COMICS / MANGA

You can find a listing of where to buy many of these in the Buyer’s Guide.

ENGLISH COMICS

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Dreamwave Productions
These comics are original stories involving the original series and a touch of the X series of the games. There weren’t many of them because the company producing them (Dreamwave Productions) evidently went belly-up shortly after the series started. The story in the volume that was produced revolves around Mega Man attending school with human children.
Archie Comics
These are serial comics that have artwork that is fairly close to some Capcom art. The plot follows the games to some degree (starting at the beginning with Mega Man 1 with a touch of Powered Up thrown in) but definitely also goes off on its own. This series is presently on-going as of this writing. It is largely comical (pun both intended and not intended), but does have some serious plot elements.
Mega Man NT Warrior
Viz picked up the license to translate the Japanese EXE manga, listed below. They seem to have preserved the manga storyline, but they use the phrase and name changes that the Mega Man NT Warrior TV show had to make. This makes them resemble the cartoons a bit more than the games. But then they always did, since, like the anime, the manga pay more attention to some of the plot devices in the games than the games themselves do. It’s interesting to note that Viz preserved the right-to-left reading order of the manga, which isn’t something that bothers me, but it does surprise me a little. Needless to say, if you pick one of these up, turn it over and read it from the other side. You’ll get used to it quickly.
Mega Man Megamix
Udon, responsible for the art book translations, are also bringing over some of the old Rockman manga that you see mentioned below. They seem to be translated fairly well. Even the sound effects are translated, which is heartening to see, though sometimes they just put the English on top of the existing Japanese, but at least in this case the English is actually big enough to notice, not just tiny little letters that you never see, which is a point in their favor.
Mega Man Gigamix
This is a sort of late-coming continuation of Megamix in many ways, translated to English by the same company. As with Megamix, the stories are largely silly (sometimes to the point of near-absurdity), but they’re not without some serious events as well. The first few pages of the first volume of Gigamix alone are chock full of Capcom in-jokes. We have Reaverbots fighting NormalNavis and there’s even a Phoenix Wright reference thrown in.
Mega Man ZX
Translation of the Rockman ZX manga below, which is, of course, a take-off on the Mega Man ZX game. This adaptation takes a slightly more light/fluffy/cute tact than the game, but otherwise follows the plot reasonably closely (and it even has energy meters—no joke!). They chose to use Vent, which doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Captain N — The Game Master
Although there are comics based off the Captain N cartoon shows, Mega Man is not in the Captain N comics. I mention them here only to make this point. Apparently the company who published the comics could not or would not arrange for royalties to use trademarked characters from any other company but Nintendo. Thus, characters from third party games such as Mega Man and Simon Belmont are out.

JAPANESE MANGA

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In Japan, comics are referred to as “manga” and they are often more along the lines of graphic novels. Most manga are black and white paperback issues and volumes. Mega Man has a small collection of manga written with their own style and flair. They seem to have been made by third parties with permission from Capcom, meaning they don’t always (okay, almost never) exactly follow the games.

Here’s a list of manga that I know of (though this list is surely incomplete):

  • Rockman (1)
  • Rockman 2 (“Dr. Wily’s Scheme”)
  • Rockman 4
  • Rockman 5 vol. 1-2
  • Rockman 6 vol. 1-3
  • Rockman 7 vol. 1-3
  • Rockman 8 vol. 1-2 (vol. 3 planned, but never published)
  • Rockman & Forte vol. 1-2
  • Blues’ Resurrection
    An original story chronicling a clone of Blues (Proto Man).
  • Irregular Hunter Rockman X vol. 1-2
  • Rockman X vol. 1-3
    There are evidently two adaptations of the first X game.
  • Rockman X2 vol. 1-3
  • Rockman X3 vol. 1-4
  • Rockman X4 vol. 1-2 (more planned, but never published)
  • Rockman X5 vol. 1-2 (Chinese only I believe)
  • Battle Network Rockman EXE vol. 1-13?
    The EXE manga seems to pay more attention to the plot devices of the games than the games themselves do.
  • Rockman Zero vol. 1-?
  • Rockman ZX vol. 1-?
  • Ryusei no Rockman vol. 1-?
  • Rockman World 1 & 2 (Game Boy adaptation)
    This manga combines the first two Game Boy games into one story.
  • Rockman World 3 (Game Boy adaptation)
  • Rockman Megamix
    A collection of original stories which tend to be on the wacky/silly side.
  • Rockman Megamix 2
  • Rockman Remix
    This includes some of Megamix.
  • Rockman Gigamix
  • Taiyo Shonen Django vol. 4
    Not strictly Rockman, but this is a Boktai manga that includes a crossover with Rockman.EXE.

Thanks to Maru, paperacechase, and Luna Hikari for additions to this list.