''Shigeru Mizuki's Hitler'', originally titled , is a manga by

Shigeru Mizuki , also known as , was a Japanese manga artist and historian. He was known for his ''yōkai'' manga such as ''GeGeGe no Kitarō'' and '' Akuma-kun'', as well as for his war stories based on his own war manga such as '' Shōwa-shi''. He was born i ...

about the life of

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

. In 1971 it began serialization in ''

Weekly Manga Sunday , also known by the nickname , is a defunct Japanese weekly ''seinen'' manga magazine published by Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha. It started to be published under the name in 1959. On June 5, 2012, it start to be published twice in a month and the "Wee ...

''. In November 2015, it was published in English by

Drawn & Quarterly Drawn & Quarterly (D+Q) is a publishing company based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, specializing in comics. It publishes primarily comic books, graphic novels and comic strip collections. The books it publishes are noted for their artistic con ...

, translated by Zack Davisson. The English version was a translation of a version in French rather than a direct translation from Japanese.

Olivier Sava of

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...

, wrote that Hitler is portrayed as he actually was, and as he deludely saw himself; in regards to the former, Sava characterizes that version of Hitler as "dopey, sad, and often pathetic" and that he "looks distraught even when he’s whistling with pleasure, suggesting that its impossible for the man to be truly happy when so much of his life is fueled by hate." Davin Arul of '' The Star'', a Malaysian publication, stated that it uses Mizuki's "trademark style of putting almost sketchily-drawn cartoon characters in realistic, highly-detailed settings". The beginning and the end of the book refer to the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. Arul wrote that the Holocaust in this graphic novel is "used as a bookend and does not figure too much in between – possibly because Mizuki did not want the magnitude of it to eclipse the rest of his story." Jan-Paul Koopman of ''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' also argued that the Holocaust is not given much attention in the book. The book has a two-page list of

dramatis personae Dramatis personae (Latin: 'persons of the drama') are the main characters in a dramatic work written in a list. Such lists are commonly employed in various forms of theatre, and also on screen. Typically, off-stage characters are not consider ...

at the front of the book and, in the English version, a footnote index in the back that has fifteen pages.

Release

The serialization in ''Weekly Manga Saturday'' began on May 8 and ended on August 28. On March 1, 1972, it was released as a single volume. In 2014 Drawn & Quarterly announced it was going to release an English translation. The book was published in Germany in 2019, with Reprodukt as the publisher. Jens Balzer wrote a foreword for the German version.

Reception

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' described it as a "fresh take". It was ranked as a "Publishers Weekly Pick", and the work stated that it is "a candidate for the year’s best graphic novel." Davin Arul wrote that a reader gets accustomed to the cartoonish art style despite it being initially "really jarring". Arul stated that the work is highly complex due to the amount of detail and that can "lose the reader".

References

External links

*
Shigeru Mizuki's Hitler
' -

*
Shigeru Mizuki's Hitler
' - Available at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

*
Gekiga Hitler
' - Chikuma Shobo Books about Adolf Hitler 1971 manga Drawn & Quarterly titles Gekiga Shigeru Mizuki {{manga-stub

Contents

Release

Reception

See also

References

External links