Leiji Matsumoto is one of Japan's most influential myth creators. Yet the huge scope of his work, spanning past, present and future in a constantly connecting multiverse, is largely unknown outside Japan. Matsumoto was the major creative force on Star Blazers, America's gateway drug for TV anime, and created Captain Harlock, a TV phenomenon in Europe. As well as space operas, he made manga on musicians from Bowie to Tchaikovsky, wrote the manga version of American cowboy show Laramie, and created dozens of girls' comics. He is a respected manga scholar, an expert on Japanese swords, a frustrated engineer and pilot who still wants to be a spaceman in his eighties. This collection of new essays-the first book on Matsumoto in English-covers his seven decades of comic creation, drawing on contemporary scholarship, artistic practice and fan studies to map Matsumoto's vast universe. The contributors-artists, creators, translators and scholars-mirror the range of his work and experience. From the bildungsroman to the importance of textual analysis for costume and performance, from early days in poverty to honors around the world, this volume offers previously unexplored biographical and bibliographic detail from a life story as thrilling as anything he created.

Who let the geeks out? Put the cat outside, unplug the telephone and prepare to be entertained by a cast of misfits of the type your doting mother warned you about Real life's just too much effort... That's the conclusion that the author has reached after spending years of his life doing his best to avoid it. As one of millions of teenage boys (and sometimes those other ones who smell better and have two bumps at the front) who spent the 80's playing games with model soldiers or pretending that they were a mighty elf warrior as the role playing craze swept the globe, the author takes the reader on a journey of almost 3 decades from his first forays into fantasy worlds, all the way to - allegedly - making a living as the owner of a game store in the 90's. Candid and heartfelt, this is the truly entertaining tale of a decidedly abnormal son of a normal family. The story is in turn, humorous, sad, serious and introspective, but always unrepentant. It asks some of the most important questions faced by a teenage 'games geek' of the time: When does 'Will you go out with me?' become unacceptable as a chat-up line? How can I avoid compulsory P.E lessons? What on earth is a 'Ral Partha'? Where did the author end up after a night out with his gaming chums? Can you make a million running a game store? These questions and many more will be answered - possibly honestly - as the reader skips hand in hand with the author along the yellow brick road of youth, headlong into the red brick wall of adulthood.