On Sunday, Shawn, Mason and I went to HalfPrice Books and I happened to see that someone had dumped back issues of SHONEN JUMP for only a dollar a piece. We had another agenda, so I only bought a couple. But, even Shawn, who is not a fan, kept saying to me, "For only a dollar a peice? You should go back and get them all."

So I did (Still life: motherload, with cat).



There are about twenty or more issues there. Not all of them contain actual episodes of BLEACH, but a good number do, and those that don't have NARUTO, ONE PIECE, and (most importantly to me) HIKARU NO GO.

At first I thought, why do this? I mean, all of the issues have the story I've read collected in the Manga, right? Except that, there's THIS:



THE COLOR INSERT of of the Byakuya/Ichigo fight!! OMG! OMG!!



For me, that alone was worth the $20 I paid for all twenty issues. But, there are a tons of other goodies in-between the pages. Old SHONEN JUMP used to run a lot of fan art, which is always fun, a few interviews with Tite Kubo (and others) and amazing insert tidbits like this:



And color insets of some of the 'group portraits' like this one, which is Renji among the Vizards, as far as I can tell (hair color kind of gives it away, but what is he doing with them? Outside of empty_mirrors and my fic, anyway?):



(The larger version):



There's even more awesome, but I think this is probably enough BLEACH for today.