When Manga Came to America

The first manga widely available in English, MAI, THE PSYCHIC GIRL -- written by Kazuya Kudo, with art by Ryoichi Ikegami -- offered a near-perfect story for American readers: a realistic super-hero story, in line with revisionist American comics of the time (like WATCHMEN). In this short book, Dr. Julian Darius explores the comic, its depiction of super-powers, its relationship to revisionism, its depiction of female sexuality, and the various attempts to adapt the story as a motion picture.

From Sequart Organization.