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Exclusive: Titan Comics' Titan Manga Imprint Licenses Atom: The Beginning, Kamen Rider Kuuga Manga

01/25/2023: ANN has become aware the Kamen Rider Kuuga pages provided by Titan Comics in this article are not representative of the final product. The original article is below.

Titan Comics' new imprint Titan Manga confirmed with ANN on Thursday that it has licensed Osamu Tezuka, Tetsuro Kasahara, and Masami Yuuki's ATOM: The Beginning manga and Shōtarō Ishinomori, Toshiki Inoue, and Hitotsu Yokoshima's Kamen Rider Kuuga manga. As part of Titan Comics' partnership with Stonebot, the company will also release a new comic series based on the Kamen Rider Zero-One series that will debut in fall/winter 2022. Brandon Easton (Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy: Siege) is writing the comic. Titan Manga unveiled cover art and pages for the first two volumes of both manga.

Titan Manga will ship the first volume of ATOM: The Beginning on October 11 and the second volume on December 13. The company will publish the first volume of Kamen Rider Kuuga on November 8 and the second volume on January 10, 2023.

Titan Comics launched its new Titan Manga imprint on March 22 when it announced a release of a director's cut edition of Takashi Okazaki's 1999 Afro Samurai seinen manga on July 26.

Penguin Random House describes ATOM: The Beginning:

ATOM: The Beginning is an original manga based on the God of Manga Osamu Tezuka's world-famous series Astro Boy. It works both as a prequel to the original series, telling the stories of the developers of the artificial intelligence that would eventually give birth to the iconic Atom, and as a stand-alone sci-fi manga about the turbulent lives of two robotic engineering students and their latest revolutionary project: the unassuming yet insanely strong A106, or “Six.”

Tetsuro Kasahara launched ATOM: The Beginning in Hero's Inc.'s Monthly Hero's magazine in December 2014 as a prequel of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy manga. The manga moved to Hero's Inc.'s Comiplex website in 2020. Tezuka's son Makoto Tezuka handles the editorial supervision of the manga, and the series is in collaboration with Tezuka Productions. Masami Yuuki (Patlabor the Mobile Police, Birdy the Mighty creator) is credited with "concept works" for the series. Hero's Inc. published the manga's 16th volume on January 5. The manga is on hiatus and will enter its new "Tobio Arc" upon returning this fall.

The manga inspired a television anime adaptation that premiered in April 2017. Sentai Filmworks licensed the anime, and streamed the anime as it aired in Japan on Amazon's now-defunct Anime Strike channel. Sentai Filmworks released the anime on Blu-ray Disc in May 2018.

Penguin Random House describes Kamen Rider Kuuga:

Kamen Rider Kuuga is a manga adaptation of the famous Japanese TV drama series of the same name, centered around the first incarnation of the Kamen Rider hero for the Heisei Era (the beginning of the 21st century). This manga goes beyond the bounds of a normal adaptation and redefines its hero for modern audiences, expanding its universe and connecting it to other incarnations of the bug-eyed hero in a completely approachable way for new readers who haven't encountered a Kamen Rider story before. It's a perfect starting point for anyone who wants to know why Kamen Rider is so beloved by people around the world.

Artist Hitotsu Yokoshima launched the manga, the third one based on the live-action Kamen Rider Kuuga television series, in Hero's Inc.'s Monthly Hero's magazine in November 2014. Toshiki Inoue, one of the scriptwriters for the live-action series, writes the scripts for the manga, and producer Shinichiro Shirakura (Gekijōban Kamen Rider 555: Paradise Lost) plans the series.

The manga moved to the Comiplex website when Monthly Hero's ended publication in October 2020. The 19th compiled book volume in the series shipped in Japan on March 29.

The "Kamen Rider 50th Anniversary and Beyond" panel at the Comic-Con Special Edition event last November had announced that StoneBot Studios would be publishing the manga in English.

The Kamen Rider Kuuga television series aired from 2000 to 2001. The series was Toei's first new Kamen Rider series following the passing of creator Shōtarō Ishinomori, and it marked the beginning of the Heisei-era Kamen Rider series. Shout! Factory TV is streaming the series online.

Source: Email correspondence, Penguin Random House's website (link 2)