celebrating 25 years of manga

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF MANGA
1988: Dark Horse releases its first manga, Kazuhisa Iwata’s Godzilla, as
a six-issue comics series.
1989: Dark Horse releases its first manga trade paperback collection, Outlanders Volume 1. No ISBN or BISAC codes are needed, as
graphic novels aren’t sold in bookstores yet!
1993: Adam Warren’s The Dirty Pair, a licensed American adaptation of
the original Japanese series, comes out. Warren later does an American
adaptation of Bubblegum Crisis with creator Kenichi Sonoda’s approval.
1995: Masamune Shirow’s epic science fiction tale Ghost in the
Shell is released as an eight-part comics series.
1988: Studio Proteus begins a long association with Dark Horse, beginning with the sci-fi comics series Outlanders. In conjunction with Studio
Proteus, Dark Horse would later publish such notable titles as Akira
and Ghost in the Shell.
1993: Weekly Super Comic Maker, a weekly comic collecting the
best Dark Horse offerings, is released in Japan. Dark Horse is the
only American publisher to have done this.
1994: Kosuke Fujishima’s Oh My Goddess! series is released. Still
published to this day, Oh My Goddess! is the longest-running ongoing
manga series in English.
1996: Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal series is first
published.
1999: Star Wars by Hisao Tamaki wins Dark Horse its first Eisner Award
for manga.
2000: Super Manga Blast! begins, a bimonthly serialized magazine
dedicated solely to manga (titles include What’s Michael?, Cannon God
Exaxxion, and Shadow Star).
2000: Kazuo Koike’s Lone Wolf and Cub launches in a bunko format (4 x 6 inches) and sets a land-speed record, with twenty-eight
volumes published in twenty-eight months. As well as being a
multiple Eisner and Harvey Award winner, it becomes one of Dark
Horse’s best-selling series.
2002: When Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy comes out, Dark Horse becomes
the first American publisher to release the lighter side of Tezuka, with
other titles showcasing Tezuka’s earlier manga history to follow, including Metropolis, Lost World, and Nextworld.
2005: Dark Horse leads the charge of publishing anime-related
novels with the best-selling Vampire Hunter D (which will become
its most popular prose novel series of all time) and follows it up
with the anime spinoff novel Blood: The Last Vampire.
2007: Dark Horse forges a relationship with renowned artist
Yoshitaka Amano with the publication of Worlds of Amano.
The publisher would later print over a half dozen of Amano’s
art books, including The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy.
2007: Dark Horse wins an Eisner Award for Garon
Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi’s gritty revenge
series Old Boy.
2008: The most-demanded sci-fi/action manga of all time, Hiroya Oku’s
Gantz, is released.
2009: The wildly successful CLAMP omnibus program begins
with Clover, followed by Chobits, Cardcaptor Sakura, Magic Knight
Rayearth, Angelic Layer, and Tokyo Babylon.
2012: Dark Horse releases Tsukasa Fushimi’s Oreimo, a contemporary
title based on the Japanese light-novel phenomenon.
2000: Regarded by many as the finest manga series ever produced, Katsuhiro Otomo’s stunning science-fiction masterpiece
Akira is published.
2003: Yasuhiro Nightow’s Trigun, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, and Kohta
Hirano’s Hellsing launch, with all three quickly ascending to the bestseller list; to date they have sold almost two million copies. Dark
Horse’s first books in tankobon size (5 x 7 inches), these titles are also
formatted as the publisher’s first non-Westernized manga (right-toleft reading).
2006: Dark Horse publishes the anime art book Gungrave
Archives, by creator Yasuhiro Nightow, which is soon followed
by another art book, Roman Album: Samurai Champloo, based
on the popular anime.
2007: The most controversial manga of all time, the multivolume
series MPD-Psycho, comes to America.
2007: The last comic issue of Blade of the Immortal (#131) is printed.
Blade is not only Dark Horse’s longest-running manga series in comic
book format, but also the last manga to be published in this format. 2009: The first volume of New York Times graphic novel bestseller
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project comes
out. It is followed by another hit series spinoff, Neon Genesis
Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse.
