Black Jack Hardcover Editions to Include Exclusive Manga

Vertical Inc. just gave readers a new reason to spend a little extra dough to buy the hardcover editions of the first three volumes of Black Jack by the Godfather of Manga, Osamu Tezuka. These limited edition hardcovers will include extra stories that won't be included in the softcover editions. Volume 1 will include a story entitled "The Two Janns" about Black Jack's attempts to separate a set of conjoined twins. Volumes 2 and 3 will also include extra stories.

Vertical's editions are designed to reproduce the deluxe editions of Black Jack that were released in Japan, which include stories in the order that Tezuka-sensei himself selected. In these deluxe editions, Tezuka opted to exclude a few stories for reasons unknown. Very recently, Tezuka Production announced that it would be re-publishing a few of these 'forbidden' stories for the first time since their original release. It's from this stash of stories that the extras for the hardcover edition were found.

According to Vertical's marketing guru Stephen Vrattos, "When Diamond approached us to do exclusive hardcovers of Volumes 1-3, we needed something to make the volumes worthy of being hardcover exclusives, i.e. unpublished material. So we asked Tezuka Productions if they'd allow us to translate and include these recently re-released stories one each for the hardcover volumes."

So far only three hardcover editions are planned, and they'll only be printed in limited quantities: 1,500 copies for Volume 1 and 1,200 copies for both Volumes 2 and 3. These limited edition hardcovers will only be available at specialty / comics shops with Diamond Comics Distributors accounts. The striking cover art by Vertical Art Director Peter Mendelsund also make these volumes, at $24.95 a pop, well worth pre-ordering from your local comics shop. Both hardcover and softcover editions of Black Jack will hit the shelves in September 23, 2008.

Meanwhile, you can check out preview chapters from Black Jack Volumes 1 and 2 at Vertical's website and see what's got so many Tezuka fans pumped up for this release.

Image credit: © Tezuka Productions