Celebrating 30 Years of Manga, Editor Carl Horn Looks at the Past, Present, and Future of Manga at Dark Horse.2018 marks 30 years that Dark Horse has been publishing manga. We couldn't have made it here if it weren't for the fact that, from the very beginning, there have been comics stores that carried manga as well—and introduced the vast world of graphic storytelling they represent to new readers. In the 1980s, I was one of those readers! I bought my very first manga, Barefoot Gen, at Comics & Comix in Berkeley, where at the time worked the person later destined to become Dark Horse's great editor emeritus, Diana Schutz.
Manga is its own thing—and at the same time, it can also be viewed as the Japanese approach to making comics. The fact Dark Horse has been publishing manga longer than almost anyone else ^_^ doesn't astonish me quite so much when I consider that our very first two manga were edited by people who are not only also Dark Horse comics editors, but comics creators—Randy Stradley (King Tiger) edited Kazuhisa Iwata's Godzilla in May of 1988, whereas Chris Warner (Predator: Hunters) edited Johji Manabe's Outlanders in December of that year.
It makes still more sense when I leap forward to 2018 and see the manga cross-connections in some of Dark Horse's most recent comics—a favorite shojo heroine of Zodiac Starforce: Cries of the Fire Prince writer Kevin Panetta is Cardcaptor Sakura, whose first volume is about to go into its eleventh printing at Dark Horse.
And when I look at the concluding issue of Elfquest: The Final Quest, I can’t help but reflect on how Dark Horse not only has the honor of publishing this last arc in one of the great creator-owned comic series, but that Elfquest's scriptwriter and artist, Wendy Pini, was one of the very first comics creators to take stylistic inspiration from anime and manga, including not only shojo (which she discovered in the 1960s!) but the shonen work of Osamu Tezuka, whose Astroboy Omnibus Volume One is already in its fourth printing from Dark Horse.
We're marking our 30th manga anniversary with a book that couldn’t be a better symbol of Dark Horse's dual history—bringing our archival expertise with original comics art to manga to create the Lone Wolf and Cub Gallery Edition, out this July. As far as I am aware, this will be the first manga gallery edition ever, either here or in Japan. Its pages are taken from the final story arc of the great samurai epic—you can imagine the excitement we felt to handle the actual 1976 artboards (pictured at left) drawn by Goseki Kojima and written by Kazuo Koike. This year you can also look forward to the continuation of Dark Horse manga series like I Am a Hero, Blood Blockade Battlefront, Fate/Zero, and Berserk—plus in June, the Berserk Official Guidebook, the comprehensive guide to the sprawling fantasy adventure world of Dark Horse's best-selling series. We'll be announcing at least seven new manga titles as we get into spring, as well. In 2018, manga are Dark Horse's past, present . . . and future!
Carl Horn
Manga Editor