One of the very first manga series to be regularly published in the US, from the time when they were still published like any other comic.
Manga had been published in the US before, most noticeably an abridged version of Barefoot Gen, but these had been one-offs. It was only after Viz Comics was founded in 1986 that the first regular series got published. At that time Viz was little more than a middleman, getting startup capital from and licensing titles through Japanese publishing giant Shogakukan. Therefore Eclipse was taken on board as the actual publisher, who at the time had a decade worth of experience with the direct market. Area 88 was one of the four launch titles, together with Legend of Kamui, Mai the Psychic Girl and Xenon. All of these were published as regular US comic books, artwork flipped so it reads left to right.
The strategy here was the same as other companies were doing with licensing anime at roughly the same time. Two of the four titles were science fiction (Mai the Psychic Girl and Xenon), while Legend of Kamui offered samurai action of a kind American audiences were already familiar with through B-movies. Area 88 however was a bit of an outlier, an adventure story about a Japanese airline pilot who, betrayed by his friends, is forced to become a mercenary pilot in the air force of a small, fictional Middle Eastern country in the grip of a civil war.
Here in Europe the jet fighter pilot strip is a well established genre. Typically starring a handsome airforce pilot, with optional comedic sidekicks, the emphasis is on ‘realistic’ adventures against a backdrop of lovingly rendered military hardware. The venerable Buck Danny is the best known example, starring an US Airforce/Navy pilot, but there’s also Tanguy et Laverdure serving in the French airforce and Dan Cooper whose unfortunate hero serves Canada. Area 88 fits in well with these comics, Shintani Kaoru too drawing his aircraft with loving care even as his characters are more cartoony. Not that you can tell from this issue as all action takes place in the sky, with everbody wearing helmets and oxygen masks.
In American comics I don’t think there was ever a similar series published; there were stories about fighter pilots in DC’s war comics, yes, but no series about a jef fighter pilot I can remember. So it’s a bit odd that Viz would choose Area 88 as one of its launch titles. Nevertheless it was successful enough, the first two issues getting a second printing and lasting for 36 issues in total. It was only because Viz was dissatisfied with Eclipse’s handling of their titles that these were cancelled. From what I can tell all of them did well enough and Mai the Psychic Girl especially became famous enough that for years there were plans to make a Hollywood movie out of it.
Of all these early manga, this issue is the only one I ever saw and bought myself. Either I wasn’t really looking for them at the time or they never made their way down to the Netherlands. The story here is simple, just one big aerial battle between the good guy mercenaries flying Mirages or Kfirs (as their planes have the little canard) and the bad guys flying Mig-23s. There’s nothing in here that makes you root for one set of mercs over the other, but the battle is well drawn and the planes look like their real life counterparts. What I liked is that this had a three page article on shoujo manga (or ‘women’s comics’ as it’s called here) by Heidi MacDonald which namechecks Urusai Yatsura and Rose of Versailles, among others.
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