THE LIBRARY
Collector guides, cover censuses, and edition answers, documented issue by issue. Every page answers one specific question, completely.
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VAGABOND
30 shelves
The Vagabond Manga Gallery
Every Japanese tankobon cover of Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond, volumes 1 to 37, Morning KC, Kodansha, 1999 to 2014, each with its release date, ISBN, and story arc.
What Weekly Morning issues have Vagabond on the cover?
Sixteen documented Weekly Morning covers led by Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond paintings, 2008 to 2014, from the LAST exhibition issue to the 2012 comeback cover,…
Vagabond's art books: Sumi, Water, and the INOUENO catalogues
Takehiko Inoue's two Vagabond art books, Water (color) and Sumi (ink), both released October 23, 2006, their 2008 Viz editions, and the two INOUENO catalogues of…
Are the Vagabond covers the same in Japanese and English?
Yes for the paintings, no for the books: Viz's single volumes keep all of Inoue's cover art and re-letter it, while the VIZBIG omnibuses and the 2025 Definitive…
What is the Vagabond VIZBIG edition?
Viz's 3-in-1 omnibuses of Vagabond: twelve paperback volumes, 2008 to 2015, collecting tankobon 1 to 36 at 5.75 by 8.63 inches with bonus color and redesigned…
What is the Vagabond Definitive Edition?
Viz Media's 2025 hardcover line for Vagabond: large-trim 7.5 by 10 inch volumes collecting three tankobon each, textured covers with gold calligraphy, launched…
Which Vagabond edition should a collector buy?
The four ways to own Vagabond, Japanese singles, English singles, VIZBIG omnibuses, and Definitive hardcovers, weighed for reading, shelving, and collecting,…
How do you identify a first printing of Japanese Vagabond?
Read the colophon: Japanese first printings of Vagabond's Morning KC volumes carry the first-printing line and the release date together. The five checks, the…
The History of Vagabond
From the September 3, 1998 debut in Weekly Morning to the 2025 Definitive hardcovers: the history of Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond, its prizes, its art books, its…
What is Vagabond based on?
Eiji Yoshikawa's 1935 novel Musashi, the Asahi Shimbun serial that made Miyamoto Musashi a national hero, and how Takehiko Inoue's manga inherits its skeleton…
How does Vagabond differ from Yoshikawa's Musashi novel?
The seventy-Yoshioka battle is Inoue's invention, his Kojiro is deaf, and his Musashi follows no bushido: the documented differences between Takehiko Inoue's…
Who was the real Miyamoto Musashi?
The historical swordsman behind Vagabond: c. 1584 to 1645, undefeated across some sixty duels, founder of the two-sword school, and the author of The Book of…
Did Musashi and Kojiro really duel on Ganryu Island?
Yes: April 13, 1612, arranged by Hosokawa Tadaoki, Musashi late by boat with a sword carved from an oar, Kojiro with his long nodachi. The recorded facts of the…
Why is Vagabond on hiatus?
Health, a lost enthusiasm Inoue named himself, a punishing brush method, and a story its author keeps refusing to rush: the documented timeline of Vagabond's…
How many chapters does Vagabond have?
327 chapters: 322 collected in 37 volumes, and a final five, chapters 323 to 327 from 2015, that exist only in Weekly Morning. The full arc-by-arc count.
When did Vagabond start in Morning magazine?
September 3, 1998, in Weekly Morning No.40: chapter 1,
What was Takehiko Inoue's The LAST Manga Exhibition?
The 2008 Ueno Royal Museum exhibition where Inoue painted an original final chapter of Vagabond across museum walls: 100-plus works, daily sellouts, and the two…
How does Takehiko Inoue draw Vagabond?
Brush and ink, no speed lines, bodies drawn from anatomy, five assistants on backgrounds, watercolor for color: Inoue's documented method for Vagabond, in his…
Why are Vagabond's covers painted in watercolor?
Because the manga is a portrait of a life: Inoue's watercolor covers age Musashi's face across 37 volumes, feed the Water art book, and scale up into the Ueno…
How did Vagabond change Takehiko Inoue after Slam Dunk?
From shonen to seinen, pen to brush, victories to costs: how Vagabond reinvented the author of Slam Dunk, in his own stated aims and the documented results.
What has Takehiko Inoue done while Vagabond is on hiatus?
Real kept running, and then came a film: Inoue's work during Vagabond's long pause, from the continuing wheelchair basketball manga to writing and directing The…
Is Vagabond finished?
No: 327 chapters, an uncollected final five, an ending painted for a museum in 2008, and no word of cancellation from Inoue or Kodansha. The precise state of…
How many copies has Vagabond sold?
Over 82 million copies in circulation worldwide, reached without any anime adaptation: what the figure counts and why it is extraordinary for an unfinished adult…
What awards has Vagabond won?
The Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize and the Kodansha Manga Award in 2000, the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Grand Prize in 2002, and an Eisner nomination in…
Who is Sasaki Kojiro in Vagabond?
Inoue's reinvention of the legend: a deaf swordsman raised by Kanemaki Jisai, given six volumes of his own, and built into Vagabond's second protagonist on the…
