Along with the great Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori was one of the founding fathers of Japanese manga.  Ishinomori created the Kamen Rider (Masked Rider in the U.S.) as well as Cyborg 009 and literally hundreds of other manga and anime series including The Skull Man, a dark anti-hero who lives for revenge.  Created in the seventies, the Skull Man was a new type of manga character.  Willing to sacrifice the lives of the innocent in his dark quest for retribution, he is an anti-hero with a dark, but magnetic presence.  Orphaned as a young boy, The Skull Man lives in a shadowy world of homicidal mutants and seductive assassins, much like his American superhero-noir counterparts Batman and Spawn.  Even retailers who don't normally carry manga titles should give Skull Man a try, and if they like it, recommend it to their more adventurous superhero comic collectors.

 

Tokyopop is translating and publishing the modern revival of Skull Man, which is written and drawn by Kazuhiko Shimamoto, who was handpicked by the dying Ishinomori to revive the series.  Tokyopop will be releasing The Skull Man in comic book form starting this November, but next year, after the publication of the first collected volume, the series will switch exclusively to the graphic novel, or more properly, trade paperback collection format.  Tokyopop has been the most aggressive of U.S. publishers in moving toward the Japanese publishing model (see 'Tokyopop Plans Major Manga Explosion').  Many of the new Tokyopop shojo titles will appear serially in Tokyopop's  Smile magazine anthology, and then in collected trade paperback editions, which precisely mirrors the way in which most comics are published in Japan.