KAZUO KOIKE (W) and GOSEKI KOJIMA (A)

The fighting clans of pre-Tokugawa Japan are gathering their arms and are on the move. Classic historical warlords, such as Takeda Shingen, Oda Nobunaga, and a young Ieyasu Tokugawa himself take the field in this quasi-historical graphic novel series, Path of the Assassin.

This volume of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's rich series finds Ieyasu both fighting for his life and looking to the future. First, a couple of eerie and mysterious ninja try to take his life, but find themselves foiled by the increasingly able ninja Hattori Hanzo. And then a nation's tribes face off and spin through intrigue and tactical webworks, all while fascinatingly dark ninja politics weave subtext and sexy action throughout the masterly drafted pages.