I’ve owned this edition of Bakuman Vol.1 and never read it nor its English equivalent. Still, looking at this cover always makes me smile:

That’s because my wife bought this comic for me, way before she became my wife. Back in 2009, my then-girlfriend and I went our separate ways for a time, after getting together during a semester spent studying abroad in Australia. I went back to Wisconsin; she went to visit her brother, who was stationed at an Air Force base in Japan. Flying home, I wondered: Is this thing we have going to keep going? (I sure hoped so.)

The next time we got together, Kat gave me this: A manga volume she’d picked up in Japan for me. She knew it was about a pair of aspiring manga creators. She saw it and thought of me. And so, even though I’ve never been to Japan (it’s on the list; maybe this year), I own a volume of manga that was purchased there.

Sentimentality aside, this is actually a cool cover in its own right. I can’t read the extra advertising flap layered over the cover’s bottom, but I imagine the top of it reads something like “From the creators of Death Note,” given that this comic is from the same creative team as that popular series. (Kat and I own that one in English and both like it, portrayals of women aside.) The cover has the same ruler-based margins as a comic art board, which is a nice flourish given the story’s subject matter. The back cover shows off various tools of a manga artist’s trade, but the real kicker here is that you can remove the book’s dust jacket to reveal a black-and-white version of the cover.

Pretty neat, huh? And this isn’t even a deluxe volume; it’s thinner and more compact than its English counterpart (the better for shoving in a backpack and reading on a train, I’d imagine). When it comes to comic production value, they sure are kicking our asses over there in Japan.

(Want to check out more posts in the Cool Comic Covers series? If so, click here.)