Dark Horse Manga used its New York Comic Con panel to announce three releases aimed at manga readers, all coming in 2027. The publisher revealed them at the Javits Center on Thursday, October 8.
A return to Lovecraft from Gou Tanabe
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Other Early Adaptations collects Gou Tanabe’s take on Lovecraft’s The Outsider alongside his story Ju-Ga and adaptations of two literary works: Anton Chekhov’s The House with a Mezzanine and Maxim Gorky’s 26 Men and a Girl. Zack Davisson translates.
Tanabe has built a following for his Lovecraft adaptations, including At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. This collection leans into the range of his source material instead of keeping him to horror alone. The title story follows a solitary figure in a decaying castle who has no memory of his origins and no knowledge of the world outside, and who escapes only to find something worse waiting beyond the walls.
A new ninja series from the creator of Shaman King
Martial War is a collaboration. Hiroyuki Takei, the creator of Shaman King, co-created and co-wrote it with Will Carter and Aidan White, and he provides the art with assistance from Jet Kusamura. Steve Dutro, an Eisner nominee for his lettering on Monster and 21st Century Boys, handles lettering.
The story is set in a country rebuilding after war, where ninja no longer fight in the streets but inside an arena called the Octagon. Ninja are disgraced now, yet they are the only people who can wield Tatara stones. A character named Trash crashes the tournament to fight for the top, and the book will read right to left, in the Japanese format.
Blue Eye Samurai continues in comics
The third release is Blue Eye Samurai: Cry of the Yurei #1, which continues the story of Mizu. When both her gender and her mixed heritage are exposed to the swordsmith’s cruel client Daisuke, she flees into the woods, hunted and ashamed, until she meets Sachiko, a housemaid with her own grievances. The issue ships with variant covers by Ito and Angela Wu.
Why it matters
Dark Horse has spent years building a manga and manga-adjacent catalog, and this panel shows where its priorities sit. The Tanabe collection extends a Lovecraft line that has sold well for the publisher. The Takei project is the kind of American-Japanese co-production that has been rare in fight comics. Blue Eye Samurai brings a story that began on Netflix into print comics.
Two of the three are 2027 releases without firm dates yet, so expect more specific windows closer to the year. The full line is set to arrive through comic shops, Dark Horse Direct, and booksellers, and the Tanabe and Takei books will sit alongside Dark Horse’s existing manga catalog rather than apart from it.
For more manga publishing news, see our report on A Bride’s Story’s new volume and K Manga’s English launch of The Wolf at Memory’s End.
Source: Dark Horse
Featured image: Blue Eye Samurai: Cry of the Yurei #1 cover art, via Dark Horse.
