‘One Piece’ Creator Reveals Cover Art For New Ace Spin-Off

One Piece may be all about Monkey D. Luffy, but fans do have their favorites outside of the Straw Hats. For lots of readers, Portgas D. Ace remains their undisputed champion, so Eiichiro Oda threw them a bone this year. The creator signed off on a spin-off featuring Arc, and Oda just shared his artwork for the series’ second novel with fans.

However, it looks like Ace is not alone for this novel. Fans may not be too thrilled to see the pirate gracing the cover with Ace for this second novel.

As you can see below, the new cover penned by Oda sees Ace flush left while Marshall D. Teach is given a mean close-up. The gap-toothed pirate looks plenty evil in this shot, and the duo both cover an inset photo of Thatch who stands in the back.

Of course, fans can piece together what this novel will likely be about. Ace doesn’t look too pleased as he brings fire to his hands. Teach looks pretty manic himself, so readers can expect to learn more about the events leading up to the murder of Thatch. After all, One Piece did gloss over the cooks’s death. Teach murdered his Whitebeard comrade all to get a Devil Fruit, and Ace left his crew to get revenge. However, the mission goes south once Ace encounters Teach, and — well — fans know how the ‘Marineford’ act went after that.

If you are not familiar with this spin-off series, it began earlier this year. The first issue followed Ace as the boy left Luffy and formed the Spade Pirates on the high seas. The second will catch up with the pirate as he serves under Whitebeard, and there are no details about the third installment as of yet.

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.

Are you ready for this spin-off? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!