positronic

October 10, 2011 6:21 am Let's see... Red Star is a DC character, so then it must be the Red Guardian (originally the ex-husband of the Black Widow, and Soviet Russia's version of Captain America). There's more than one?

October 10, 2011 6:16 am You're too late. You obviously missed the CAPTAIN AMERICA CORPS miniseries. OK, it's more of a time-travelling Green Lantern Corps-type thing, rather than a Batman-inspired corporation, but at least they share 4 letters in common.

August 14, 2011 7:32 am @KenOchalek  I don't work for DC, but I voted to kill him twice. There was nothing preventing anyone from voting as many times as they wanted, as long as they were willing to pay 50 cents per vote.

August 14, 2011 7:24 am Who knows, maybe he can actually write (better than he can draw, I hope), so I'm willing to give it a chance.

August 14, 2011 7:13 am @KenOchalek  You're right, I was focusing on the big "death" (yeah, right) issue, and forgot about the post-mortem. So it looks like they ARE following the previous model established with HULK/INCREDIBLE HULK. You know what they say, statistics lie. And so do comic book numbering systems. Anything to wring the extra bucks out of the hung-up-on-numbers audience. Whatever "issue number" is perceived as the most attention-getting will be the one they use. Now they can add "have our cake and eat it too" to the repetoire.

August 13, 2011 12:57 pm Duh. Do the math, kids. 587 (last "old numbering" iisue of FANTASTIC FOUR) plus 12 (issues of FF) equals 599. And the next issue is,,, FANTASTIC FOUR #600.

Did anyone NOT see this coming when they renumbered the series last year??? On the other hand, they already pulled that "one old title beomes a new title, then becomes TWO titles on the anniversary" with HULK/INCREDIBLE HULK. And no doubt CAPTAIN AMERICA (and possibly DAREDEVIL) will pull the same trick of "merged numbering but continuing" in the future. Although since they both recently had big numbers it's a long way off.

June 10, 2011 1:47 am Interesting article, Molly, but I think you should have defined your ground rules for inclusion, and also added notes to each entry to tell folks who published it or where to find it (you can't assume everyone can read Japanese and/or has access to a Japanese bookstore).

That said, I had made myself a similar list over a year ago.  My ground rules were that the manga had to be translated into English and published in the USA within the last 25 years. Here's the list I came up with:

1.    2001 Nights (Viz)
2.    Akira (Epic/Marvel, Dark Horse)
3.    AstroBoy [Tetsuwan Atomu] {by Osamu Tezuka} (Dark Horse)
4.    Barefoot Gen (New Society Publishers, Last Gasp)
5.    Bat-Manga! {by Jiro Kuwata} (Pantheon Books)
6.    Bio-Booster Armor Guyver (Viz)
7.    Cobra - Space Adventure (Eclipse/Viz)
8.    Crying Freeman (Viz, Dark Horse)
9.    Cyborg 009 {by Shotaro Ishinomori} (TokyoPop)
10.    Fist of the North Star (Eclipse/Viz, Raijin)
11.    Ghost in the Shell (Dark Horse)
12.    Golgo 13 (Viz)
13.    Kikaider 02 {by Shotaro Ishinomori & Memu} (CMX)
14.    Lone Wolf & Cub (First Comics, Dark Horse)
15.    Mai the Psychic Girl (Eclipse/Viz)
16.    Midnight Eye [Goku] (Viz, ComicsONE)
17.    Planetes (TokyoPop)
18.    Sanctuary (Viz)
19.    Speed Racer [Mach Go-Go-Go] {by Tatsuo Yoshida} (NOW, Wildstorm, Digital Manga)
20.    Ultraman Classic: Battle of the Ultra Brothers (Viz)

Now, I'll grant you that list would be a lot tighter if I pared it down from 20 to 15 or 10, plus I created it as a "Favorite Classic Manga" list, rather than a "BEST Classic Manga" list. Also, the list is alphabetical, rather than ranked.

June 9, 2011 5:15 am Great article.  The question that isn't being asked here (and I think it should be), is how do we redirect (or multiply) those same consumer dollars back into the seed industry (comic books), or is it even possible?  To a large extent, the answer is probably no, but even a tiny percentage of that cake would mean a massive influx of cash into the publishing end for Marvel and DC.  There's got to be a way to use synergy and cross-promotion to help improve the comic industry.

June 9, 2011 4:13 am There were rumors for about a month before the news dropped, however, if I recall correctly.  I think Rich Johnson was theorizing this over on bleedingcool.com

June 9, 2011 4:10 am @el355 

Geoff Johns has been quoted in interviews for months, saying (I'm paraphrasing, here) "The first rule of FLASHPOINT is you don't talk about what comes after FLASHPOINT".

So yeah, it was definitely planned well ahead of time -- and amazingly, they did manage to keep it Top Secret until the first shipping week of FLASHPOINT miniseries.