I've been procrastinating this post for about two weeks straight, despite having these volumes (in excellent condition and delicious print production) atop my desk staring me down. A variety of factors combine to make this sprawling, widely-adapted, long-running and beloved (in Japan) manga weirdly difficult to write about for me.
It basically comes down to two factors: I was never a huge Golgo 13 fan back in my formative years and manga-reading baptism in the mid-90s - although revisiting now immediately reveals their brilliance and storytelling muscle - and (more importantly), other writers like Jason Thompson and Ryan Holmberg have painstakingly and thoroughly covered the various pitstops and pitfalls in bringing this character and manga to English audiences between 1986-2012.
Before going any further reading my short dispatch, I strongly suggest you read Jason Thompson's fantastic column on Golgo 13 here - as part of his extensive House of 1000 Manga series for ANN.
Jason is an old friend of mine from when Same Hat first began, and an extremely influential manga editor through his work at Viz (and on the magazine Pulp). In that 2012 column, Jason covers everything I would have written and researched, including the multiple starts and attempts to bring Duke Togo to English audiences. Jason also shares first-hand experiences and anecdotes working with editor Carl Gustav Horn on the series. I will quote a few more times from that piece, but please simply go read it now!
It basically comes down to two factors: I was never a huge Golgo 13 fan back in my formative years and manga-reading baptism in the mid-90s - although revisiting now immediately reveals their brilliance and storytelling muscle - and (more importantly), other writers like Jason Thompson and Ryan Holmberg have painstakingly and thoroughly covered the various pitstops and pitfalls in bringing this character and manga to English audiences between 1986-2012.
Before going any further reading my short dispatch, I strongly suggest you read Jason Thompson's fantastic column on Golgo 13 here - as part of his extensive House of 1000 Manga series for ANN.
Jason is an old friend of mine from when Same Hat first began, and an extremely influential manga editor through his work at Viz (and on the magazine Pulp). In that 2012 column, Jason covers everything I would have written and researched, including the multiple starts and attempts to bring Duke Togo to English audiences. Jason also shares first-hand experiences and anecdotes working with editor Carl Gustav Horn on the series. I will quote a few more times from that piece, but please simply go read it now!
For more on Takao Saito himself, I strongly recommend Ryan Holmberg's 2011 essay "Saitō Takao and the “Gekiga Factory” over on TCJ. Ryan details Takao Saito's place in the history of gekiga and his relationship with Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Osamu Tezuka and Kazuo Koike and others, focused on "Saito Pro" and how Takao Saito pioneered his own production model for serial manga in and around those explosively creative years of 1966-1970.
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Here are the four paperbacks of the Golgo 13 Graphic Novel Series, published in 1986, 1987, and 1988. These editions are published in English, and feature a lot of lush print production. Each features a slipcover with an inside flap underlining just how popular Golgo 13 is in Japan ("Over 60 Million Copies in Print!!"). The books feature color opening sections of a story, with striking spot reds highlighting: spilled blood, a Nazi swastika, a red sunset over an African plain, and Duke Togo's impeccable 70s flared shirt collar.
The volumes feature that very specific mid-80s English typeface prevelant in Japanese works published in English in Japan; I have an immediate nostalgic fondness for this typeface, which Fred Schodt described to me over text recently as "weird kerning, no proportional spacing - classic stuff!" I use this exact typeface in some of my early zines, after encountering it in Japan as an exchange student in the late 90s. The volumes also include some incredibly lush and fantastic hand-lettering for SFX throughout.
As Jason describes in his essay, these editions are attributed to "Lead Publishing" in Nakano, Tokyo - the name of one arm of Saito Production Co. focused on proselytizing the good word of our international assassin. There are no translators or staff listed in the books, but a mini bio of Takao Saito graces the inside back cover.
