For the last five years, one of Dark Horse's best-selling manga titles has been Kenichi Sonoda's rubber-burning, thug-whacking, pistol-packing action series Gunsmith Cats. After the series finale of Gunsmith Cats in October, Sonoda is bringing his hit Japanese sci-fi series Cannon God Exaxxion to Dark Horse, scheduled for November release.

It's a typical school day for Hoichi. He's skipping class and beating the stuffing out of a bunch of upperclassmen, which makes him about the only person on the whole planet who isn't glued to the television -- today's the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Space Elevator, a gigantic earth-to-orbit elevator built by those lovable aliens, the Riofaldians, who arrived on Earth ten years ago. Today, the mass media is proud to report, tens of thousands of Riofaldians are working side by side with humanity, as good neighbors on the march to global prosperity. Hoichi's ultra-rich, ultra-brilliant, and ultra-eccentric grandfather (the author of a loony book claiming the Riofaldians are out to take over the Earth) doesn't agree and this has driven a wedge between him and his equally eccentric grandson. But that -- and the history of mankind -- is about to change forever!

Dark Horse's manga editor Tim Ervin-Gore summed up the series succinctly: "Rebellious teen inherits a big responsibility (ensuring the freedom of planet Earth from oppressive, shifty aliens) and a big gun (and I mean BIG, with legs!) to deal with his problems. Expect usual teen-age mistakes, but on a grand scale. Japanese-scale destruction and hilarious manga conventions abound!"

Kenichi Sonoda's Cannon God Exaxxion is a new ongoing manga series from Dark Horse Comics and Studio Proteus. The first big issue of the premiere eight-issue miniseries, called Cannon God Exaxxion: Stage 1, hits your favorite comic-book shop starting November 21.