Black Magic Paperback – April 23, 2008

Arrived in fantastic condition! Love my purchase!

Rogue AI, android sorcerers, robots gone off mission, and that barely covers some of the story! The manga also intelligently points out the political always ends up becoming personal.

The first work of Masamune Shirow, this have some of all the concepts of his ulterior books but in a basic form, drawing style is not developed yet,but it has a nice 80's feeling.

This artist is a legend. I dont think anyone can match his skill.

This volume collects Masamune Shirow's early works, in which you can find basic ideas behind Masamune's later stories including Appleseed, M-66, etc. While the mangas are not great in themselves, this collection is worth having for enthusiasts of Masamune's works.

This is the first work by Ghost in the Shell author Masamune Shirow. The time is sometime in the future. It is a time when "the creation of life itself has evolved to include biodroids" and cyborg warriors that are programmed to kill. The power struggle between the above life-forms and humans could spell the end of life as it is known. However, the aptly named Typhon may just be the one with the power to stop them.This is a must buy for any serious Shirow fan-or for those who want to discover one of the master's of Japanese manga.

One of Masamune's early works. Black Magic seems to be Shirow's prototype for developing the world of Appleseed. Appleseed fans will probably notice some parallels/links/continuations in this book.As an early work, the art is very similar to the first Appleseed book in that there is less detailed art work that appear in his later works (most significant of which is his latest Ghost in the Shell).

The artistic style seems somewhat dated today and looks nothing like Shirows later work. However, his storytelling prowess and mechanical savvy are all here. The only ding I would give the book is for the occassionally bizarre metaphysical story elements which receive little to no explanation. Still, even in his first published work Masamune Shirow seems a more than capable artist and veteran writer (just don't expect it to look like his later, better known stuff).