'One Piece' Reveals New Novel Artwork, Ace's Backstory

Luffy's brother Ace is one of the most popular characters in all of One Piece, but the series never quite got the chance to explore him fully. While fans appreciated Oda's gentle touch on the character, fans have always wanted to know more about Ace.

Thanks to a newly released novel, fans are able to learn all about the character. It even features new art from series creator Eiichiro Oda himself.

One Piece novel A cover revealed (drawn by Oda himself) from r/OnePiece

The novel is set to release in Japan on April and covers important elements of Ace's back story. It's titled "Forming the Spade Pirates" and is a compilation of three of Ace's back story segments first released as part of the One Piece Magazine in Spring 2017.

The book features new content yet to be revealed by Oda and publisher Shuiesha and the cover features Ace, and characters Masked Deuce and Isca in full color. Twitter user @sandman_AP has thankfully released full summaries of the three stories included in the novel which feature Ace getting invited into the Shichibukai and even fighting a Marine Admiral when negotiations falling apart.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece's future at Jump Festa 2018. Not only will the manga see Wano sooner rather than later, the next villain of the series is "one of the legends which lurks in the One Piece world. The greatest enemy ever for Straw Hats will hinder their way...Can you believe Marineford Summit War will look 'cute' compared to that?"

The new live-action One Piece series also got some new information as it was revealed that the series will portray the Straw Hats' adventures from the very beginning, and will take place in the East Blue.

One Piece is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and FunimationNOW.