20th Century Boys

Naoki Urasawa's sprawling, 22-issue epic for Panini Deutschland weaves a masterful thriller that spans decades, following a group of childhood friends whose innocent clubhouse fantasies of a villainous cult eerily become reality. Co-written with Takashi Nagasaki and Josef Shanel, this 2000s series layers mystery and paranoia across its long-running narrative, as a grown man races to stop a catastrophic plot that mirrors the game he invented as a boy. Urasawa's clean, expressive art grounds the escalating suspense, making this a landmark of mature, character-driven manga storytelling.