Astra is an 8-part manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 mini-series collaboration between American Golden Age

Golden Age of Comic Books

The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s...

 Batman

Batman

Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...

artist Jerry Robinson

Jerry Robinson

Jerry Robinson is an American comic book artist best known for his work on DC Comics' Batman line of comics during the 1940s.He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004.-Career:...

 and American singer/songwriter Sidra Cohn along with Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese manga artist

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

 Shojin Tanaka and Ken-ichi Oishi. Astra was originally conceived as a theatrical musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 and represents one of the few instances of Americans collaborating with Japanese to create a true manga, as opposed to Amerimanga, which is Americans drawing in the manga style.

Plot

Astra is a girl from the planet of Eros whose Amazonian race of women have evolved to the point where they only bear females. The entire male population having been wiped out for centuries and their sperm supply running out, she must set off to Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 to find a sperm donor.

It should be pointed out that, despite the storyline, Astra is not an H manga.

American release

The American release of Astra #1 had two different covers which were shipped in equal amounts. The original cover was drawn by Shojin Tanaka and the alternative cover was drawn by American Jim Balent

Jim Balent

Jim Balent is an American comic book illustrator from Pennsylvania. He is perhaps best known for his long run on Catwoman between 1993 and 1999...

. Additionally, there were 500 limited edition copies signed by Jerry Robinson that retailed for $29.95 (the normal editions were $2.95).

While the American release consisted of eight standard comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

s, the Japanese version was released in a single tankōbon

Tankobon

, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series , though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...

.

Astra was turned into an American off-Broadway musical of the same name that ran in summer of 2007.