Skullman

By Shotaro Ishinomori

Comixology, 94 pp

Rating: 15 +

Shotaro Ishinomori's manga classic, Skullman, is available for the first time in the US thanks to the fine folks at Comixology! This single volume story tells the tale of a dark, masked avenger carrying out a war against a massive, secret organization that seemingly controls the world. Unlike his spiritual brothers in the Kamen Rider franchise, Skullman presents a rather grim, anti-heroic take on the concept.

This is something I've been wanting to read for a while now and there's something of an urban legend feel to it's creation. The story goes that Ishinomori was asked to create a new hero for a kids show Toei was putting together. He presented them with this, Skullman, a dark, grim and possibly insane man waging a war against a secret organization. Reportedly the executives rejected it as being too violent and scary, so Ishinomori went home and after a few days he tweaked the concept and thus was born Kamen Rider. Indeed it's hard to look at Skullman and not see quite a bit of Kamen Rider present in it. But make no mistake, the executives were right on this account; Skullman is surprisingly dark and he's definitely not a knight in shining armor, he's not even a knight in slightly tarnished armor, he's a driven man who seems to take sadistic glee in the lives he takes and at one point even claims that genocide is an acceptable means to his ultimate end.

Shotaro Ishinomori's artwork is lovely and effective. His action scenes are easy to follow but exciting and he does a fantastic job at conveying motion, speed and energy throughout the book. At times the cartoony style does seem to clash with the grim nature of the story and there are a few moments which lose a little impact because of it. In addition there's another small issue with Skullman when it comes to visuals, namely… Skullman himself. His costume is fine, the all black clothing and q jacket that is vaguely evocative of some kind of military dress suit and the cape all work wonderfully together. It's the helmet that really threw me a loop though. Maybe I've been spoiled by the recent Skullman anime series, but Skullman's helmet in this just doesn't scream scary or skull to me. It's a large, white helmet which covers most of his face, leaving his mouth and jaw exposed, with two giant red eyes. It's not terribly skull-like and actually made me think of Riderman rather than.. a scary, skull like monstrosity. Still, despite this and the odd cartoony style I did love the book and it has some absolutely gorgeous moments. The opening with the giant bat in particular is visually impressive and memorable.

I'm incredibly glad that this is finally available in the US and I'm very thankful for both Ishinomori Productions and Comixology for getting it out to us, along with several other series of his that I've been interested in. While I did have some minor issues with the visuals as I mentioned above, and the ending feels a bit sudden and anti-climatic, I did enjoy reading this and I can see myself going back to it again and again in the future as well.

Skullman is available now from Comixology.