MISC. MANGA, *Devilman

Shin Devilman was an early 80s spinoff of the original 70s Devilman manga by Go Nagai and was one of the first pieces of printed material from the franchise that got an English release. Glenn Danzig of The Misfits started his own comic book company specializing in adult titles, one of which was this manga relabeled as just Devilman which confused people when it was released in the mid-90s that confused it with the storyline established in the OVA series from Manga Entertainment. Shin Devilman was a self-contained story that only tangentially connects the with original manga. The plan was to release it as separate comics book issues and then in a collected edition later on, but only three issues actually got released it with Nagai being displeased on how the coloring of it was handled with a shaky translation.

Taking place sometime after Akira had already bonded with the demon Amon to become Devilman, but his friend Ryo secretly being Satan the whole time has yet to be revealed. Akira visits Ryo's mansion when they both conveniently fall into a time warp that the spend the rest of the series in, making Devilman into a remake of Quantum Leap. They're first stop is none other than Adolf Hitler when he was a young artist and the devilish duo cause the future-genocider from making his first being commission and swears vengeance on all Jewish people. Akira and Ryo then travel to a time when Joan of Arc is under trial by the lords of Hell for causing the Hundred's Year War, but Devilman acts as the ultimate defense lawyer and calls the demonic court on their double-standard dung. The last issue has Devilman stopping a demon disguised as an angel who is handing out shotguns to people several centuries before they logically should have existed in the first place. Apparently, Hell can just rev up their own Tardis and use time travel to screw up human history even further than it already was.

Danzig's attempt to bring early mature manga to American readers in the 90s was a noble effort as Danzig himself was a huge fan of Devilman, so much so that he created his own female counterpart in a series titled Satanika that was slated to have its own genuine anime along with a fully produced trailer by a professional Japanese studio. Go Nagai was seriously not impressed with how Verotik handled his work causing the American Devilman comic book series getting cut short. Nagai's artwork is still impactful and highlights the maturity missing from most other manga getting an English release at the time. The idea of taking a horror-based superhero and having them go travel through time and causing the events that they tried to prevent is an original idea, but it just doesn't work well here for someone not familiar with the previous versions of Devilman. It would be like introducing Godzilla for the first time as being a Time Lord instead of a mutated dinosaur. The 3-issue run has been long out of print, even though its is still available directly through the Veroitk website. If you want to see how to do a lousy job of given a coveted manga series an English release than Danzig's Devilman should help your masochistic machinations.