The Bastard!! Manga Gallery
Twenty-seven covers, twenty-four years: one artist’s style mutating in public.
Bastard!! began in Weekly Shonen Jump in March 1988 and has never formally ended; its twenty-seventh and latest tankobon shipped in March 2012. This gallery shows every Japanese Jump Comics cover in order, verified volume by volume, with the arc, the release date, and the ISBN printed for each. Read top to bottom, it is less a cover census than a time-lapse: the clean 1988 shonen line of volume 1 slowly gives way to the dense, painterly maximalism of the Ultra Jump years. The editions behind these covers are documented on the Complete Edition page.
THE FIRST AND THE LATEST
Volume 1, 1988 · Volume 27, 2012Volume 1, and volume 27
The same wizard, drawn a quarter-century apart
Between these two covers the series changed magazines three times, slowed from a weekly schedule to an irregular one, and rebuilt its own artwork twice. The covers are the fastest way to see all three stories at once.
VOLUMES 1 TO 7
The Dark Rebel Armies · the weekly era
Volume 1
The Dark Rebel Armies I · August 10, 1988 · ISBN 978-4-08-871063-1
Volume 2
The Dark Rebel Armies II · November 10, 1988 · ISBN 978-4-08-871064-8
Volume 3
The Dark Rebel Armies III · January 10, 1989 · ISBN 978-4-08-871065-5
Volume 4
The Dark Rebel Armies IV · March 10, 1989 · ISBN 978-4-08-871066-2
Volume 5
The Dark Rebel Armies V · May 10, 1989 · ISBN 978-4-08-871067-9
Volume 6
The Dark Rebel Armies VI · September 8, 1989 · ISBN 978-4-08-871068-6
Volume 7
The Dark Rebel Armies VII · November 10, 1989 · ISBN 978-4-08-871069-3
VOLUMES 8 TO 12
Hell's Requiem · the quarterly years
Volume 8
Hell's Requiem I · June 8, 1990 · ISBN 978-4-08-871070-9
Volume 9
Hell's Requiem II · November 9, 1990 · ISBN 978-4-08-871831-6
Volume 10
Hell's Requiem III · July 10, 1991 · ISBN 978-4-08-871832-3
Volume 11
Hell's Requiem IV · February 10, 1992 · ISBN 978-4-08-871833-0
Volume 12
Hell's Requiem V · July 3, 1992 · ISBN 978-4-08-871834-7
VOLUMES 13 TO 18
Crimes & Punishment · the long arc
Volume 13
Crimes & Punishment I · March 4, 1993 · ISBN 978-4-08-871835-4
Volume 14
Crimes & Punishment II · October 4, 1993 · ISBN 978-4-08-871836-1
Volume 15
Crimes & Punishment III · June 3, 1994 · ISBN 978-4-08-871837-8
Volume 16
Crimes & Punishment IV · March 3, 1995 · ISBN 978-4-08-871838-5
Volume 17
Crimes & Punishment V · May 10, 1996 · ISBN 978-4-08-872241-2
Volume 18
Crimes & Punishment VI · November 1, 1996 · ISBN 978-4-08-872242-9
VOLUMES 19 TO 24
Immoral Laws · back in Jump, then Ultra Jump
Volume 19
Immoral Laws I · March 4, 1998 · ISBN 978-4-08-872243-6
Volume 20
Immoral Laws II · December 3, 1998 · ISBN 978-4-08-872651-9
Volume 21
Immoral Laws III · September 3, 1999 · ISBN 978-4-08-872759-2
Volume 22
Immoral Laws IV · June 4, 2001 · ISBN 978-4-08-873131-5
Volume 23
Immoral Laws V · April 30, 2004 · ISBN 978-4-08-873563-4
Volume 24
Immoral Laws VI · July 4, 2006 · ISBN 978-4-08-873877-2
VOLUMES 25 TO 27
Immoral Laws closes · the Tomb of Spells opens
Volume 25
Immoral Laws VII · April 4, 2008 · ISBN 978-4-08-874492-6
Volume 26
Immoral Laws VIII · June 4, 2009 · ISBN 978-4-08-874672-2
Volume 27
The Tomb of Spells I · March 19, 2012 · ISBN 978-4-08-870171-4
THE CENSUS
What a complete shelf means27 volumes
Jump Comics tankobon, August 1988 to March 2012. The series is unfinished; volume 27 is the latest, not the last by design. Chapters are numbered 0 through 138, with half-numbered extras along the way.
Two re-drawn editions
Shueisha’s nine-volume Complete Edition (2000–2009) revises and partly redraws the early art; a nine-volume bunkoban pocket edition followed in 2014. See the editions page.
English stops at 19
Viz Media published volumes 1 to 19 in English (2002–2009) and cancelled volume 20. Volumes 20 to 27 have no official English edition. See the English page.
30 million copies
Shueisha counts more than 30 million copies in circulation, a remarkable total for a series that has published at an irregular pace for most of its life.