Volume 2: The Key to His Power

Volume 2 is where the series started to move away from monster-of-the-week gags, to instead develop something resembling a narrative. Saitama teams up with Genos and begins to make a name for himself, attracting the attention of the evil House of Evolution and his new "rival" Speed-o'-Sound Sonic. Here we go!

Chapter 11

So we're actually gonna skip ahead a few chapters, because not much is changed in the beginning. We're gonna skip right up to Saitama's encounter with the dangerous Carnage Kabuto, which still has one of the best punchlines in the series imo.

Carnage Kabuto looks a little more ferocious in these redrawn panels:

Original

Volume 2

(Btw, I'll try to get rid of most of the text when I upload the art, but in some panels it's impractical to remove and I won't bother; sorry, I'm not getting paid to do this lol).

And that's it for the House of Evolution! Guess Murata was already pretty satisfied.

Chapter 12

Now for the introduction of Speed-o'-Sound Sonic, whose arc is also hilarious. I kinda miss these comedy-focused stories from the good old days. We've got plenty of time to discuss that though.

Here there are some minor corrections to details such as Sonic's outfit and the sky:

Original	Volume 2
Original	Volume 2

Chapter 13

A funny alteration for this next page is making King the one who sees Zeniru's poop-house get destroyed; a nice little treat for anyone rereading the manga after seeing King is an S-Class hero. Tbh I really don't get the poop-house gag, it must be funnier in Japanese.

Original

Volume 2

Sonic's "innocent" smile is made creepier and given a lot more attention here. It ends up influencing the page after it, so I've included that one as well. This also includes the first alteration to a double-page spread so far.

Original	Volume 2
Original	Volume 2

Chapter 15

Now here's one of the most interesting differences between the original online and volume releases: the flipbook pages.

In the originals, Murata sometimes tried this cool pseudo-animation technique by drawing lots of different pages of the same action, almost like an animation at a low framerate. Understandably, he couldn't include these in the volumes - printing several double-page spreads for a single action would be very inefficient - so they've been condensed into just a couple panels for the physical releases. I understand why the flipbook pages had to be cut, but I think they're really unique and it's a shame they couldn't pull it off. (If Captain Underpants did it, maybe One-Punch Man should've tried too? lol).

So here are the original pages of Sonic darting around Saitama:

Original	Original	Original
Original	Original	Original
Original	Original	Original
Original

Yup, Murata drew ten pages dedicated to just Sonic jumping around. That's dedication. Here's an animated version so you can follow along:

Very impressive work.

Now here's the condensed version from the volume:

Volume 2

It's still a pretty interesting and dynamic page, but it just doesn't have the same unique charm as the flipbook pages. Oh well, I assume Murata did his best with what he had. Also, it looks like Saitama might still have his red cape from the old days of the manga? Interesting to note.

And that's all for Volume 2!