New old Naoki Urasawa manga is on its way!

Viz announced a lot of new licenses this week and only one really stood out to me.  Come December, they’ll release the first volume of “Master Keaton,” an Urasawa work that pre-dates “Monster” and “20th Century Boys.”  It’s about the adventures of one Taichi Hiraga-Keaton, an archaeologist who also works as a part-time insurance investigator.  The man is also a former member of Britain’s Special Air Services (SAS) and any fan of the collected works of Garth Ennis can tell you that they are not a group to be trifled with.  With his background and particular skill set, Keaton travels the world uncovering hidden truths and making sure justice is recognized.

The anime version of this did get a release out here, and I only made it through the first two and a half discs before concluding that it was a little dry for my tastes.  Still, I’m willing to give the manga a shot because more often than not the source material winds up being better in these adaptations.  More interesting is the fact that this will be first major Urasawa release out here that he didn’t have a hand in writing.  “Pineapple Army” doesn’t count as a “major” release because we only got one volume of it.  I’m looking forward to seeing how this measures up to his later work, though it’s worth noting that he did return briefly to “Keaton” with his “20th Century Boys” co-writer Takashi Nagasaki.  Viz didn’t say whether or not we’d be getting “Master Keaton Reborn” with this twelve-volume deluxe-edition release of the original manga, but it would seem silly not to do so here.

This will go a long way towards filling that “20th Century Boys”-shaped hole in my reading list, and Viz is no doubt hoping that all of the fans of that series will go out and buy a copy too.  If it turns out that there is enough of a fanbase for Urasawa’s work, then we could get lucky and see a release of “Yawara!  A Fashionable Judo Girl,” though that might be too much to hope for.  (I’d certainly go for it!)  A bigger question is why hasn’t anyone licensed his and Nagasaki’s current series “Billy Bat” yet?   The premise sounds like the “Mr. Sparkle” episode of “The Simpsons” played as a thriller, which sounds bizarre enough to work.  Viz is apparently out of the running because this is published by Kodansha — the DC to their Marvel in Japan — yet that doesn’t explain why Kodansha’s American publishing arm hasn’t announced it, or that another publisher like Vertical hasn’t picked it up.  It could be that Urasawa is being particular about it.  After all, he nixed Viz’s plans to publish “20th Century Boys” concurrently with “Monster” because he wanted people to see the evolution of his art between the two titles.  Whatever the reason is the only upside is that the longer it takes, the less of a wait we’ll have between volumes when it does arrive.

As of right now, I’m just going to sit here and wait as patiently as I can for the first volume of “Master Keaton” to arrive.  That, and think on the fact that this one title really doesn’t do much to correct the “great Viz manga shrinkage of 2013.”  Come on people, I’ve got all this money that I was spending on your titles last year that’s going to wind up in the pockets of other publishers.  If you want it, you’re going to have to keep this up!