusing. Mercifully I don't often indulge in that habit!) A handful of the episodes, I am not certain how many, were excised at Tezuka's request for various reasons. Well, the first of the new English-language editions was released in September. In paperback, as I understand it, this is a straight adaptation of the seventeen Japanese editions from Akita Shonen. But there's a bonus treat for people who'd like to support their local comic shops. The first three volumes will also be available in very limited edition hardcovers available to the direct market (1500 of the first book and 1200 of the next two) which each contain one of those otherwise unavailable episodes. So this isn't just their first English language appearance; it's their first reprint appearance ever.

At any rate, the publishing plan is for one new volume of Black Jack every other month from now until the summer of 2011. You can advance-order the first six from Amazon or stop by your local comic shop, who'd appreciate your bizness.

I'm very pleased with the quality of the collection. Vertical's run features the pages in the original orientation, with translator's footnotes to explain Tezuka's use of wordplay and puns in character names. Vertical's books simply look better than the comparatively cheap production of digests from other publishers, with better paper and cover stock. It looks like a quality production, and it certainly suits the classic material. Black Jack is really a great comic, full of inventive situations, wildly imagined diseases and bizarre, grisly accidents, and I strongly encourage readers to give it a try!

Read more of what I've written about Tezuka at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of Black Jack:
David P. Welsh at Flipped
Jog the Blog
Dave Merrill at Let's Anime
Deb Aoki at About.com
Tangognat, Agent of L.I.B.R.A.R.Y.

Enter a contest to win the first two volumes of Black Jack at Precious Curmudgeon.

(Originally posted November 17, 2008, 15:02 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Reprint This Update on Black Jack

Tezuka's Black Jack Returns

By Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 10/29/2007 1:54:00 PM

Japanese pulp fiction and classic manga publisher Vertical Inc. announced plans to publish Black Jack, legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka’s popular series about a genius surgeon, in its entirety beginning in fall 2008.

Black Jack originally ran in Japanese publisher Akita Shoten’s magazine, Weekly Shonen Champion,from 1973 to 1978. The series is approximately 12 volumes. According to Ada Palmer, founder of the Web site Tezuka in English, which is devoted to introducing Tezuka to an English speaking audience, Viz Media published the first two volumes before licensing conflicts with Tezuka Productions forced Viz to cancel the series. A new Black Jack anime—which included the collaboration of Tezuka’s son—recently finished airing on Japanese television after a two-year run. An older version of the Black Jack anime, originally created in the 1980s, was made available unofficially by fans over the Internet and is now available on iTunes.

The series stars title character Black Jack, an unlicensed but gifted surgeon who saves peoples lives, often against all odds. The series is a childhood favorite of Vertical editorial director Ioannis Mentzas. "[Black Jack] is probably the most influential book of my early years,” explained Mentzas, “and I've heard that sentiment from many Japanese." Mentzas added that the character’s appeal lies in its psychology. "Black Jack reflects the glory and squalor of early adulthood,” he said. Mentzas believes that the series will draw an audience in the late teens to early 20s. "I think any high school or 20-something person of the slightest intellectual bent will identify with BJ."

According to Palmer, founder of the Web site Tezuka in English, which is devoted to introducing Tezuka to an English speaking audience, Black Jack is the second most popular character in Japan. "Black Jack is Tezuka's most exciting adult character,” Palmer said, citing the Japanese medical and technology company Hitachi, which recently licensed the Black Jack character to be the spokesman for its medical equipment.

Palmer, whose site attracts an international crowd, said that most English-speaking anime and manga fans don't read Tezuka and aren't usually familiar with works like Buddha, which were formerly marketed to the Japanese literature-reading audience. Because of Viz’s earlier release of the Black Jack manga and the circulation of the anime series, Palmer said that Black Jack is better known among American manga and anime fans and has the potential to broaden his appeal.

"Black Jack is clearly the one that will sell the best in the U.S.,” Palmer said. "This is the title that will make or break his reputation in the U.S."

I first wrote about Black Jack in July. Good work, publishers! What is next?

(Originally posted October 31, 2007, 13:11 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

The Black Jack entry

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Reprint This! 11. Jungle Emperor

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's probably more overdue than any other is JUNGLE EMPEROR, one of Osamu Tezuka's earliest comics. It ran in the pages of Manga Shonen from 1950-54. A decade later, Tezuka's company produced a television adaptation, Japan's first color animated series. The show, distributed in America by Fred Ladd's company and retitled Kimba the White Lion, was a worldwide success and has prompted several sequel series, films and remakes, but, bizarrely, the original comic has never been collected in English.

