Barbara (DMP)
Barbara (DMP)
English Title: Barbara
Japanese Title: ばるぼら
Publication Date: 2012
Publisher: DMP
No. of Volumes: 1
In Print: ✔
Digital: ✔
From the Publisher
Wandering the packed tunnels of Shinjuku Station, famous author Yosuke Mikura makes a strange discovery: a ragged hippie who can quote French poetry. Her name is Barbara. He takes her home for a bath and a drink, and before long Barbara has made herself into Mikura’s shadow, saving him from egotistical delusions and jealous enemies. But just as Mikura is no saint, Barbara is no guardian angel, and Mikura grows obsessed with discovering her secrets, tangling with thugs, sadists, magical curses and mythical beings – all the while wondering whether he himself is still sane. Written in 1973 and 1974 and inspired by the classic opera “Tales of Hoffman” by Jacques Offenbach, Barbara may be Tezuka’s most psychological and unsettling work, shattering the fine line between art and madness with masterful precision.
A Muse demands her sacrifice…
What you should know
Digital Manga Publishing’s edition of Barbara has the distinction of being the first Osamu Tezuka manga to be successfully funded and printed through the crowd-funding platform Kickstarter. Although DMP had earlier success in funding a reprint of their edition of Swallowing the Earth, this was the first time Kickstarter was used to license and print all new material.
In January/February 2012, 353 backers pledged $17,032 (of a $6,500 goal!) to see Tezuka’s classic Barbara published in English for the first time. The campaign was such a huge success, that it encouraged DMP to return to the platform to successfully fund and publish numerous other Tezuka manga series in English since.
In 2015, the the out-of-print Barbara was included as part of the successful Clockwork Apple Kickstarter campaign. In total, 581 backers pledged $32,749 (of $13,500 goal) and the reprint of Barbara on higher quality paper was secured as the second stretch goal, once the campaign reached the $22,900 mark.
It is worth noting that this campaign also successfully met stretch goals to secure a print edition (to replace the digital-only edition) of Brave Dan (at $18,200), and to reprint Swallowing the Earth (at $28,400). Although the campaign failed to reach the $40,300 mark to needed to secure a reprint of Uncio, it was later part of the successful Kickstarter campaign to publish Storm Fairy in English, and the stretch goals to not only reprint Uncio (at $26,000), but actually re-publish it using higher quality colouring (at $27,000) and paper were both met – thus bringing this Tezuka classic back into print.
As with nearly all of DMP’s editions, Barbara was published unflipped in the original right-to-left Japanese reading style. The English edition is 200 pages in length and is printed in the A5 (5.875″x8.25″) format. In 2015, a digital edition was released and is available on DMP’s emanga.com website for legal download in a number of popular formats (ePub, CBR/CBZ, PDF, etc.).
