Oh! My Goddess - English

The English version of Ah! My Goddess is distributed by Dark Horse Comics. Dark Horse decided to use the title Oh! My Goddess figuring the pun on the phrase "oh my God" would be more charming.

Originally, Oh My Goddess was released in standard comic book format. While still black and white, the entire thing had to be mirrored as the Japanese read read right to left. This creates a barrior to entry, since it's often harder to get into a comic that is already started. If it seems puzzling why Dark Horse would have started with comics instead of manga collections, keep in mind that when they first started, NO ONE released manga collections. This was a new market. It's easy to take this sort of thing for granted now, but trying to release manga in the America in general was an uphill battle and many had their doubts it would even work. The first issue was published in 1994, and currently this makes Oh My Goddess the longest running manga series in America.

Dark Horse continued to release Oh My Goddess in comic book format for a number of years, but market conditions had changed considerably. For instance you generally only have one run of comic book prints, and after that they're more like a rare commodity and a pain in the ass to collect. In contrast manga collections were now an established market, and easy to print in segments. Also people completely new to the series could easily pick up the entire story from volume 1 with little trouble. So not surprisingly they changed gears to releasing Oh My Goddess as manga collections, and the comic book format is no longer printed.

An ordinary issue of Oh! My Goddess costs $2.95 .

Manga collections are priced at $11.95