Drawn and Quarterly will publish Shirato Sanpei’s The Legend of Kamuy, a historical action manga that was the first series to run in the legendary Garo magazine when it launched in 1964. The ten-volume series is set in feudal Japan and conveys a powerful message about social inequality along with its tale of an outcast boy who becomes a ninja. Manga scholar Ryan Holmberg is editing the series, which is being translated by Dr. Richard Rubinger. The first volume is slated for fall 2024.
“I’ve known for a long time that Shirato Sanpei’s The Legend of Kamuy was the last great comics epic that hadn’t been published in English,” Executive Editor Tom Devlin told ICv2. “I had enquired a couple of times after it and got nowhere. Like so many other things, one day someone, in this case Kenny Okayama, approached me asking if we were interested and here we are. We’re going to try to publish these as quickly as we can. It’s gonna be a blast!”
Sanpei’s original series, titled Kamui-Den in Japanese, ran from 1964 to 1971 and has never been published in English before. The sequel, Kamui Gaiden, written by Sanpei with art by Tetsuji Okamoto, was one of the first manga to be published in English. VIZ Media and Eclipse Comics released it as a 37-issue series, titled The Legend of Kamui, in 1987, and VIZ later re-released it as a trade; it was adapted into an anime in 2009 (see “Funimation Adds ‘Kamui Gaiden’
Source: ICv2
