The Hellsing Manga Gallery

Ten volumes, one red band, and a second cover hiding under every jacket.

This is the paper shelf: every Japanese tankobon cover of Hellsing, volumes 1 to 10, in the Young King Comics editions Shonengahosha published between 1998 and 2009. Kohta Hirano painted the early covers and coloured later ones digitally, but the frame never changed.

Hellsing is an adult series, and this page keeps to the covers themselves: the art, the design, and the publishing record. One collector detail before the grids: each volume is a dust-jacket book, and under the jacket the boards carry a second, different Hirano illustration, so a complete copy is really two covers deep.

THE TWO ENDS OF THE SHELF

Hellsing, 1998 and 2009

The first volume and the last

Ten volumes · one design system · 1998 to 2009

Hellsing volume 1 Japanese cover, Alucard in his red coat and hat — **Volume 1 · 1998**Alucard alone, tipping his hat over the masthead. The red spine band and the numbered shield badge are already in place.

Hellsing volume 10 Japanese cover, the full cast — **Volume 10 · 2009**The whole surviving cast crowded into one frame for the farewell. The band and badge never changed in eleven years.

Every Japanese Hellsing cover is built the same way: the word HELLSING stamped across the top, a red spine band down the left with the volume number in a shield, and one of Kohta Hirano’s paintings inside the frame. The covers below are the publisher’s own images from Shonengahosha, checked volume by volume against the printed numbers.

VOLUMES 1 TO 5

Young King Comics years

Volume 1

Shonengahosha · 24 September 1998. The first book of the series.

Volume 2

Shonengahosha · 6 December 1999.

Volume 3

Shonengahosha · 9 December 2000.

Volume 4

Shonengahosha · 27 September 2001.

Volume 5

Shonengahosha · 27 February 2003.

VOLUMES 6 TO 10

To the final volume

Volume 6

Shonengahosha · 14 November 2003.

Volume 7

Shonengahosha · 27 December 2004.

Volume 8

Shonengahosha · July 2006.

Volume 9

Shonengahosha · 9 November 2007.

Volume 10

Shonengahosha · 27 March 2009. The final volume, closing an eleven-year run.

READING THE COVERS

What the grids show

The frame

The red band is a spine first and a cover element second: shelved together, the ten volumes read as one red stripe with white numbers, the Young King Comics colophon at the foot.

The cast grows

Alucard carries the first five covers almost alone. From volume 6 the paintings widen: Integra beside him on 6, Seras and Pip on 7, Anderson and Maxwell on 8, Alucard and Walter on 9, and everyone on 10.

The backs

Each dust jacket back carries a small still-life of a character’s belongings rather than a second portrait: Anderson’s gloves on volume 8, Integra’s cigars on volume 9, the Major’s handbook on volume 5.

Paint, then pixels