One of the first manga to be published in North America, Lone Wolf and Cub was originally released in the 1980s by First Comics as 48-page perfect-bound comics. Less than a third of the series had been completed by the time First Comics went out of business in 1991. Dark Horse began publishing the series as small-format tankoubon in 2000, with a new translation and covers by Frank Miller, and by April 2001 the first volume had sold over 27,000 copies (see “Dark Horse Retro Manga Boffo”). The series won a 2001 Eisner for Best Edition of Foreign Material. In 2013 Dark Horse began re-releasing the series in paperback omnibus format.
The first volume of Dark Horse’s deluxe hardcover edition of Berserk was the top selling manga of 2024, and the second and third volumes were on the year’s Top 20 best-seller list as well (see “Full Year Circana BookScan”). The success of that series has led to more deluxe editions from Dark Horse and other manga publishers (see “Manga Week: The Boom in Deluxe Editions”).
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