Synopses & Reviews
A world class hit man, the ultimate Professional fulfills contracts under the alias of "GOLGO13". Without allegiance to any group, cause, or nation, he follows his own personal code when choosing "jobs". And once he accepts a contract, it is always honored.
A true professional, GOLGO13 is an expert marksman familiar with most of the world's military hardware and master of several of the more lethal Oriental matial arts. Fluent in at least thirteen languages, GOLGO13 is able to slip in and out of even hostile nations without detection.
Victims, they never know what hit them.
Synopsis
Golgo 13, the world's greatest assassin for hire, never fails a job and never sees his clients again, unless they try and betray him.
Synopsis
Assassination through space and time
For four decades, Golgo 13 has been the world's greatest assassin for hire--sometimes to settle a private score, and sometimes to change history His real name and nationality are unknown--but his legend is everywhere. G13 never fails a job, and never sees his clients again--unless they try to betray him
One Minute Past Midnight
1998: Security on death row has never been tighter, as ex-CIA agent Henry Mitchell prepares for his fate. But if a lethal injection awaits him, why is Golgo needed to execute the sentence? Then, in 1981, Pope John Paul II survives an attempt on his life--or does he? To uncover the conspiracy that lies behind the missing pontiff, Golgo 13 will need two million dollars, a rifle, a revolver...and a priest's robe Plus FILE 13 reveals why Golgo has sex before a mission, his international list of partners, and the secrets of his technique
About the Author
Takao Saito was born in Osaka on November 3, 1936. Ten years younger than Osamu Tezuka (Phoenix, Adolf: A Tale of the Twentieth Century), Saito grew up reading him as part of Japan's own first postwar generation of manga fans. In the 1950s and 60s, however, Saito and his peers such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi (The Push Man & Other Stories) began to find an artistic voice of their own, creating adult-oriented graphic novels and magazine stories for the gekiga ("drama pictures") movement, whose name set itself apart from "manga"--a term then still associated only with works suitable for children.
Gekiga style gradually made itself respected within the manga industry as a whole, and by 1965 Takao Saito was well-known enough to be asked to create the authorized manga adaptation of Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels, an experience that prepared him well for Saito's own creation, Golgo 13, a ruthless secret agent out not for his country, but for himself: a reflection of the darkening era of Vietnam, political assassinations, and Watergate. Since its premiere in the January 1969 issue of Big Comic magazine (home of Viz's multiple Eisner-award nominated Eagle), Golgo 13 has remained topical, growing into a phenomenon even by manga standards, with 137 volumes in Japan to date and total sales of well over 200 million.
A longtime publisher as well as an artist, Takao Saito formed his own production company in 1960, that by 1974 developed into Leed Co. Ltd, which continues today to put out its own line of manga, books, and contemporary-interest magazines. Leed was itself an early pioneer of the American manga market, in 1986 releasing its own four-volume English-language edition of Golgo 13 graphic novels for distribution in the U.S.--a full year before American companies began to publish manga on a regular basis in comic book format, and more than fifteen years before the Japanese graphic novel format would become standard in the U.S. manga industry.