COM (manga magazine)

COM was a Japanese manga magazine, published from 1967 to 1973. COM stands for comic books, Companion, Communication.

The alternative magazine Garo was founded in 1964 and went with surrealist publications by artists such as Yoshiharu Tsuge a new way in the manga market. Because Garo so that was very successful, founded the manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka ( Astro Boy, among others ) with COM in a sense a counterpart to Garo. The magazine was published by Tezuka's Mushi Productions production company and drew attention to himself, especially by new, unknown characters talents. So, among other things worked Moto Hagio, and Mitsuru Adachi Daijiro Mohoroshi for the magazine. Also Osamu Tezuka himself drew a few, mostly experimental, Manga for the magazine; a large part of his Phoenix was published in COM. Other important Fujio Akatsuka staff were, Fujiko Fujio, Ishinomori Shotaro (including several chapters of his successful series Cyborg 009 published in COM), Hideko Mizuno, Shinji Nagashima, Hisashi Sakaguchi, Keiko Takemiya and Jiro Tsunoda.

COM was discontinued in 1971. 1973 started to try again, but this also failed after only a issue as Mushi Productions went bankrupt. Some employees of the magazine as Murasaki Yamada then changed to Garo.

As a sister magazine of the COM was Tezuka Magazine Funny, the first manga magazine for women ( Josei ).

• Manga magazine (Japan)
• Antiquarian Magazine (Japan)
• First publication in 1967
• Posted in 1973