One-shot (comics)

[2] In the marketing industry, some one-shots are used as promotion tools that tie in with existing productions, films, video games or television shows.

[1] In the Japanese manga industry, one-shots are called yomikiri (読み切り), a term which implies that the comic is presented in its entirety without any continuation.

[3][better source needed] One-shot manga are often written for contests, and sometimes later developed into a full-length series, much like a television pilot.

Many popular manga series began as one-shots, such as Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Berserk, Kinnikuman, Attack on Titan and Death Note.

This type of one-shot is not to be confused with a comic book annual, which is typically a companion publication to an established ongoing series.

[6] Most modern era one-shot manga (yomikiri 読み切り) have independent settings, characters, and storylines, rather than sharing them with existing works.

[2] Influenced by the chaos of social revolutions and changings in the 20th century, Western alternative comic art was quickly developed as well as 1970s and 1980s' America.

[8] On the other side of the coin, in Europe, magazine format was developed as a comic supplement of newspapers along European features and never lost the identification.