Ever wanted to see your favourite Arsenal stars in comic-book form? Well now you can!
Ahead of last summer’s Asia Tour, we depicted Arsenal captain Thomas Vermaelen as a Shaolin Kung-Fu master after being inspired by the incredible banners we had seen on our previous visit to the Far East.
We received such an amazing response that we decided to do something similar ahead of our tour games in Japan this summer. So what better way to commemorate our trip to the Land of the Rising Sun than to create some very special manga designs of the Arsenal squad?
"I based Theo's suit loosely on the long-running Gundam franchise, the main protagonists in which are usually heroic youngsters with access to gigantic exo-suits"
Morgan Lewis
Manga is a Japanese comic art form depicting a wide-ranging set of genres, including action, romance, sports, fantasy, historical drama and horror. It is hugely popular, appealing to people of all ages and every level of society and the industry is worth hundreds of billions. It also has a significant worldwide audience and is especially popular in Europe, the Middle East and the United States.
We worked with artist Morgan Lewis to create a series of designs - and will be revealing one each day for the rest of the week, starting with Theo Walcott. The England international is pictured in a battle suit, a popular image in Japanese comics and cartoons.
“I based Theo's suit loosely on the long-running Gundam franchise (a personal childhood favourite), the main protagonists in which are usually heroic youngsters with access to gigantic exo-suits,” Morgan explains.
“Since the comics and TV shows in which these suits feature are usually concerned with war or violence of one kind or another, it was important to keep anything resembling weaponry out of the design!”
Theo Walcott
Now we want to see YOUR manga creations of the Arsenal squad - all for the chance to win a very special prize!
Simply send your design to @Arsenal or @OfficialAFC_JP on Twitter, using the hashtag #ArsenalManga, and we will publish a selection on the website and Facebook. Not only that - the winner will receive a signed copy of the Arsene Wenger animation created by our designer!
So start working on your unique images of the Arsenal players - you have until Monday, July 8 to enter our competition. Good luck!
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