FIST OF THE NORTH STAR HC VOL 01

Okay, slight cheat here as this manga has been available in English before, but it was a long time ago and was never completed, so I’m giving us a pass. Also, it’s our list, sooo....Fist of the North Star! This 80’s manga classic by writer Buronson and artist Tetsuo Hara casts a long shadow, almost single-handedly defining what the Western world understood “manga” to be in the 80’s: extreme, over the top violence with eye-popping action sequences like nothing you had ever seen before. It’s the Citizen Kane of insane, ultraviolent, post-apocalyptic martial arts sagas. The late Kentaro Miura cites FotNS as the most important influence on his own hit series Berserk, and it’s not hard to see it. Set in a wasteland populated by bizarre gangs fighting over the few remaining resources, Fist introduces us to Kenshiro. A practitioner of the pressure-point exploiting martial art Hokuto Shinken, Kenshiro journeys across the world protecting the weak and seeking to take down his archenemy, a former dojo-mate who betrayed the code of Hokuto Shinken. Trust us, you’ve never read anything quite like this.