Avi Arad, the energetic movie mogul who once ran Marvel, but now just helps out with things like the new Spider-Man movie…has written a comic book.
Why did you want to do a manga story?
I’ve been in the world of comics all my life, and specifically into Japanese comics in the early days, before manga attempted to penetrate this market. I wanted to do The Innocent a long time ago. It stayed with me quite a while. Once I got out of Marvel Comics, it was one of the things on my bucket list to do a manga. I had an idea and I followed it, and here we are.Did you grow up reading manga?
I discovered manga later, really when I came here. I came to the united States in 1970 and it became one of the formats of comics that I really liked, but we couldn’t get going here. U.S. publishers have had a really hard time with publishing them. I’ve been involved with many publishers in Japan, and still am— I’m now making movies based on Japanese video games, translating them to American movies that will play around the world—and I thought, Let’s give it a shot!
Wow, it’s a wonder we never saw that Wolverine in Japan storyline when Arad was running Marvel.
Published by Yen, THE INNOCENT has a script by Junichi Fujisaku from Arad’s story and art by YaSung Ko.
