By Joseph Luster

If I remember correctly, the original 2006 Vertical edition of Ode to Kirihito was my first true exposure to a dark, somewhat self-contained Osamu Tezuka tale. It also may have been the largest bulk volume of manga I consumed prior to Drawn & Quarterly's release of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life . Its original run in Japan was a different matter, with twenty gripping chapters serializ...

By Joseph Luster

Before the latest volume of Black Jack is even a third of the way through, the good doctor fends off sharks with scalpels while adrift at sea with a critical patient. Does something as seemingly preposterous as this make me balk? Oddly enough, no. Instead, I wonder if Black Jack has had to do this before, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out the answer is an emphatic "of course." That's bec...

By Daryl Surat

Kazuo Koike may be the most respected living manga author of all, but read enough of his manga and you’ll realize that respect comes from the fact that he’s certifiably insane. But he won’t be around forever, so in order to ensure that his manga-fu legacy lives on he took it upon himself to open a school and train students in the mystic arts of how to create hit manga. His most well-known stud...

By Joseph Luster

I was fairly blind to the work of Natsume Ono prior to Viz's unveiling of their Ikki line of manga, aside from some cursory knowledge of her series Ristorante Paradiso . My first real introduction was House of Five Leaves —a few chapters of which are still available over at the Ikki site —and I couldn't recommend picking up the first volume more when it hits in May. Viz's latest publication of...

By Joseph Luster

Viz's 2009 publication of Taiyo Matsumoto's GoGo Monster received a lot of love when the time came for year-end Best Of lists, and now this fashionably late reader knows precisely why. This is as good a comic as you're likely to find out there on bookshelves, and before I continue to gush over its contents, I'll go ahead and suggest you do go find it. Hit up comic shops, hit up Borders or what...

By Julian Gnam

The opening panel of this manga is a rear-end shot of a man in a leather thong bending over. I just thought you should know that. Most manga series feature a principle cast of one or two protagonists, and the cast is expanded with supporting characters gradually, in a linear fashion, as the story unfolds. Soul Eater features a pretty large principle cast which is thrown at the reader all at on...