Dark Horse to Debut “Lone Wolf and Cub Gallery Edition” in 2018 Dark Horse to Debut “Lone Wolf and Cub Gallery Edition” in 2018 Kazuo Koike’s samurai epic Lone Wolf and Cub has long been considered a masterpiece of graphic fiction. And Dark Horse is thrilled to announce the release of the oversized gallery edition coming in 2018! Lone Wolf and Cub is a staggering, sprawling epic, and a tour de force of storytelling, both in the complex, emotional narrative of writer/creator Kazuo Koike and the explosive kineticism and subtle expressiveness of artist Goseki Kojima. Featuring Kojima’s spectacular illustrations at original size on heavy-stock art paper, the Lone Wolf and Cub Gallery Edition is a...
[more]
Lone Wolf and Cub has for decades been a member of that exclusive club among graphic novel series—those titles discussed as being among the best comics ever created. And series writer/creator Kazuo Koike has rightly earned his place among the most significant writers in comics history, not only for his LW&C stories, but for an impressive oeuvre that includes Samurai Executioner, Lady Snowblood, Crying Freeman, and many others. Koike is forever linked to his Lone Wolf and Cub collaborator, the late artist Goseki Kojima, with whom he formed a long partnership that produced over 15,000 pages of stories set in Japan’s samurai era, including Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai Executioner, and Path of the Assassin. Kojima’s...
[more]
Editing New Lone Wolf and Cub affords me the opportunity to compare the sequel to the original, and see both the elements they share, and where they diverge. I find the two respective key protagonists, Ogami Itt? of Lone Wolf and Cub, and New Lone Wolf’s T?g? Shigekata, fascinating character contrasts. Both are warriors of spectacular skill, iron will, and unshakeable devotion to honor and to young Daigoro. And yet they are two very different people. Ogami was a family man. He was court executioner in Edo, the capital of the shogunate, the center of power in feudal Japan. He was betrayed by the system he had so loyally served, accused falsely of the one crime he would never commit: disloyalty. While vengeance for his wife’s...
[more]
Possibly the most difficult act in the arts is to pull off revisiting a legendary performance. Expectations are sky high, public scrutiny is bound to be intensive, and you know that some detractors are just waiting in the tall grass to ambush you. “You can’t win,” some would say. But what if you had more story to tell? In the case of Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf and Cub, we’re not talking about just any legend—we’re talking about arguably the greatest graphic-fiction work ever created. Following such a timeless archetype, one that influenced generations of comics creators around the globe, would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but imagine if you’d lost your artist. And in...
[more]
Few works of graphic fiction have portrayed action so powerfully, so elegantly, and so kinetically as has Lone Wolf and Cub. But what sets LW&C apart from other graphic fiction is the extreme contrasts within its pages. As a fan of great storytelling, I’ve come to realize that contrast is the high-octane fuel of drama. The studious intellect of the Judge in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian magnifies the character’s savagery. The moment of sunlight and blue sky in the midst of The Perfect Storm renders the stricken sword boat’s plight absolutely crushing. The quiet passages in Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit" turns the volume to eleven when the big chords come crashing down. No one in comics...
[more]
Great news! Lone Wolf and Cub creator Kazuo Koike announced at New York Comic Con that he plans to write more Lone Wolf and Cub stories, furthering the original saga’s sequel, New Lone Wolf and Cub (Shin Kozure Okami), which starts its North American publication at Dark Horse this June. Any new LW&C material is cause for raised glasses and lit fireworks, but for you lost souls who may not have read the original, there’s no better time than now to catch up. Lone Wolf and Cub Omnibus Volume 3 hits comics shops Wednesday (and bookstores not long after), featuring over seven hundred story pages of what some consider the greatest work of graphic fiction ever created—and at the ridiculously low cost of less...
[more]
Evangelion and FLCL character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is coming to America in August for Japan Expo! Here at Dark Horse, we know about the Japan Expo event held each year in Paris, France. It's the biggest gathering of Japanese pop culture fans in the world (outside of Japan itself!) with an attendance of over 200,000 in 2012. Several artists published by Dark Horse have attended, including CLAMP (Gate 7), Kazuo Koike (New Lone Wolf and Cub), Masakazu Katsura (Shadow Lady), and Shinichiro Watanabe (Samurai Champloo Roman Album). But just next month, August 23-25, 2013, is the date Japan Expo finally comes to America, with their first convention to be held in the United States, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA....
