Some people believe that the worlds of Western comic books and Japanese manga don't usually intersect, but that is not true. There's an incredibly funny Deadpool manga by Sanshirou Kasama and Hikaru Uesugi that was published in Shonen Jump, for example. The history of manga series with comic book heroes dates back to the 60s, when Batman swept the world off its feet.
In 1966 DC Comics partnered with 20th Century Fox and released a live-action TV series about the adventures of Batman and Robin who fought a variety of villains on a weekly basis. It was popular not only in the US: it created a literal wave of Batmania in Japan. Every piece of merchandise was swooped by the people, be it toys, games, records, or anything else. And one magazine, Shonen King, decided to chomp off a bit of this pie.
They got the rights from DC Comics to draw their own stories with these characters for the Japanese market — and released a few chapters of a comic. It never used the original Batman villains: instead, Jiro Kuwata, the author and illustrator of the series, created some new ones, like 8 Man, or Doctor Faceless, or Lord Death Man. The run was brief, for about a year: it started in 1966 and ended in 1967.
Most American comic book artists didn't even know about the existence of the Japanese version of Batman: David Mazzuchelli, creator of Batman: One, accidentally learned about it at a comic book convention in Japan in the 90s — and he told his friend, Chip Kidd, an avid Batman fan, about that.
Chip decided to learn as much as he could about the short series and started lurking.
First, he met the collector Saul Ferris who helped him identify a fake toy, and they became friends. Saul had an extensive collection of non-US Batman merchandise, and when Kidd spotted Batman manga in his archives, he decided to compile them in a book.
It was released in 2008 and titled Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan, and included not only the manga but also photos of the toys from Ferris' collection and an interview with the creator of the manga, Jiro Kuwata; a special edition of the book also included a short story by him. Sadly, his manga collection had some blank spaces in it, and American DC archives didn't have any copies of the Japanese comics, but some of the issues were found in Shonen King archives after the book's release, possibly hinting at the sequel.
So the adventures of the Japanese Batman have not ended!
The Bat conquered the whole world.
Some people believe that the worlds of Western comic books and Japanese manga don't usually intersect, but that is not true. There's an incredibly funny Deadpool manga by Sanshirou Kasama and Hikaru Uesugi that was published in Shonen Jump, for example. The history of manga series with comic book heroes dates back to the 60s, when Batman swept the world off its feet.
In 1966 DC Comics partnered with 20th Century Fox and released a live-action TV series about the adventures of Batman and Robin who fought a variety of villains on a weekly basis. It was popular not only in the US: it created a literal wave of Batmania in Japan. Every piece of merchandise was swooped by the people, be it toys, games, records, or anything else. And one magazine, Shonen King, decided to chomp off a bit of this pie.
They got the rights from DC Comics to draw their own stories with these characters for the Japanese market — and released a few chapters of a comic. It never used the original Batman villains: instead, Jiro Kuwata, the author and illustrator of the series, created some new ones, like 8 Man, or Doctor Faceless, or Lord Death Man. The run was brief, for about a year: it started in 1966 and ended in 1967.
Most American comic book artists didn't even know about the existence of the Japanese version of Batman: David Mazzuchelli, creator of Batman: One, accidentally learned about it at a comic book convention in Japan in the 90s — and he told his friend, Chip Kidd, an avid Batman fan, about that.
Chip decided to learn as much as he could about the short series and started lurking.
First, he met the collector Saul Ferris who helped him identify a fake toy, and they became friends. Saul had an extensive collection of non-US Batman merchandise, and when Kidd spotted Batman manga in his archives, he decided to compile them in a book.
It was released in 2008 and titled Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan, and included not only the manga but also photos of the toys from Ferris' collection and an interview with the creator of the manga, Jiro Kuwata; a special edition of the book also included a short story by him. Sadly, his manga collection had some blank spaces in it, and American DC archives didn't have any copies of the Japanese comics, but some of the issues were found in Shonen King archives after the book's release, possibly hinting at the sequel.
So the adventures of the Japanese Batman have not ended!
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