Next Up at Vertical: Tezuka's Ode to Kirihito
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on February 7, 2006 Sign up now!
by Kai-Ming Cha, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 2/7/2006
After completing the publication of Buddha, Japanese manga master Osamu Tezuka's eight-volume biographical masterpiece, in January, Vertical Inc., a small U.S.-based publisher of contemporary Japanese literary and genre fiction in English, will publish Tezuka's Ode to Kirihito in December 2006. "Most people are familiar with Tezuka as a children's writer because of Astro Boy and Kimba the Lion, says Anne Ishii, director of marketing and publicity at Vertical. "We have a bigger picture of Tezuka as an adult writer. He's done quite a bit of adult manga and we want to introduce this to American audiences."
Kirihito, pronounced Kirishto in Japanese, is the Japanese pronunciation of Christ. The book is an ode to humanity. In the story, a young doctor searches for the cure to a disease that turns its victims into dog-like animals. Humanity, reflected by the qualities of compassion and nonviolent philosophy, is contrasted with a sense of beastliness, which Tezuka portrays through animal violence and the eating of raw meat. "There's a very humanist message at the core of the book." Ishii says.
Originally published in Japan in 1970 as a three-volume work, Vertical's Ode to Kirihito will be a single-volume, 800-page edition. Kirihito will feature the same trim size as Tezuka's much-acclaimed Buddha biography, which is also published by Vertical. Ishii says in Kirihito, Tezuka addresses social issues such as racism, class differences and misogyny, just as he does in Buddha, but in a more modern context. Ishii also notes that Tezuka's drawing style in this story is different from Buddha and Astroboy—less comical and exaggerated.
In January Vertical released the final hardcover volume of Tezuka's Buddha, a mammoth undertaking for the small house. Ishii acknowledged that sometime around volume 4, the house feared it might not be able to complete the series' publication. "The payoff [in this kind of publishing] isn't immediate," says Ishii. Buddha has since gone on to sell on average about 8,500 copies for each volume and Vol. 1, Ishii says, has sold more than 20,000 copies. Remember, she says, Vol. 8 has just hit the stores and vol. 7, released in December, had to be recalled because of printer error.
The company was ambitious in its hardcover packaging of Buddha, using star book designer Chip Kidd (who is also designing the forthcoming paperback edition) and setting a price point of $25. "Format was a big issue." Ishii says, explaining that the book deserved to be published in hardcover. Buddha has gone on to win the Eisner Award for Best Foreign Work two years in a row. Vertical will also begin releasing the series in paperback in the spring for $15. In May Vertical will release the first volume of the paperback edition of Buddha, Kapilavastu. And in July it will release Volume 2, The Four Encounters.
Ishii says that Vertical would like to continue to bring more of Tezuka's work to the U.S. but that it depends on how well Kirihito does and whether Vertical can get the rights from Tezuka Productions in Japan. Ishii says that while Vertical is interested in publishing other manga, the fast-growing U.S. manga market has made licensing Japanese manga "incredibly competitive."
Meanwhile, Vertical has plans to publish Japanese horror master Koji Suzuki's first novel, Paradise. Suzuki is considered a pioneer of Japanese horror writing and he is best known for Ring, his novel that became a movie that became a manga (published here by Dark Horse), also published in English by Vertical. Suzuki's Birthday, a trilogy of short stories based on the main story lines of his Ring series, is also in the works. Vertical will also release The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi, a sci-fi thriller that Ishii describes as Battle Royale (a Japanese stranded-on-an-island thriller) meets Lost, its American counterpart.
