The anime is upon us!

I have to say upfront, I've never been a big fan of Anime. I never liked the too-cutesy style and the apparently mandatory inclusion of at least one character that looked so badly drawn in comparison to the others, you'd think the animators did it as a joke and nobody noticed.

Aside from all that, there's metric tons of it out there, and I just don't have the time, room, or inclination to start sorting my way through it.

Having said this--and likely incurred the wrath of Anime fans worldwide--I have to say I'm impressed with "Battle of the Planets", the 12 issue series done a few years back by Image and Top Cow. Alex Ross did the covers, which never hurts. The interior pages were drawn by Wilson Tortosa. I've put up a scan of the original art from issue 1, page 08, along with the layout sketch done by Tortosa.

The story is based partly on the animated series of the same name aired in the United States, which in turn is based on the original series from Japan, titled "Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman" which loosely translated to "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman", and is apparently known by the shorthand title, "Gatchaman".

I had to learn all this as I was presented with the aforementioned Wilson Tortosa pages to put up for sale on our companion site, www.artandcomicsstore.com

I hate to just throw something up there with no information whatsoever, so I try to research enough to give a reasonable description of what people are looking at. I was given access to the series by a friend so I could read it and accurately describe the various characters on each page.

I got to know who they were well enough to no longer need the cheat sheet I'd written to keep track. I had enough of an idea of what was going on so I could follow the story. In doing the research, I also learned it was slated to be an open-ended series, but low sales forced it's cancellation after issue 12.

Despite that it ended on a cliffhanger--of which I think longtime fans know the ultimate resolution--I find I liked it. So if you get a chance, take a look at it. I also found that the artwork style was pleasing to me, which, given my normal opinion of such works, is saying a lot.

The artwork displayed above in this post is available for sale (as of this writing) at the
Art and Comics online store.

Mike