As Jason outlined:
Here are the four paperbacks of the Golgo 13 Graphic Novel Series, published in 1986, 1987, and 1988. These editions are published in English, and feature a lot of lush print production. Each features a slipcover with an inside flap underlining just how popular Golgo 13 is in Japan ("Over 60 Million Copies in Print!!"). The books feature color opening sections of a story, with striking spot reds highlighting: spilled blood, a Nazi swastika, a red sunset over an African plain, and Duke Togo's impeccable 70s flared shirt collar.
The volumes feature that very specific mid-80s English typeface prevelant in Japanese works published in English in Japan; I have an immediate nostalgic fondness for this typeface, which Fred Schodt described to me over text recently as "weird kerning, no proportional spacing - classic stuff!" I use this exact typeface in some of my early zines, after encountering it in Japan as an exchange student in the late 90s. The volumes also include some incredibly lush and fantastic hand-lettering for SFX throughout.
As Jason describes in his essay, these editions are attributed to "Lead Publishing" in Nakano, Tokyo - the name of one arm of Saito Production Co. focused on proselytizing the good word of our international assassin. There are no translators or staff listed in the books, but a mini bio of Takao Saito graces the inside back cover.
As Jason outlined:
The books are nearly exactly the eventual Viz Signature format, and around 150 pages per book - including two multi-chapter stories each. One other detail I adore, the first volume "Into The Wolves' Lair" starts with a beautiful pull-out poster at the start of the book, a fictional dossier / interpol bulletin on our main character.
The stories included are absolute bangers, giving a great vantage point of what Duke Togo's adventures entail - and the consistently stunning and cinematic layouts of Takao Saito. We've got Duke fighting the "4th Reich" in a Boys From Brazil caper where he hunts down Hitler's successors across Germany, Argentina, and Brazil; infiltrating and killing poachers hunting elephants and lions in Sub-Saharan Africa; overthrowing S. American drug cartels, executing Apartheid flunkies, and helping a Mujahideen group interrupt a corrupt Russian arms deal.
Truly wild stuff, like if Tezuka's Black Jack was a murderous Day of the Jackal style Forrest Gump, appearing silently on the periphery of every 20th century conflict to solve diplomacy with bullets to the head. (Jason talks additionally about stories published by Viz in the 2010 releases where Duke kills Princess Di, inteferes in the Gore v. Bush election, and fights for (and against) a free Palestine at various times.
Here are photographs from the aforementioned two standalone Golgo 13 floppies, published a few years later in 1990 in conjunction with the Vic Tokai game releases. There is an air of "pick me" in these floppies, of grasping for the correct format that will finally entice American readers. The 1st issue is printed on thin paper with a rough, blurry mimeograph look, while the 2nd issue is a FULL COLOR book (and the cover price rises from $1.00 to $1.50 from The Impossible Hit to Hopper the Border, just . You get a sense of this floppy as Lead Publishing's hail mary pass, sandwiching a Golgo 13 chapter between Game Boy and Nintendo ads (Clash at Demonhead is advertised in the back of the issue).
Here are photographs from the aforementioned two standalone Golgo 13 floppies, published a few years later in 1990 in conjunction with the Vic Tokai game releases. There is an air of "pick me" in these floppies, of grasping for the correct format that will finally entice American readers. The 1st issue is printed on thin paper with a rough, blurry mimeograph look, while the 2nd issue is a FULL COLOR book (and the cover price rises from $1.00 to $1.50 from The Impossible Hit to Hopper the Border, just . You get a sense of this floppy as Lead Publishing's hail mary pass, sandwiching a Golgo 13 chapter between Game Boy and Nintendo ads (Clash at Demonhead is advertised in the back of the issue).
At the close here, I must also share the anecdote that open's Ryan Holmberg's essay, a story transmitted as part of an essay by critic Osabe Hideo. This story certainly feeding into Takao Saito's own self-mythologizing, but shares that another Takao Saito's historical gekiga "Muyōnosuke" was nearly the first series translated into English by an American comics publisher:
Hope everyone is enjoying these photos and recaps. Please read Jason and Holmberg's linked pieces above if you want to learn more about Takao Saito and Golgo 13. I'll have a new Early Manga Days for you next week!
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