context: comics > Some works

Akira

the comic was coloured for its US publication

Other than a small-time publication of excerpts from Barefoot Gen, put out almost as an underground comic, this was the first Japanese comic to make it into English. Marvel comics picked it up, and decided to put it out on glossy paper in full colour, neither of these things at all in keeping with the original. Fortunately they did a beautiful job of colouring it, and it was a real hit, and slowly the floodgates opened.

Katsuhiro Otomo's story is a postapocalyptic tale of mutant teens with psychic powers (so an unsurprising choice for the publishers of the X-Men, for instance), and it's a fine and exciting comic - I guess for me I disliked the fact that so much that followed was SF too, most of it nowhere near as good, so I'm maybe a bit too grudging in my respect and admiration for the series.

backwards: Rose of Versailles

forwards: What's Michael