Gunsmith Cats: Mister V
Manga artist Kenichi Sonoda has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in animation and science-fiction manga, but the Tokyo-based artist hit his true stride as a creative force when he dreamed up a single illustration of two women for a friend's manga fanzine. This striking drawing showed two women - one tall and serious, the other tiny and mischievous - each armed to the hilt and looking for action. So was born the idea for Sonoda's influential manga series Gunsmith Cats, which launched in Japan's Afternoon magazine in 1991. Ten years later, this action-packed crime series about two irrepressible bounty-hunting women is one of the most popular manga in America, published by the Oregon-based Dark Horse Comics. Gunsmith Cats fans can find an entire series of animé feature films based on the popular manga at video stores the world over, and Dark Horse boasts XX of the scintillating and sexy graphic novels as part of its manga line.