The Claymore Manga Gallery
Twenty-seven covers, one painter: every Japanese Claymore, volume by volume.
Claymore ran in Shueisha magazines from 2001 to 2014 and was collected in twenty-seven Jump Comics volumes, each wrapped in a full painting by Norihiro Yagi. The covers are the series' public face: pale warriors, enormous swords, and, waiting in the later volumes, the monsters they were made to fight.
VOLUME 1, TWICE
Tokyo · San FranciscoThe same painting, two editions
One cover · two countries · four years apart
Viz Media kept Norihiro Yagi's cover paintings for the English line, so the gallery below is also, cover for cover, the English shelf. Every Japanese cover here is the current Jump Comics art, checked volume by volume against the printed numbers on the covers themselves.
VOLUMES 1 TO 9
The Monthly Shonen Jump years begin
Volume 1
Shueisha · Silver-eyed Slayer · 5 January 2002.
Volume 2
Shueisha · Darkness in Paradise · 1 May 2002.
Volume 3
Shueisha · Teresa of the Faint Smile · 1 November 2002.
Volume 4
Shueisha · Marked for Death · 1 May 2003.
Volume 5
Shueisha · The Slashers · 4 November 2003.
Volume 6
Shueisha · The Endless Gravestones · 30 April 2004.
Volume 7
Shueisha · Fit for Battle · 4 November 2004.
Volume 8
Shueisha · The Witch's Maw · 28 April 2005.
Volume 9
Shueisha · The Deep Abyss of Purgatory · 4 November 2005.
VOLUMES 10 TO 18
Across the magazine change
Volume 10
Shueisha · The Battle of the North · 2 May 2006.
Volume 11
Shueisha · Kindred of Paradise · 2 November 2006.
Volume 12
Shueisha · The Souls of the Fallen · 4 April 2007.
Volume 13
Shueisha · The Defiant Ones · 4 October 2007.
Volume 14
Shueisha · A Child Weapon · 2 May 2008.
Volume 15
Shueisha · Genesis of War · 4 December 2008.
Volume 16
Shueisha · The Lamentation of the Earth · 1 May 2009.
Volume 17
Shueisha · The Claws of Memory · 4 November 2009.
Volume 18
Shueisha · Ashes of Lautrec · 2 July 2010.
VOLUMES 19 TO 27
The Jump Square years, to the end
Volume 19
Shueisha · Illusions in the Heart · 3 December 2010.
Volume 20
Shueisha · Demon's Claw Remains · 3 June 2011.
Volume 21
Shueisha · Corpse of the Witch · 2 December 2011.
Volume 22
Shueisha · Claws and Fangs of the Abyss · 4 June 2012.
Volume 23
Shueisha · Warrior's Mark · 4 December 2012.
Volume 24
Shueisha · Army of the Underworld · 4 June 2013.
Volume 25
Shueisha · Sword of the Dark Deep · 4 December 2013.
Volume 26
Shueisha · A Blade from Far Away · 4 June 2014.
Volume 27
Shueisha · Silver-eyed Warriors · 4 December 2014.
READING THE COVERS
What the paintings are doingOne warrior, alone
Most covers isolate a single warrior in painted space: a face, a blade, weather. The series sells stillness, not battles, and the covers stay eerie long after the action inside is over.
The monsters arrive late
For nine volumes the covers show only the hunters. The great Awakened Beings take the covers over in the second half, as the story's scale turns, until the final volume returns to a single warrior, winged, in white.
Never redrawn
Shueisha never replaced this art. A Claymore reprint on a shelf today wears the painting its first readers saw, which makes the Japanese shelf unusually honest to collect: the art is the edition's face, and only the back page tells its age.