I think I first discovered manga around 1980 while going through the magazines on the rack at a Japanese grocery store. Knowing me, I was probably looking for pictures of Godzilla, but instead I found this phone-book-thick magazine filled with an assortment of lively and exciting comics stories of all kinds. I remember the magazine contained a baseball story, a samurai story, and a story about a group that seemed to be fighting demons or alien monsters -- as well as lots of other stories -- only one of which came anywhere close to fitting into the traditional American superhero genre. I couldn't read any of it, and the price was a whopping $3.00 (in those days a fortune for a comic!), but I knew I had to have it. For this comics fan, that magazine was a wake-up call to the possibilities of the medium.
Over time, I picked up several more of the magazines, even though three bucks a pop seemed a hefty price to pay for comics Icouldn't even read. Still, I was fascinated. By the mid-eighties, Frederik L.Schodt's wonderful book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics had opened the eyes of many American comics readers to what was going on outside our borders. Frank Miller had pointed to Kazuo Koike's and Goseki Kojima's Kozure Okami (known in the States as Lone Wolf and Cub) as an influence on his work. In some of the better comics stores around the country you could find manga collections (still in Japanese). Fans and professionals alike were beginning to take notice.
Within a few years, many American comics publishers had added manga translations to their line-up. Nowadays, you can't find a comics shop worthy of the designation that doesn't carry a multitude of manga titles. Most retailers and publishers will tell you that in these unsettling days of sagging (or even plummeting) sales, manga titles have remained relatively stable. Manga fans are a loyal bunch, but maybe that's just because they know something other comics readers haven't opened their eyes to yet... In addition to all of the great manga titles currently available from Dark Horse and Studio Proteus (Gunsmith Cats, You're Under Arrest, The Legend of Mother Sarah, etc.), the next few months will see the debut of three new series.
March
Master artist and storyteller Masamune Shirow's Dominion: Conflict 1 -- No More Noise hits the stands mid-month. Tank-cop Leona is determined to restore order to the future metropolis of Newport -- even if it means destroying the city! Shirow's previous Dominion series has earned him a legion of fans and spawned two animated series. If you haven't seen what you're missing, trust me, you haven't seen what you're missing!April
Spirit of Wonder,by Kenji Tsuruta, is a series for which publisher Mike Richardson and I have been waiting a long time. Studio Proteus' Toren Smith first showed us this series nearly five years ago, and we were immediately taken with its charm and air of classic adventure. Now we'll finally get to read it, and so will you.June
Manjiis a ronin (a masterless samurai) whose body has been invaded by a kessenchu -- a parasite which has given him eternal life. But all the grieving ronin wants forhimself is death -- a death the kessenchu will grant only when Manji has slain a thousand men. Hiroaki Samura's work in Blade of the Immortal is rich, atmospheric, and guaranteed to please. And there are more new manga series planned for the coming year. So, yes, March is "Manga Month," but so is everymonth, if you just open your eyes.Happy reading.
Randy Stradley creative director