At least in my meager experience, when a manga finally gets translated over here in the States, the cover is almost always the same as the Japanese cover. Looking at Naoki Urasawa’s Monster and his Pluto series, the original covers and design are the same things that Viz put out when they finally translated his [...]
Tags: 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa
It’s been fascinating seeing how Naoki Urasawa constructs stories. In a relatively short span of time, Viz has released his Monster, Pluto and 20th Century Boys and in each, Urasawa has put together his stories in different ways. Monster was a marathon, with the main two contestants being Tenma and Johann. It was a slow, [...]
Friends say it’s fine, my friends say it’s good Ev’rybody says it’s just like rock’n’roll Fly like a plane, love like a car Hold lots of hands, babe I wanna be your man – oh Well it’s plain to see you were meant for me, yeah I’m your toy, your 20th century boy Gutter Shots [...]
I have a feeling that for the next few years one of the great debates will be which is better– Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys or his Pluto? And, for me at least, the answer will most likely be whichever book of his I most recently read. Both books offer some of the best constructed stories [...]
Tags: 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa
Using the unlicensed, black market doctor Black Jack, Osamu Tezuka tells remarkably human and humane stories around small little medical dramas that have as much to do about healing the physical body as the do about the health of a person’s soul. In the new 5th volume of Black Jack stories from Vertical which contains [...]
Tags: Black Jack, Osamu Tezuka
The first volume of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto contains one of my favorite comic book sequences ever put down on paper. Paul Duncan, a blind musical genius, has just been sent a new robotic manservant, North No. 2. The old man, once one of the best film score composers, cannot stand the idea that he needs [...]
Tags: Astro Boy, Naoki Urasawa, Osamu Tezuka, Pluto
Takehiko Inoue is an incredibly versatile artist and Slam Dunk is the perfect series to highlight what he is capable of. The third volume of his basketball manga continues to show the development of Sakuragi into his self-professed “Basketball Man!” That means in this volume he learns how to do a lay up, one of [...]
Tags: Slam Dunk, Takehiko Inoue
I wonder if we’ve somehow become desensitized to the end of the world. As we go about our daily lives, we’re bombarded with so many smaller, little crises that I wonder if we’d even know a big one if it was happening right before our eyes. We’ve seen so many television shows, movie and comic [...]
Tags: 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa
I love that there are still times where a comic page can surprise and delight me. Just this weekend, I found a page among the pages of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack V2, in the story called “Pinoko’s Challenge.” Note: read this page from the right side to the left since it’s unflipped manga. Pinoko is [...]
Tags: Black Jack, Osamu Tezuka, Pinoko, Vertical
from CBR: NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: THE SHINJI IKARI RAISING PROJECT VOLUME 1 Osamu Takahashi (W/A) On sale June 10 b&w, 184 pages $9.95 TPB, 5″ x 7″ Stunning, hotheaded Asuka Langley Soryu has been friends with Shinji Ikari since they were little. And she always sort of assumed they’d stay together–until the day the beautiful, [...]
