Manga Month: An Interview With Philip Simon

An Eisner, Harvey, and Eagle Award-winning and multiple New York Times Bestselling editor, Philip R. Simon, has been with Dark Horse Comics for sixteen years. We caught up with Philip for our Manga Month feature and discussed what his work and what he likes about Japanese comics.

**********

PREVIEWSworld: You’ve been with Dark Horse for a long time—tell us about what you’ve worked on for the company!

Philip Simon: I oversee Dark Horse Manga’s long-running Blade of the Immortal program, and I’m the English-language script adapter and editor on numerous Japanese and Korean series published by Dark Horse (such as I Am A Hero, Eden, the FLCL Omnibus, MPD-Psycho, Blood+, and Bride of the Water God). In addition to working on several licensed properties (Conan, Aliens, Plants vs. Zombies), I’ve spearheaded a myriad of very different projects over the years, from archival reprint series (Crime Does Not Pay Archives, Creepy Presents Richard Corben, Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years) to creator-owned graphic novels (Blood Song, Concrete Park, Finder, and Peter Bagge’s Reset) to Dark Horse ambitious Plants vs. Zombies all-ages program and upcoming Moebius Library series.

PREVIEWSworld: What are you currently working on?

Philip Simon: Recently, I’ve been working on our Blade of the Immortal Omnibus program, mapping out the contents and covers for the first several volumes in this new omnibus series, and I’ve been wrapping up design work on I Am a Hero Volume 1 as I begin script work on I Am a Hero Volume 2!

PREVIEWSworld: What are your favorite manga titles you’ve worked on?

Philip Simon: Blade of the Immortal, Hiroaki Samura’s Emerald and Ohikkoshi short story collections, Eden: It’s an Endless World, Hiroki Endo’s Tanpenshu collections, MPD-Psycho, What’s Michael?, Blood+, Blood-C, and the FLCL Omnibus, to name a few. I’ve probably found myself the most immersed and invested in the characters featured in Blade of the Immortal over the years, since I’ve been working in this manga series for Dark Horse Manga since March 2000, when I was first hired on as an Assistant Editor. I’ve worked on a good chunk of Blade of the Immortal, editing and providing English-language adaptation work, and Samura’s characters Rin, Manji, Giichi, and Magatsu are some of my favorite literary characters of all time now.

PREVIEWSworld: You’ve seen so much manga over the years, what artists and creators have influenced you the most?

Philip Simon: When I was younger, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Domu: A Child’s Dream manga, definitely. Now that I’m older – and since I watched his development intimately over the years – I’d say Hiroaki Samura and his long-running Blade of the Immortal series and also the series Real—which is Takehiko Inoue’s moving series about loss, recovery, and wheelchair basketball.

PREVIEWSworld: What is your favorite manga?

Philip Simon: Currently, I’d say Inoue-sensei’s Real series. I appreciate its unflinching gaze at life’s difficulties and those special people in our lives who help us rise above loss and seemingly-hopeless circumstances.

PREVIEWSworld: What manga would you recommend readers pick up today?

Philip Simon: Right now, my favorite female creator from Japan is Q Hayashida. Her Dorohedoro series is imaginative, violent, and hilarious. My current favorite male creator is Takehiko Inoue, whose underappreciated manga series Real is actually my favorite over any of his more popular works, like Vagabond or Slam Dunk. Some of my favorite Dark Horse series (that I’m not working on) are The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Berserk, all of the great Satoshi Kon works that Dark Horse Manga is finally bringing to English-reading eyes, and our Katsuya Terada books. Out of what I personally work on, I’d love for more readers to discover Blade of the Immortal and read it all the way out to the expertly-paced, heartbreaking volumes that conclude this epic series.