Shirow's Minor Works 4

Metal Pop Dorothy is an old fanzine published on December 29, 1985 by Atlas. Perhaps some of you have recognize this name since they are the same guys with whom Shirow has started to draw manga and who published Black Magic for the first time. Anyway this fanzine contains 40 pages, but only the cover and four pages have been drawn by Shirow himself. In a chapter called "Bike Nut" a character, who looks like Hitomi from Appleseed (during that same year Shirow published the first two Appleseed books), talks about motorbikes (one is called VR-H750F).

Magic Caravan is a short manga (25 pages) published many years ago inside the Comic Fusion magazine. Looking at the style of the drawings, it should have been created at the same time of Black Magic. Also the story about magic powers and the look of the main character remember BM very much, but Japanese friends had assured me that they aren't related. Inside that same magazine, there are other b&w illustrations by Shirow not related to the manga.

Years ago Shirow has drawn the cover and illos for Hitoshi Yasuda's The World of SF Fantasy Game published by Seishinsha. This game was quoted inside Intron Depot 1 (pages 53, 54, 55) and on the left you can see the original cover of the book (compare it with page 54). Shirow told about this cover (from ID2): "This was done with colored pencil. I worked long and hard on it, yet somehow it appears to be missing something. A shame ... (sorry, Hitoshi). The design of the suit leaves a bit to be desired, but that's because I wanted to emphasize the huge visor. The space ship looks like the Enterprise, but the size suggests it's some type of interstellar container ship. The workings of the propulsion system remain a mystery."

It's well known that Shirow has started his mangaka career working for fanzines. So here are some covers drawn for the "Battle comics" fanzine by Atlas Comix. Probably these issues are much older than the Metal Pop Dorothy above.

Flying Shirow Pictures Copyrights
Title: ManMachine Interface ©1997 Shirow/Kodansha. From the Top: 1-2) Metal Pop Dorothy ©1985 Shirow/Atlas. 3) Magic Caravan © Shirow/Comic Fusion. 4) World of SF Fantasy Game © Shirow/Yasuda/Seishinsha. 5) Battle comics © Shirow/Atlas Comix. Left: Orion ©1991 Shirow/Seishinsha.

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	Pictures Copyrights Title: ManMachine Interface ©1997 Shirow/Kodansha. From the Top: 1-2) Metal Pop Dorothy ©1985 Shirow/Atlas. 3) Magic Caravan © Shirow/Comic Fusion. 4) World of SF Fantasy Game © Shirow/Yasuda/Seishinsha. 5) Battle comics © Shirow/Atlas Comix. Left: Orion ©1991 Shirow/Seishinsha.