Who did the art for Death Note?

Every volume of Death Note carries the same two credits: story by Tsugumi Ohba, art by Takeshi Obata. Obata (born February 11, 1969, in Niigata) is the man behind the gothic shinigami, the fashion-magazine wardrobe of Light Yagami and the exhausted stare of L. The manga ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from December 1, 2003 to May 15, 2006, for 108 chapters collected in twelve volumes, and passed 30 million copies in circulation.

The pairing was an editor's idea. In 2003, while Obata's series Hikaru no Go was finishing, Jump's editors brought him a one-shot pilot chapter by an unknown writer. This pilot was not the Light Yagami story: a thirteen-year-old named Taro Kagami finds the notebook, uses it as a diary and undoes his mistakes with a Death Eraser. Obata has said he had always wanted to draw reapers and grotesque, dark things, and the pilot gave him the chance.

Reader response to the pilot earned the series its slot, and Obata stayed on as the artist. The Library's Death Note shelf covers what the pilot became, including how the one-shot differs from chapter one; this shelf is about the man who drew all of it, and what else his pen has done.