2013: Yoshitaka Amano’s original fantasy novel, Deva Zan, is
printed. It is released in America before being released in Japan
or elsewhere.
www.DarkHorse.com/Manga — TRIGUN © YASUHIRO Nightow 2013. Originally published in Japan in 2000 by SHONEN GAHOSHA Co., Ltd., TOKYO. English translation rights arranged with SHONEN GAHOSHA Co., Ltd., TOKYO through TOHAN CORPORATION, TOKYO. BERSERK by Kentaro Miura © 2013 Kentaro
Miura. All rights reserved. First published in Japan by HAKUSENSHA, INC., Tokyo English language translation rights in the United States of America and Canada arranged with HAKUSENSHA, INC., Tokyo through TOHAN CORPORATION, Tokyo. HELLSING © KOHTA HIRANO 2013. Originally published in Japan by
SHONEN GAHOSHA Co., Ltd., TOKYO. English translation rights arranged with SHONEN GAHOSHA Co., Ltd., TOKYO through TOHAN CORPORATION, TOKYO. BLOOD+ ADAGIO © Kumiko SUEKANE 2006 © 2005 Production I.G. • Aniplex • MBS • HAKUHODO. First published in Japan by KADOKAWA SHOTEN
PUBLISHING Co., Ltd., Tokyo. English Translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA SHOTEN PUBLISHING Co., Ltd., Tokyo through TOHAN CORPORATION, Tokyo. NEON GENESIS EVANGELION GAKUEN DATENROKU © Mingming 2009 © GAINAX • Khara. First published in Japan by KADOKAWA SHOTEN Publishing
Co., Ltd., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA SHOTEN Publishing Co., Ltd., Tokyo, through TOHAN CORPORATION, Tokyo. NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: COMIC TRIBUTE © khara • GAINAX. English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA SHOTEN Publishing Co., Ltd., Tokyo, through
TOHAN CORPORATION, Tokyo. Oh My Goddess! Copyright © 2013 by Kosuke Fujishima. All rights reserved. Blade of the Immortal Copyright © 2013 by Hiroaki Samura. All rights reserved. Gunsmith Cats Copyright © 2013 by Kenichi Sonoda. All rights reserved. MPD-PSYCHO © OTSUKA Eiji Jimusyo. Sho-u TAJIMA
2006. First published in Japan by KADOKAWA SHOTEN Publishing Co., Ltd., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA SHOTEN Publishing Co., Ltd., through TOHAN CORPORATION, Tokyo. Eden © 2013 Hiroki Endo. All rights reserved. First published in Japan by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo. Publication rights
for this English edition arranged through Kodansha Ltd. Gantz © 2013 by Hiroya Oku. All Rights reserved. First published by SHUEISHA Inc., Tokyo. Lone Wolf & Cub © 2013 KOIKE KAZUO & KOJIMA GOSEKI. All rights reserved. First Published in Japan in 1995 by KOIKE SHOIN PUBLISHING CO., LTD., TOKYO. English
translation rights arranged with KOIKE SHOIN PUBLISHING CO., LTD. TETSUWAN ATOM by Osamu Tezuka © 2013 by Tezuka Productions. All rights reserved. English translation rights arranged with Tezuka Productions. Appleseed original art and story copyright © 2013 Shirow Masamune and Seishinsha. Appleseed, its
characters and their distinctive likenesses TM and © 2013 Shirow Masamune and Seishinsha. Oreno Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii wakeganai © TSUKASA FUSHIMI / SAKURA IKEDA 2013. Originally published in Japan by ASCII MEDIA WORKS Inc., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with ASCII. Cardcaptor Sakura
© 2013 by CLAMP. All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published by Kodansha Co., Ltd., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with PYROTECHNIST CO. LTD., Tokyo. Chobits © 2012 by CLAMP. All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published by Kodansha Co., Ltd., Tokyo. English translation rights
arranged with PYROTECHNIST CO. LTD., Tokyo. Angelic Layer © 2013 CLAMP. All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published by Kodansha Co., Ltd., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with PYROTECHNIST CO. LTD., Tokyo. Dark Horse Manga is a trademark of Dark Horse Comics, Inc.