Weekly Shonen Jump

The weekend is here! Take a look back at what’s happened in the past seven days. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

This past Monday, August 22nd, saw the end of one of the Big Three shonen manga of the 2000s (alongside One Piece and Naruto), and what was at one time one of the most popular shonen titles in the world. Tite Kubo's Bleach published its 686th and final chapter, "Death and Strawberry," in the latest issue of Viz's Weekly Shonen Jump. In anime and manga circles the reaction has been celebratory, but also somewhat muted. Given that Bleach ran for over a decade, and spawned a highly successful anime, four feature films and many stage musicals, and is still a merchandising and cosplay bonanza, why is that? The truth is, to most Western fans at least, Bleach overstayed its welcome.

Since 2012, Viz Media has fought the omnipresence of poorly translated bootleg manga by offering weekly manga chapters published simultaneously with Japan in the digital Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. Now Viz has gone one step further in that cause by unveiling a new section of Weekly Shonen Jump's website with free official translations of popular and new series posted daily.

Viz Media has announced a North American release of Blanc et Noir: Takeshi Obata Illustrations, a limited edition hardcover art book collecting the work of popular manga artist Takeshi Obata. The book, limited to 10,000 copies, will be released in a silver-stamped oversized slipcase hardcover under Viz's Art of Shonen Jump imprint.

What if Harry Potter was a knight and also kinda dumb? That’s the logline for Yuki Tabata’s Black Clover, an action romp that doubles down on shonen (boys’) tropes to create a fun adventure that sucks you in no matter how familiar it seems.

Takeshi Obata, the acclaimed manga artist behind Death Note and All You Need it Kill, has been working on School Judgment: Gakkyu Hotei with writer Nobuaki Enoki (Rikkuou) in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, and on February 2nd, Viz Media is launching it as a new book series under the Shonen Jump imprint. The book is set in an elementary school in which all problems are settled in a court, featuring the school's own students who happen to be skilled lawyers.

It's no exaggeration to say that Shonen Jump is one of the cornerstones of manga. Since it started in 1968, the weekly anthology has given rise to some of the biggest titles in manga history, including One Piece, Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, and more -- and, judging by the covers, an awful lot of stories about baseball. And I know that, because I just spent a good amount of time browsing an incredible Flickr gallery from Sao Paolo, Brazil's Kami Sama Explorer Museum, where they've collected a massive amount of covers from Shonen Jump's 46-year history, going from the first issue in July of 1968 all the way up to 2009. It's fantastic to see them lined up next to each other, because you can see the evolution of some of the most dominant styles in manga as you browse through, but there are also a lot of really great individual covers. So before you head over and take a look at the full gallery, check out 20 of my favorites below!

Legendary Dragonball writer/artist Akira Toriyama will launch a brand-new manga series in the July 13 issue of Weekly Shonen Jump to coincide with the magazine's 45th anniversary. It's his first comics work since 2010's one-shot Kintoki. The magazine is promoting the new series, called Ginga Patrol Jako, with the line, "The 'legend' of hope for the entire world returns here!!" Pretty vague. But Shonen Jump has released some preview cover art, which you can check out after the jump!

Video: The party rises (on) in MakeEmLaugh's Bane's World. Manga: New images of the full-color Dragon Ball Z manga are now online, which you can check out up close in the digital edition of Weekly Shonen Jump. Movies: Guys, you probably shouldn't join COBRA...

Yesterday saw the launch of Weekly Shonen Jump, the latest incarnation of Viz Media's anthology collecting material from the Japanese title of the same name. The reason for the relaunch is a good one, though: Now the digital magazine will include material released on the same day in the original Japanese version...