Dark Horse Comics announced the November release of a new manga series from Kenichi Sonoda, the creator of Gunsmith Cats (also published by Dark Horse).  From Gallforce to Bubblegum Crisis to Gunsmith Cats Sonoda has displayed a deliberate penchant for both girls and guns.  Now Dark Horse is publishing the English version of Sonoda's latest work, Cannon God Exaxxion, which adds big robots to the explosive mixture of babes and ballistics.  The first issue in an eight-issue series, which reprints the first volume of the Japanese Exaxxion collection, is set for a November debut.  Exaxxion is a bullet-paced science fiction romp that should find plenty of eager Stateside readers.

 

The key to the success of Cannon God Exaxxion is the series' basic premise.  Supposedly beneficent aliens have visited Earth and shared portions of their advanced technology.  After ten years of living here peacefully (and building a giant space elevator to facilitate shipments from outer space), the aliens' true purpose is revealed as they destroy the Pentagon and make the Earth their 7th colony.  Only one eccentric inventor, who outfits his high school age grandson in an indestructible body suit, can keep the Earth from being totally subjected.  Sonoda moves this narrative along at light speed and fills his panels with dynamic battle sequences and quirky characters.  The strangest of all the characters is Houichi, the grandfather/inventor, who (like Sonoda himself perhaps) has a real thing for busty women.  He has created a bevy of well-endowed androids and assigns one of them, Isaka, to help his grandson.

 

Just as in Gunsmith Cats, Sonoda provides readers of Exaxxion with plenty of what the Japanese call 'fan service' -- sexy revealing shots of female characters.  Like Gunsmith Cats, Cannon God Exaxxion is hardly recommended reading for feminists, though particularly with the androids the 'fan service' is so obvious and humorous that the artist is both parodying the convention and indulging in it at the same time.

 

So far Sonoda has published three volumes of Cannon God Exaxxion in Japan, which means that Dark Horse will have enough material for at least two more eight-issue series.  Dark Horse is publishing the first volume in eight monthly comic installments, which the publisher will undoubtedly collect into a trade paperback collection, but Dark Horse's next manga series to debut in the U.S., Tezuka's  Astro Boy will be published as a series of 23 two-hundred page trade paperbacks starting next March (see 'Dark Horse to Publish Astro Boy').