Dark Horse Comics & AnimEigo
Release Date: Feb, 2025
The Gunsmith Cats are coming back in an omnibus collection from Dark Horse Manga! For newcomers, what’s offered is sure to please. Past editions are long out of print, and as much as I’d love to see brand-new stories happen, it’s not looking likely. Everything depends on what creator Kenichi Sonoda wants to do, especially following his attempts to reboot Bean Bandit / Riding Bean.
But for his most beloved series starring two bounty hunters, this edition collects:
- Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition vol. 1 (2007) [entire volume]
- Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition vol. 2 (2007) [p. 1-134]
or the equivelent of:
- Gunsmith Cats vol. 1: Bonnie & Clyde (1996)
- Gunsmith Cats vol. 2: Misfire (1997)
- Gunsmith Cats vol. 3: The Return of Gray (1998)
The release date for Gunsmith Cats Omnibus Volume 2 has not been announced, but it’s safe to assume that it will be next year or later in 2025.
From the Gunsmith Cats Press Release:
Rally Vincent runs Gunsmith Cats—a gun shop in Illinois, with her partner, demolitions expert and former call-girl Minnie-May Hopkins. But Rally’s “real” job doesn’t pay the bills; her hobby does. Her hobby is bounty hunting: bringing the most wanted men and women in the Chicago area to justice—dressed in her sharp suit and tie and driving her Shelby Cobra GT 500!
But Rally and Minnie-May have their work cut out for them in Gunsmith Cats Omnibus Volume 1, with corrupt lawyers and cops, fetish-fuelled hitmen, and crazed cocaine kingpins bringing the copters, the big rigs, and even the anti-tank guns onto the streets and the freeways of Chicagoland in a windshield whirlwind of double-crosses, car chases, and shootouts!
This 5.75 × 8.25” paperback omnibus, spanning 596 pages, is now available for pre-order. Secure your copy today through your local comic shop or Amazon USA at the MSRP of $29.99.
And somewhere else in the Windy City….
Riding Bean, which introduced the world to Rally Vincent as a blonde Caucasian woman, is getting a new Blu-ray release! Technically, they are the same character, but back when Kenichi Sonada conceived this world, he didn’t consider what would soon cause him to lose the creative rights. There was a feud with Toshiba EMI, and when he left and created Gunsmith Cats, he had to change how Rally looked. Although he could put Bean Bandit in this work, it seems that after this series’ success, followers of these two titles had to accept the changes.
Following the limited release of Bean Bandit (also the title of an experimental new short), it seems Rally is back to looking “All-American” instead of mix-blood (of Indian descent). Since many years have passed, maybe he came to an agreement with Toshiba to use the concept art he started with. This Kickstarter campaign is a retcon of everything he’s done to date. Minnie-May and Becky are featured. Newcomers may get lost if they have not seen Riding Bean before or know of this two series’ history.
Elsewhere, AnimEigo also offered their own crowdfunded project to get Riding Bean upgraded to Blu-ray. After their successful Kickstarter run and having all those editions go out of print, they have a new production run which includes an all-new interview with the creator (maybe he’ll explain why he reverted to the other version of Rally, since the change resulted from having a fallout with Toshiba EMI) and there are also these changes:
Added:
- German dub/sub
- Catalan dub
- New trailer
Removed:
- Commentary tracks
- Original artwork and comic
Riding Bean Promotional Trailer
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