Eiichi Shimizu

If you're looking to get into Ultraman, Eiji Tsubaraya's long-running, world-famous tokusatsu franchise, now seems like a pretty good time. There's Ultraman X, of course, which just became the first ever toku series to be broadcast simultaneously worldwide via Crunchyroll, but for those of us who prefer our superheroes on the printed page rather than live action, there's something else, too: A new manga from Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi. Billed in bold type right there on the cover as 'THE BEGINNING OF A NEW AGE', the first volume dropped digitally this week from Viz Media, and while there are parts that read like a pretty standards superhero reboot, it's well worth checking out --- if only so that you can get to the awesome ending.

  If you had to compare Tsuburaya's Ultraman to a Western superhero concept, the closest comparison would probably be... Captain Marvel or a much friendlier version of Alan Moore's Marvelman? Every incarnation of the longrunning Japanese tokusatsu and anime empire is different, but more often than not, the hero is the result of a nobel member of a kind of cosmic pantheon merging with a human host