#GOLGO 13 MANGA DOWNLOAD SERIES#

Carl now works for Dark Horse, but continues to edit Golgo 13 from afar, because he's the only one who can do this manga justice.Įach volume of the Viz Golgo 13 comprises two Golgo stories, one recent, one 'classic.' Since the stories are self-contained, and the art style changes remarkably little over the course of the series (possibly because so much of it is drawn by assistants trained in the now-famous Golgo house style), you can pick up any volume of Golgo 13 and dive right in. As the then-receptionist at Viz, I only got to witness bits and pieces of the diplomatic process, but at one point it involved Carl receiving the gift of a one-of-a-kind pair of English-language Golgo 13 underpants. Legendary editor Carl Horn spent years planning his dream Golgo and convincing the Japanese licensors to let Viz turn that dream into reality.

The current Viz edition of Golgo 13 is a labor of love. Hello, Manga Pope John Paul II! (And hello, evil doppelganger of Manga Pope John Paul II! Boy, are you in for it!) Hello, Manga Bill Clinton and his Manga Cabinet! Real-life political figures make cameos in Golgo's crudely-drawn world. Golgo 13 has crossed the newly-destroyed Berlin Wall, destroyed Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and shot out a hanging chad. One of the truly awesome aspects of the series is that it works current events into its stories of international espionage. It is all so '70s it makes you want to put on a rayon suit and a wide tie and sucker-punch Walter Barnes.Īh, but Golgo 13 isn't strictly a product of the '70s. His adventures are self-contained stories set in a midnight-movie world of cold brutality and beefy, hatchet-faced tough guys. But where Lupin III (another 1970s manga superstar) is like the Bond of the movies, witty and lusty and fun, Golgo is the Bond of Ian Fleming's novels: 'there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold.' He's tough, he's ruthless, and he barely speaks.

He's kind of like James Bond working on the opposite side of the law. Golgo 13, also known as Duke Togo (Why? Who knows?), is a mysterious, stoic, superhumanly gifted assassin for hire. (It's still dwarfed by the 154-volume comedy This Is the Police Box in Front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward, which has only been around since 1976.but has run every single week of those 30 years in Weekly Shonen Jump.) Nerdy Americans of my generation know Golgo primarily as the hero of one of the more frustratingly tedious 8-bit NES games. It's one of the longest-running manga in Japan, still chugging along since 1969 and currently 142 volumes in length. I totally love that Viz is publishing Golgo 13. A lot of crazy manga got published in the '70s, and even the hits are crude and idiosyncratic. It was such a fun period for manga: the industry had gotten big enough to attract gifted artists and works of all styles, genres, and descriptions, but it hadn't yet become the corporate megalith it is today, churning out mass-produced pop hits and allowing genius to flourish only in the chinks of the machine. This may not be news to regular readers of the Overlooked Manga Festival, but I love all manga from the 1970s without reservation. This is your chance to own a piece of Narbonic and/or Foglio history!Īnd, as always, a new page of Smithson means a new Overlooked Manga Festival! In other news, Phil Foglio is selling a bunch of artwork on eBay, including his panel from the final Narbonic strip. I don't know if you caught last week's Chronicles of William Bazillion, but Andrew put up a little sample of the William Bazillion prequel minicomic that I wrote. Brian had to go eat a deep-fried turkey for Memorial Day.

Golgo 13 manga download