Viz Launches Signature Manga Line

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on Dec. 13, 2005 Sign up now!

By Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 12/13/2005

Hoping to appeal to readers looking for more than schoolgirl crushes and giant robots, Viz Media is launching Viz Signature, a new imprint that will release a line of classic manga titles targeted to appeal to more sophisticated male and female readers.

The Signature imprint launches in February with two paperback titles: Naoki Urasawa's Monster and Golgo 13 by Takao Saito. Monster , a runaway hit in Japan, where over 20 million copies of the series have been sold, is a medical crime thriller that tells the story of a doctor who saves the life of a small boy instead of a prominent politician, and the unraveling of his life thereafter. Golgo 13, the 1970s cult series about a hitman of few words and fewer emotions, will be most familiar to American audiences through the animated film of the same name.

This will be the first time the Golgo 13 manga will be translated for English readers. By summer, Viz Media plans to feature five to six titles in its Signature imprint.

"This line will reach a more sophisticated audience in the U.S.," says Viz Media publicity director Evelyn Dubocq. "The feel of the books is more grown up, more refined. The content is significantly more artistic."

Dubocq uses the terms "classic" and "literary" to describe the forthcoming books, which will also include the rerelease of Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond and Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix. Phoenix, which manga expert Frederik Schodt has called Tezuka's most "intellectually challenging experiment," explores Buddhist themes of enlightenment as well as the cyclical nature of life and death. Inoue's Vagabond, based on the prose novel Musahi by Eiji Yoshikawa, is a graphic and fictionalized account of Miyamoto Musashi, one of the most important swordsmen in the history of Japan.