The September 2021 issue of Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine kicked off a “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” series in commemoration of the Dragon Ball franchise’s upcoming 40th anniversary. The celebration aims to have different artists all contribute their own spin on the original 42 tankōbon covers, with the images and an accompanying comment published as the magazine’s back cover.
Following the previous eight entries, this month’s May 2022 issue brings us Hiroshi Shiibashi (Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan) and their take on the series’ 6th volume cover:
Shiibashi commented:
When I was little, I was the kind of kid that would just go to the bookstore and get the latest volume of whichever series I wanted at the moment, not once thinking about starting from volume 1. This is why the first Dragon Ball comic I ever bought was volume 7, the one with the fight against General Blue. I remember wondering for a while about what might have happened in the previous volumes. When I finally managed to get my hands on volume 6, I excitedly thought to myself: “so there were all these super fun battles before, huh?” I really liked the battle with Ninja Murasaki, so I wonder what kind of face that kid that was still in the first year of primary school would have made if he heard that he would one day draw the cover for volume 6, the one that contains that battle…?
Saikyō Jump is currently a monthly magazine published in Japan by Shueisha under the “Jump” line of magazines. The magazine began as a quarterly publication in 2012, went monthly in 2013, went bimonthly in late-2014, and returned to a monthly format last fall (including a digital release for the first time). The magazine’s focus is spin-off and supplementary manga series aimed at a young audience, while also including game promotions, news coverage, and more. The magazine currently serializes content such as Yoshitaka Nagayama’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultra God Mission!!!! manga series, Yūji Kasai’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Avatars!! manga series, and the Dragon Ball GT Anime Comic. For calendar year 2019, Shueisha reported Saikyō Jump‘s circulation down at 130,000, with readership as 58.5% upper elementary school, 28% lower middle school, 11% middle school, and 2.5% high school or older.