Last year, Viz Media announced Ultimo, their first ever manga collaboration between an American creator, the legendary Marvel creator Stan Lee, and a Japanese creator, Hiroyuki Takei. Takei is the creator of the shonen manga, Shaman King, a series totaling with 32 volumes and a 64-episode anime adaptation. Takei appeared at this past weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con to promote the American release of Ultimo where PW Comics Week sat down and spoke with him. Takanori Asada, Takei’s editor and the editor of Ultimo in Japan, was also present to add his own perspective and to assist in answering questions. Translation was provided by Viz Media and Misaki Kido.

PW Comics Week: Stan Lee is very popular in American comics. Were you familiar with his work before this project? If so, which comics were you familiar with?

Hiroyuki Takei: Of course. Everybody knows about Spider-Man.

PWCW: Did you use any of his characters as inspiration for Ultimo?

HT: Not so much, I wasn’t aware of those type of characters. But when I was coming up with the color concept, I knew that I wanted to use red.

PWCW: Why red?

HT: There were a few aspects behind my color choice, one of the reasons is this color is the color of [Stan Lee’s] signature character, Spider-Man. What I had in mind for Ultimo when I started is inspiration from Astroboy which contains red in the color scheme as well. Lastly, it’s the color of the Japanese crane. [Red] is a popular color in Japanese style drawing and illustration.

PWCW: Was Ultimo a collaboration between you and Mr. Lee?

HT: Definitely.

PWCW: I imagine that your approach to this script was different from your approach to your own work. Can you tell our readers a little about this?

HT: It wasn’t so different from working on my own series because Stan Lee had a great understanding of the different creation process in Japan. I was able to work freely on this one.

Asada: There were pretty detailed and specific requests from Stan Lee for themes and such for the series and Mr. Takei takes it into consideration and takes it from there.

PWCW: Have there been any disagreements regarding these requests?

HT: So far, there has been no incidence like that.

PWCW: The look of your art in Ultimo is a bit different from that in Shaman King. Were you going for a different aesthetic since this was a collaboration?

HT:In terms of the aesthetic of the character, I don’t think it was different from Shaman King but since I’m a creator who continues to look into new styles, the design of Ultimo might have become different from Shaman King. When I started to work on Ultimo, I was working on the Kanzen-Ban of Shaman King—which is the complete edition. So I when was working on them simultaneously, I felt that they were more or less similar.

PWCW: Did you read Spider-Man in the past?

HT: I can’t quite give credit and say that I grew up with Spider-Man.

Asada: The popularity of American comics in Japan came later than when Mr. Takei was growing up.

PWCW: Mr. Asada, what did you enjoy about the collaboration between Stan Lee and Mr. Takei?

Asada:It was definitely great to work with two creators with incredible talent. It makes me happy as an editor. This is the first time I’ve work with a famous creator from America, and I received ideas from him that I’ve never heard of or seen before—completely original.