Kodansha’s K MANGA blog has posted the first part of an interview with Joji Morikawa, the artist behind Hajime no Ippo. The interview originally ran in January 2019.
Morikawa describes submitting work for review at 15, working as an assistant during high school and landing his first serialization at about 18, which was cancelled after five chapters.
Hajime no Ippo took about a year of drafts and roughly 1,000 pages to develop, shifting along the way from amateur boxing to professional. The series began in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1989 and is still running. A second part is on the way, with no date given.
Source: K MANGA