[more]
Hey Digital Denizens! Avatar fans, are you ready to find out what happened to Zuko's mom? For years fans have burned with one question: what happened to Fire Lord Zuko's mother? Finding a clue at last, Zuko enlists the aid of Team Avatar—and the most unlikely ally of all—to help uncover the biggest secret of his life. This is the perfect companion to The Legend of Korra and the official continuation of Airbender from its creators! Get Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Search now. We have a treat for all the gamers. The Art of BioShock Infinite is now available digitally. Delve deeper into the city of Columbia—the fabled floating metropolis that serves as a beacon of technology and...
[more]
Hey Digital Denizens! Get ready for an amazing month of Digital releases. We've got a whole mess of Star Wars, The Goon, and Conan! And now you can finally get your hands on Mike Mignola's Baltimore series, which has been growing quickly in popularity. Need another reason to buy Star Wars books? Yeah, we didn't think so, but we want to give you one anyway. Starting today, every time you purchase a Star Wars Episode digital comic, you are automatically entered in a chance to win the complete Star Wars saga on Blu-ray as well as our new print Omnibus. Episodes I - III hit digital shelves today, with Episodes IV - VI hitting next week. You can check out our blog here for all the fine print. Get your...
[more]
Hey Digital Denizens! This week brings you a host of BPRD and Star Wars, Goon and Mr. Hyde and special adventures into the Fast-Food culture. Don't miss the Digital release of Supersized! Supersized: Strange Tales From A Fast-Food Culture Don't have the App? You can Download it for Free! As Always, make sure to visit Digital.Darkhorse.com weekly for more great sales and offers. On Sale Now! - 08/03/11 B.P.R.D.: The Warning #1-#5 Bundle B.P.R.D.: The Warning #1 B.P.R.D.: The Warning #2 B.P.R.D.: The Warning #3 B.P.R.D.: The Warning #4 B.P.R.D.: The Warning #5 Doctor Solar®, Man of the Atom #7 The Goon #13 Hellboy: The Fury #2 Solomon Kane: Red Shadows Bundle Solomon Kane: Red Shadows #4 Speak of the Devil Bundle Speak of...
[more]
Hey Digital Denizens! Get ready for an amazing month of Digital releases. We've got a whole treasure trove of Star Wars books coming your way and don't miss out on these callout titles from each week: Supersized, Star Wars: Invasion - Revelations, RIPD, Hellboy: The Fury #3, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. Don't have the App? You can Download it for Free! As Always, make sure to visit Digital.Darkhorse.com weekly for more great sales and offers. Release Date: 08/03/11 *Supersized: Strange Tales from a Fast-Food Culture Doctor Solar #7 Hellboy: The Fury #2 Solomon Kane: Red Shadows # 4 Speak of the Devil 1-6 Star Wars: Legacy 1-4 Star Wars: Jedi - The Dark Side #3 Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Shipyards of Doom The...
[more]
I'd never read any manga before Lone Wolf & Cub. It was those Frank Miller covers that first captured my attention, but it was what I discovered on the pages inside that kept it. As I began reading the story of samurai Ogami Itto on a bloody road of assassination, revenge, and redemption, with his his three-year-old son Daigoro in tow, I felt like I had uncovered the root from which many of my favorite comics -- Western comics -- had grown. The deep characterizations with complex personal motivations, the beyond-kinetic action and cinematic violence, the rich serial narrative slowly unfolding through a linked chain of complete and satisfying individual tales, everywhere I looked, I not only saw brilliance I'd never...
[more]
We continue our series with Mike Denning about the design and development of the Dark Horse App, Digital Store and Dark Horse Digital Program. App Design Part 1: A Background So as I mentioned in my first blog entry… after the announcement of the iPad, we jettisoned our initial design of a Dark Horse iphone reader app and began anew. And although we were starting over, there were certain design constraints we put into place for first version of the Dark Horse App. One constraint was that we weren't going to customized the user interface but instead use as much as the standard Apple App interface as we could. This simplified (somewhat) what I needed to do… I used the standard top nav bar and bottom tab bar...
[more]
Why You Should Buy an iPad When I first bought an iPod Touch a couple years ago, I thought "this is it, this is the one I've been waiting for." You see, I bought a Palm Pilot years and years ago–well actually it was a Handspring Visor using the Palm operating system. And though it was a clever little device…it pretty much stayed in a drawer until I needed a calculator for a stats class…..but I digress. The Touch was great. I could surf the web, play games, read books and comics–especially Dark Horse comics that we formatted and released as standalone apps. But after standing in line that first day for my pre-ordered iPad, well, let's just say the Visor has a new friend in the drawer. Instead...
[more]
