is a Japanese

alternative manga Alternative manga or underground manga is a Western term for Japanese comics that are published outside the more commercial manga market, or which have different art styles, themes, and narratives to those found in the more popular manga magazin ...

magazine. It was first published in 1998 and is released every two months by the publishing house Seirinkogeisha. As of November 2021, 143 issues have been published. The magazine was founded after the manga magazine

Garo Garo may refer to: People and languages * Garo people, a tribal people in India ** Garo language, the language spoken by the Garo tribe Places * Kingdom of Garo, a former kingdom in southern Ethiopia * Garo, Colorado * Garo Hills, part of the Ga ...

faced a crisis in 1996 after editor Katsuichi Nagai's death. Several of Garo's key staff quit their work with Garo and instead founded AX in 1998. Several of Garo's regular contributors moved to AX instead. In October 2008, North American publisher Top Shelf announced that it will release a 400-page selection of underground manga stories from the magazine as an anthology called ''AX Collection'', edited by

Sean Michael Wilson Sean Michael Wilson is a comic book writer from Edinburgh, Scotland. He has written more than 30 books with a variety of US, UK and Japanese publishers and has been nominated for both the Eisner and Harvey book awards, and won a medal in the Jap ...

. The volume was nominated for "Best American Edition of Foreign Material" at the 2011

Harvey Awards The Harvey Awards are given for achievement in comic books. Named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards were founded by Gary Groth in 1988, president of the publisher Fantagraphics, to be the successor to the Kirby Awards that we ...

Published series

''AX'' has featured

manga artists A is a comic artist who writes and/or illustrates manga. As of 2006, about 3,000 professional manga artists were working in Japan. Most manga artists study at an art college or manga school or take on an apprenticeship with another artist bef ...

such as

Suehiro Maruo (born January 28, 1956 in Nagasaki, Japan) is a Japanese manga artist, illustrator, and painter. Biography Maruo graduated from junior high school in March 1972 but dropped out of senior high school. At the age of 15, he moved to Tokyo and began ...

, Shintaro Kago, Shinichi Abe, Nishioka Kyoudai, Naoto Yamakawa,

Usamaru Furuya is a Japanese manga artist. Biography During elementary school, Furuya enrolled in the Osamu Tezuka Manga Correspondence Course and by the time he reached high school he had discovered a darker, more underground style. He graduated from Tama ...

Toshio Saeki is a fictional character from the ''Ju-on'' franchise, created by Takashi Shimizu. He was played by several child actors, including Daiki Sawada in the short movie '' 4444444444'', Ryōta Koyama in the original two V-Cinema movies, Yuya Ozeki i ...

, Akino Kondoh, Kotobuki Shiriagari,

Yoshihiro Tatsumi was a Japanese manga artist whose work was first published in his teens, and continued through the rest of his life. He is widely credited with starting the gekiga style of alternative manga in Japan, having allegedly coined the term in 1957. H ...

, and Toyo Kataoka. The magazine featured, among others, these series: * ''Doing Time'' by Kazuichi Hanawa (1998-2000) * '' Tokyo Zombie'' by Yusaku Hakanuma (1999) * ''Jacaranda'' by Kotobuki Shiriagari * ''Suiton Kikou'' by

Shinya Komatsu Shinya (Shin'ya) is a Japanese given name, usually for males. It is pronounced as "Shin-ya", not "Shi-nya". Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese curler and curling coach *, Japanese politician *Shinya Aoki (born 1983), professional mi ...

(2004)

References

External links

Ax
* Manga anthologies Top Shelf Productions titles {{Manga-stub