Comics Alternative

This month on their manga episode, Shea and Derek discuss two very different works. They begin with Hirohito Araki's JoJo Bizarre Adventure, which is now being reissued in new editions from VIZ Media. The title has been published in smaller paperback form for quite a while, but this year VIZ began collecting Araki's world-famous -- and still ongoing -- series in larger hardcover editions, beginning with the first two volumes in the series' first narrative arc, Phantom Blood. (The third volume will be released this August.) Shea points out that one the distinguishing features of these new collections is Araki's more contemporary artwork that can be found on the cover of the volumes. This is markedly different, he mentions, from Araki's original style from the mid- to late 1980s, when the series first came out in Japan. In fact, the guys discuss how JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is very much influenced by -- or at least participated in -- the kind of over-the-top, extreme action narrative that defined that decade. A