At the end of the '60s, major manga publisher Shogakukan (part owner of Viz) noticed that adults were reading mature manga carried at rental shops, and responded by commercializing the trend with their magazine Big Comic - carrying manga like Golgo 13, Kaiji Kawaguchi's Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President, and the darker bits of Osamu Tezuka's body of work.





From 1970 to last fall, the covers of Big Comic sported caricatures of public figures from Shuichi Higurashi. His family has confirmed that the seminal artist passed away last week at age 75. He succumbed from pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital.

via Daily Mainichi