One Punch Man Manga (ワンパンマン Wanpanman) is a is a Japanese superhero franchise created by ONE. The webcomic started in July 2009, with more than 10 million views and 20,000 hits per day. Shueisha’s Young Jump Next picked up the series after Yusuke Murata contacted ONE and proposed to redraw the comic for digital publication as well.
The first chapter of the One Punch-Man manga was published on June 14, 2012. The manga series began publication in Viz Media’s Weekly Shonen Jump (Shonen Jump Alpha at the time) in North America on January 21, 2013. The first digital volume was released in February 2014. The manga was released for print in the United States starting on the 1st of September, 2015.
The story follows the life of an average hero named Saitama who manages to win all of his fights with just one punch. This ends up being the cause of a lot of frustration as he no longer feels the thrill and adrenaline he once felt in battle. After all, what’s so good about having overwhelming power?
One-Punch Man had 2.2 million copies in print in November 2013. The series was one of ten nominated for the seventh annual Manga Taishō Awards in 2014. The manga won the 2017 Sugoi Japan Award. As of July 2017, the manga had 13 million copies in print; by July 2019, this had grown to 20 million copies in print. As of April 2020, the series has sold over 30 million copies.
Once released in the United States, both the first and second volumes debuted on the New York Times Manga Best Sellers list, in first and second place respectively, and remained there for two weeks. Volume one dropped to second place for the third week, while volume two fell off the list altogether. In July 2019, the first volume of the series had been on the list for 71 weeks. As of November 2019, it was no longer on the list. The series was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2015, and a Harvey Award in 2016.
