It’s been a while since I last covered the indie manga, Monsters We Make. A passion project created by popular YouTuber CoryxKenshin, it was first announced after a year-long hiatus that ended in December 2024. The first volume of Monsters We Make was announced through an official YouTube upload on the creator’s channel with a promotional video animated by BAFTA-nominated studio, THE LINE (Marvel SNAP, Overwatch, Gorillaz) and released on December 16, 2024, on the official website.
The official Monsters We Make synopsis is as follows:
“For Jabari Booker, New Edyn Academy promised a future of music and mastery. But on his first day, that promise shatters into a nightmare. As he’s dragged deeper into the abyss, he realizes that true horror awaits at the end of the broken road. To survive, he must battle not only New Edyn’s monsters but also the corruption festering within its walls.”
What is Monsters We Make?
Monsters We Make is an American action-horror manga from the creative mind of CoryxKenshin, who is celebrated as one of the world’s foremost storytellers because of his editing in action gaming and horror and has 21.5 million YouTube channel subscribers and 8.5 billion cumulative video views. The YouTube creator injects his storytelling expertise while drawing on childhood inspirations from the iconic anime Dragon Ball Z to modern titles like Attack on Titan, allowing him to share his creative vision with the world through a medium he loves and grew up with.
“Monsters We Make is a playground for me to exercise all the ideas and life experiences I’ve collected from the decades of being a spectator,” said Cory. “Creating a story that scrutinizes humanity and what makes us tick, injecting some of the Black representation I’ve been longing to see in this space, and finally adding in some sprinkles of my faith in God, were the driving forces behind this project. It meant a lot to me to see a character like The Raikage from Naruto in a space where you don’t typically see Black characters, let alone powerful ones. My hope is that my main character, Jabari, can be to people what Goku was to me growing up. This experience, while a ton of work, has been incredibly fun and fulfilling.”
New Edyn Press announces Monsters We Make sold over 200,000 units
On April 8, 2025, New Edyn Press announced that the first volume had sold over 200,000 physical units within its first week of release on December 16, 2024, marking the series one of the fastest-selling independently published manga in the United States. Building on this explosive success, Monsters We Make Volume 2 is set to publish later this year and an in-store release is in discussion.
Have you read Monsters We Make volume 1? Do you plan to get volume 2? Let us know down in the comments! Until next time!
For more news on Monsters We Make, check out my previous Beat article on the announcement. For more additional info you can follow the project’s official X/Twitter account or check out their website.
