T-shirt #89 - Lone Wolf and Cub

T-shirt #89 - Lone Wolf and Cub

There have been comments by readers (verbal mostly) that my blogs entries are very long. It is true. I can't deny that I am verbose, wordy, Baroque in the extreme. See? Right there, I could have just described myself as "wordy."

Then, yesterday, a good friend told me that I am cool, and cooler than he originally believed. I am touched by this compliment.

With the original concept for the blog, I intended to make short entries. If you do not believe me, dial back to the first five entries. They are all short blurbs. Not crazy long essays. Even T-shirt #6: Discpline is very much on the short side. But then they started to grow. Some are crazy long. I need to continue my dedication to variety both in subject matter (at least day-to-day) as well as length.

And so, in keeping with that variety thing, another short-ish entry.

Like many American comic book readers, I have Frank Miller to thank for introducing me to Japanese Manga, principally the series: Lone Wolf and Cub. Miller's comic Ronin (1983-1984) sparked my interest in Manga just before my internship in New York, where I was able to find Manga racked in comic book stores. No surprise that my interest flared as Ronin was inspired by  Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub. In 1987, the now defunct comic company FIRST COMICS began publishing translations of the manga with covers by Miller and others.



Other companies followed as interest in and sales for manga translations grew. Marvel Comics' Epic division--where I worked in 1985--published Akira under the stewardship of Jo Duffy, who had great interest in manga and Akira in particular. Other manga translations followed as Eclipse Comics partnered with Viz Communications division with titles such as The Legend of Kamui and my all-time favorite Mai, the Psychic Girl. (Eclipse was helmed by the Mullaney brothers who hired Cat Yronwode as editor. Yronwode is due to be featured in an upcoming blog entry that I have already started writing and researching, so I think this connection is interesting.)

Starting in 2000, Dark Horse Comics began releasing the Lone Wolf and Cub translations in trade paperback format. DH Comics added the volumes (28 in all) to its digital platform in 2012.

A re-imagined version titled Lone Wolf 2100 was created  by writer Mike Kennedy and artist Francisco Ruiz Velasco with Koike's indirect involvement in 2002 (published by Dark Horse). Though the series did not sell as well as the original, I thought it was excellent.

Dark Horse recently announced obtaining the license to Shin Lone Wolf and Cub, a follow-up to the original series by  Kazuo Koike and Hideki Mori.

The original Lone Wolf and Cub manga began publication in Japan in 1970 and spans 28 volumes totaling over 8700 pages in all.

It is regarded as one of the greatest and most epic manga of all time.

- chris tower - 1306.18 - 10:00