Marvel Partners with Kadokawa for Manga Publishing Program

NEWS
MARVEL PARTNERS WITH KADOKAWA FOR MANGA PUBLISHING PROGRAM
Reveals Concept Art for Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen, Daredevil, Punisher
Posted by Brigid Alverson on October 1, 2026 @ 2:47 pm CT

Marvel and Kadokawa are partnering to produce new original manga featuring Marvel superheroes, which will be published in Japan starting in 2026 on Kadokawa’s digital platform KadoComi and then collected into print volumes. No announcement has been made about English-language publication, but the publishers have released some details and preliminary character designs.

The line will include five different titles, starting with Spider-Man, by tokitokoro, and Spider-Gwen, by Ryusei Yamada. The Spider-Man manga features a new character, high school student Haruto Hachidori, who suddenly develops spider-powers and enjoys swinging through the streets of Shibuya until a dark presence awakens beneath the city. Spider-Gwen is simply Gwen Stacy, high school student and drummer in the band The Mary Janes, who gets superpowers from a spider bite and becomes the protector of her city. Marvel also released character designs, but no other information, for manga versions of Daredevil and Punisher.

Both the artists for the first two titles are known to American comics readers; tokitokoro is the artist for Marvel’s Jeff the Land Shark (see “Preview: ‘Jeff the Land Shark’ #1”), as well as the VIZ manga Lynx (written by Unico writer Samuel Sattin). Ryusei Yamada was the penciler for several Marvel Rivals comics.

Former Marvel EIC C.B. Cebulski is spearheading the initiative, in his new position as Editor, Asia Originals, and has moved to Japan to take the reins (see “New EIC at Marvel”).

Marvel had previously worked with Shueisha, the publisher of Shonen Jump, and that partnership produced a number of titles that were published by VIZ Media (see “Marvel and VIZ Team Up for ‘Marvel Meow’ and ‘Deadpool: Samurai!’”), but that contract ended on September 30, 2026, and Kadokawa is taking over as Marvel’s new Japanese partner.

Click Gallery below for concept art!

View Gallery: 8 Images
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brigid Alverson
Contributing Editor. Alverson has been writing about comics since she launched MangaBlog in 2005. She wrote the Comics A.M. column for Robot 6 (now part of CBR), and currently edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. In her earlier life, she had roles at magazine and book publishers.
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