Barefoot Gen question

[Jet_Jaguar]

I'm currently reading the four volumes of Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen that are currently available in English (I was able to check them out at the library at the university I attend), and I was intrigued by the comment that Gen's mother makes somewhere in the second volume that everyone has at least four doubles somewhere in the world. Is this something that comes from Japanese folklore?

[Jet_Jaguar]

While we're on the subject, does anyone know why only four of the ten volumes of Barefoot Gen are available in English? In one of the Last Gasp volumes, a foreword mentions that the magazine that originally serialized Barefoot Gen for some reason canceled it, and the remainder of the series was published in a couple of lower-profile magazines. If I had to guess, I'd say that volumes 5-10 are tied up by some kind of copyright issue. Does anyone know if this is the case?

I'd like to read more of this series, but I don't really like the Last Gasp editions, so I'd be pleased if another company picked up the rest of the series. I got tired of the cheap-looking computer-generated Comic Sans MS lettering, and I really got sick of characters constantly going "WAAAAHHH!" when they break down in tears.

[Stan Sakai]

I was frustrated that the story never ended myself. I first came across it in the comic book "I Saw It", then later in two volumes published by Project Gen. I have a volume by another publisher that printed the second part of Book 2 and continued the story for another 100 pages.

I'm particularly interested because my father's side of my family comes from Hiroshima and my mother from Nagasaki, the two targets.

[Jet_Jaguar]

It looks like Last Gasp is finally releasing some more volumes of Barefoot Gen. Barnes & Noble lists April 1 as the release date for volumes 5 and 6.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookse ... custreview

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookse ... 0867195972