I've been picking up the Ranma 1/2 manga and have to wonder where the Gatchaman manga is. The only manga I've seen is the ones on the ADV DVD's. I suppose they only came in Japanese--it would be great if they did some translated versions or better yet new manga for Gatchaman. Does anyone know if Gatchaman manga ever released in English?

There wasn't a fat lot of gatch manga ever made. There are a few japanese books that contain manga retellings of some of the stories, I think the TV colletion 1 & 2 books. There's no english version of those unless that's what's on the DVDs (haven't got too far in watching mine yet). There are a number of doujinshi, where the artwork looks very lovely but the stories/characterisations may not be very true to the original (lots of yaoi and Joe raping Katse and stuff like that). Again, there aren't any english versions that I've heard of.

Actually, there was a lot more Gatchaman manga than most people realize, though almost all of it has never been reprinted anywhere, and virtually none of it has been translated. The majority of the manga done for Gatchaman was created for Shogakukan kids magazines during the run of the original Gatchaman TV series, running in the magazines Yoiko, Yochien, 1st Grader, 2nd Grader, and so on through 6th Grader. Some of these were adaptations of episode from the series (Or stories that were vaguely similar to the aired episodes, but wildly different in numerous aspects) , while others were original stories using Gallactor mecha from the series. The length and style of these stories differed from magazine to magazine, from 1 or 2 pages to 6 to 8 pages depending on the age level of their audience, and the quality of the artwork varied equally as much. Several of these magazines included occasional Gatchaman text stories instead of manga. Most of these magazines had Gatchaman coverage through 1973, tapering off in 1974. Gatchaman II had manga created for two magazines, TV-kun and Manga-kun. The Manga-kun stories were adaptations of TV episodes, while the TV-kun stories were original stories. These ran from the start of the series through early to mid-1979. By mid-1979, TV-kun had stopped the Gatchaman II manga, but continued to have informational articles on the series through the end of Gatchaman Fighter, the only magazine to cover the third series in any depth. Some of the Shogakukan kids magazines had scattered Gatchaman II manga early in the run of the series, but the coverage was pretty much only in the magazines aimed at the youngest readers, Yoiko through 2nd Grader, with only minimal coverage for the series in the magazines aimed at older kids. Alas, as far as I am aware, Gatchaman Fighter had no manga created for it. The 9 manga stories shown on the ADV bonus discs were original material released as a series of three books in the Sunpy Comics line, and later reissued in the Ace Five Comics line. As the only Gatchaman manga to be released in book form, most people have assumed that this was all that was ever created, but this was not an accurate assumption. I hope this helps! James

Welcome tatsunokofan and thankyou for the good information its nice to see peeps who know Gatcha Well at least it makes up for my shortcomings with the program hehe

James seems to know a lot about the entire series. Glad to see him over here too. ( Another BOTP mailing list person)

Hi James. Good to see you here.

James seems to know a lot about the entire series.

Rather an understatement. Trust me on this. Welcome! Cricket (aka Sandy)

Welcome James

Hi all! Thank you all so much for the warm welcome! An unexpected and pleasant surprise! I'm looking forward to doing my part to share the Gatchaman goodness! James

Yeah, James, the "Gatch Guru" is here!! Welcome, James!

Cricket I have a feeling that my statement is understated but I couldn't figure out how to put it without scarring everybody! Welcome James, glad to see ya here!