Vol.1 – Red foil variant

Volume 1 cover variant to celebrate the series’ release in USA.

Hey, wait a second, why does the manga tag says Shin Devilman, but the cover just says Devilman?  Time for a story:

Glenn Danzig, founder of the horror punk band Misfits, launched his own comic book company, Verotik, in 1994. Danzig also happens to be a huge Devilman fan (he has a tattoo of the logo on his lower back) and decided to go big: bringing Go Nagai’s masterpiece to the American audience for the first time.

But there was a problem, the rights to the original Devilman were locked down tight. So, he settled for Shin Devilman, the awful sequel/spin-off that no one has ever read (and rightfully so). He published it in the classic stapled US comics format, and on the cover, he pulled the sneaky move to simply write Devilman.

As per American comic book standards, the whole thing got the full-color treatment, and that’s where disaster struck. Not only it is one of the worst examples of digital coloring, but the colorist also took the liberty of adding extra details to Nagai’s original art, like nostrils (check picture). The result was a total trainwreck. And here’s where the legend kicks in. Supposedly, Nagai himself didn’t see the book until 1995 San Diego Comic-Con, where he was invited as a guest by Verotik… and it was not pleased.

The variant cover is identical to the regular one but with a foil layer. While it’s not particularly sought after or valuable, it proudly stands as an eternal witness to this spectacular failure.