Star*Reach 07 — #aComicaDay (59)

Star*Reach 07 is not important because of its gorgeous Barry Smith wraparound cover. Nor even because it has an early Dave Sim story. But because it contains the very first manga published in English.

A wraparound Barry Windsor Smith cover. On the front cover a man in a white toga and cloak, chest bare, wears a laurel wreath and holds a glowing orb in his left hand. His right hand is holding the left hand of the woman on the back cover, clad in a purple toga, chest also bare

In the mid-seventies the American comics industry was going through one of its periodical doldrums. The silver Age of superhero comics was over and they had become slightly stale and formulaic again. While there was some room for more experimental stories in the weirder parts of the Big Two, that room was limited. Sales were down too as the newsstands were slowly dying, as they had been for decades. Meanwhile, the underground comix revolution had petered out too, partially due to the crackdown on head shops and other alternative distribution points for them. Partially also because too many imitators just went for quick drugs jokes and t&A instead of anything interesting.

Enter Mike Friedrich. One of the first fans to become a comics professional, Friedrich had written for both Marvel and DC, but by 1974 was fed up of working for them. Instead, he set up his own magazine, Star*Reach, positioning it as inbetween the underground and the “over ground” of mainstream comics: ground level comics. Where artists would have creative freedom and own their stories. The first issue came out in my year of birth, 1974, the last in 1979 for a total of eighteen issues. In many ways it pointed the way for the direct market revolution of the early eighties and the work of publisher like Eclipse, first and Pacific Comics.

Most of the people published in Star*Reach were sort of Friedrich’s contemporaries from the mainstream. Young artists like Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Frank Brunner, Mike Vosburg, Jim Starlin and even Dick Giordano. Lee Marrs meanwhile represented the underground tradition. What you got as reader was not that different from what was on offer from the mainstream. It was all genre work, science fiction, horror and fantasy, just with more violence and nudity than you could get away with at Marvel or DC.

Art by Masaichi Mukaide for the Bushi story showing a samurai confronting a priest with a chopped off head

Issue 7 was published in 1977 and is typical. It starts off with the Dave Sim story about an astronaut meeting god, which is actually penciled by Fabio Gasbarri instead of Sim himself. There’s a Johnny Achziger scripted story about the Gods of Olympus with Joe Staton art, a Lee Marrs story like there was (almost) every issue, something by Jeff Bonivert and a Steve Englehart and Mike Vosburg thriller to round out the issue. And without fanfare, a short samurai story by Satoshi Hirota and Masaichi Mukaide, which may be the very first manga ever published in the US or even in English. Not that you would know that except for the names in the credits; the art and story are not dissimilar to the sort of thing Star*Reach published anyway.

There was a reason for this. Masaichi Mukaide was that rarest of breeds, a Japanese artist who was a fan of and inspired by American comics. Because republication of these in Japan was rare, he read them in English. Along the way he came across Star*Reach and decided to submit to it, striking up a mail correspondence with Mike Friedrich. Several other stories of his would be published in other issues as well. This also led to the first ever attempt to create an English language Manga magazine a few years later, called, erm, Manga, in which Friedrich and several other Star*Reach affiliated creators were involved as well. Mukaide was the editor of this, one of the first attempts to bring manga to an English speaking audience:

The stunning roster of authors makes the unique publication more impressive: Hiroshi Hirata, Yosuke Tamori, Yukinobu Hoshino, Katsuhiro Otomo, Keizo Miyanishi, Noboru Miyama, Yoji Fukuyama and Noriyoshi Orai (illustration). In addition, Hajime Sorayama was featured on its cover. The back cover was illustrated by Hiroshi Hirata. Chiki Oya was in charge of coloring the illustration indicated.
[…]
During the editing process, people who were introduced to Mukaide by Friedrich were highly involved. They included Lee Marrs, who debuted with an underground comic, Steven Grant, who later worked for Marvel and DC, and Larry Hama, who worked as an actor, musician, writer and artist.

As adapters, their duties were correcting parts unacceptable to American readers because they were too Japanese. For instance, take Keizo Miyanishi’s “MidSummer Night’s Dream,” which depicted the night Hikaru Genji met a mysterious woman. The original didn’t have much dialogue and narration, so Marrs added lots of it.

Manga is actually available at Mangadex if your morals are loose enough. Both Mukaide’s Star*Reach stories and it are ultimately just curiosities, early attempts at creating manga for an American audience, but no less interesting for this. An indicator of how much of a ‘prehistory’ there is to the official history of manga publishing in America.

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