Jungle Emperor is the story of a lion named Leo, who is briefly raised by humans and whose father created a safe haven for all animals in the jungle. The cub Leo wants to expand the territory to embrace human culture as well, and wishes for peace for all creatures. Naturally, he finds opposition, both from other animals who challenge his claim to the region, and from humans who bring their squabbles into his kingdom.

I certainly know less about Jungle Emperor than anything else on the Reprint This! list, since I've only flipped through copies of Japanese editions of the comics. I'm more familiar with the TV series, both the original but more so the second series, which was shown on the old CBN network in the 1980s under the name Leo the Lion. It's a truly excellent series, full of heart and optimism. The action and the comedy bits also work very well, but Tezuka's hope for a peaceful world shines in every reflective moment.

Anyway, in Japan, Jungle Emperor was a massive success and has been reprinted many times over the last fifty years, but no American company has licensed the rights to the comics. This is uninformed speculation, but I think that an American publisher like Viz would like to cross-promote any comic series that did appear with the cartoon series, which is already available via a small video company called The Right Stuf. Anyway, while we're holding out for Viz to give Tezuka's Black Jack another try, perhaps Dark Horse, who have published several volumes of Astro Boy, might like to give this one another look. Alternately, Vertical has published several other Tezuka volumes in the US, including Buddha, Apollo's Song and Ode to Kirihito. I think it's a winner in the right hands, so I hope somebody takes a chance on it.

(And while I'm thinking about it, I'd also like to see English editions of Ambassador Magma and Wonder 3, now, please.)

Special thanks to Dave Merrill for sending me these wonderful scans. Most appreciated!

(Originally posted September 18, 2007, 06:00 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

(edited to add: Publisher's Weekly had already interviewed Ioannis Mentzas of Vertical about Tezuka's work, and this series was mentioned, before this article appeared. Click to visit.)

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Reprint This! 5. Black Jack

UPDATE: Black Jack has been reprinted in 17 volumes by Vertical. Go, buy 'em all!

Black Jack's format is one of 15-page episodes dealing with utterly messed up illnesses and ailments - the sort that would drive Hugh Laurie to the priesthood - and accidents that require the most unusual surgeries ever seen. It's not like it's unrealistic due to a lack of research - Tezuka held a medical degree - but rather, realism is deliberately thrown completely out the window in favor of using the format for parables about greed and the debt one owes society, built around outlandish grotesqueries that are completely captivating.

Just to tell you how nutty this gets, in one of the few stories available in English, Black Jack serves as a supporting character in a story about his favorite sushi chef, who loses both his arms in a freak traffic accident. The contrite driver devotes his life to making up for his crime, and trains under the chef to become his new "arms." Black Jack's services are needed years down the road, when the driver is killed in a later, grisly accident. You can tell where this is going, only if you turn off your common sense circuits and think "utterly insane."

As engrossing as the stories are, the art is its own draw. I've been reading comics for three decades, and Tezuka remains the only artist who has ever tricked my eyes into actually seeing motion on the page. I'm absolutely drawn into Tezuka's weird world of heavy lines, sumptuous detail and stumpy, cartoony-people, and then he pulls an optical illusion and I swear the character on the page just moved. And hey, I'm the sort of guy who drives eighty miles off the interstate to see a gravity hill, so you're damn right I want more Black Jack in print.

Black Jack originally appeared as a weekly series in the pages of Shonen Champion from 1973-1983. Most of Tezuka's enormous output (said to be more than 150,000 pages over a 43-year career) came from short stories or 50-week serials or periodic installments of much larger works, such as Phoenix 2772, which was never actually completed. Black Jack was one of Tezuka's handful of series to be published regularly over a several year period.

You'd think that since Black Jack requires no backstory and has almost no continuity that it would be ideal for repackaging in the US. But only a handful of episodes have been published in this country. Viz released two volumes of translations, in their old "neither-fish-nor-fowl" trade paperback format, which were taller, wider and had fewer pages (around 160) than standard Japanese digests, but shorter and narrower than everybody else's graphic novels, priced at a too-high $15.95, and with the artwork flipped so the book's spine is on the right. Viz has done right with some of its older properties, issuing them in the more common size and under $10, but Black Jack hasn't been seen again since they switched formats. We'd like to see the rest of the series, so how about it, Viz?

(Originally posted July 17, 2007, 08:13 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

(Update 10/07: Vertical has announced they have licensed the series for North American publication!!)

(Update 4/08: First look at Vertical's design for the series.)

Reprint This!