Viz

VIZ was founded in San Francisco in 1986 by Seiji Horibuchi, to publish Japanese manga in English at a time when almost nobody was. Early releases were issued as monthly comics and flipped to read left-to-right, on the assumption that American readers would not accept the original format.

That assumption was abandoned, and the collected-volume format read right-to-left became the industry standard. VIZ Media took its present form in 2005 from a merger of the publishing and media arms.

It is jointly owned by the Japanese publishers whose material it licenses, which is why its catalog includes so much of the best-known work from Shueisha and Shogakukan.