Bookshelf #39

This week's bookshelf is a manga shelf, and it's dominated by two creators, one of whom is among the most influential Japanese artists to ever put pen to paper. That is, of course, the late Akira Toriyama. On the far left we have four volumes of his Dragon Ball, volumes 13-16. Why does my collection start with the 13th volume...? Good question! If I had to guess without a more thorough investigation, I would guess that I had read the earlier parts of the series via single issues, when Viz was still publishing some manga series in floppy, stapled comic book format on a monthly basis (Note how much lighter volumes 15 and 16 are compared to volumes 13 and 14; I fear that the sun must shine through the blinds in that room in just such a way to land directly on those two volumes). After that, we have ten tankobon volumes of Dragon Ball imported from Japan, which I bought at my first Mid-Ohio Comic Con in 2000. I of course could not read them at all, but I thought they looked neat...and I…