One Pound Gospel was created to celebrate the debut of of Shogakukan's new magazine Young Sunday much as Maison Ikkoku was for Big Comic Spirits. Though the series was not published regularly, it typically appeared every few years and eventually reached its conclusion.

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Irregular Publication in Young Sunday (ヤングサンデー)

One Pound Gospel is unique in that it is Takahashi's only multi-part series to run in Young Sunday. Young Sunday began its publication as a bi-weekly magazine and author Rumiko Takahashi had a relationship with the magazine from its very first issue in March of 1986. Four months later in Young Sunday 1987 Volume 9, serialization of the first storyline Hakari no ue no mayoeru kohitsuji (The Sinner and the Scale) began. If your average Rumiko Takahashi fan were to pick up an issue of Young Sunday they may be shocked to see that One Pound Gospel is the exception rather than the rule of other series published in the magazine. While the familiar imagery of Mitsuru Adachi's Short Program works and Birdy the Mighty by Masami Yuuki are shonen magazine staples, series like Peach by noted ecchi artist U-Jin and Sex by Atsushi Kamijo feature graphic sex scenes in virtually every chapter. An innocent work like Takahashi's begins to feel a bit out of place in the magazine. Virtually every cover of the magazine features a scantily clad bikini model rather than the featured manga of the week, the exception to this seems to be when One Pound Gospel appears, as this is a very big event and the editors absolutely want to feature it on the cover.

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Tankobon (単行本)

After the chapters have been published in Young Sunday they are collected into small books called tankobon. A tankobon is a collection of 9 to 10 chapters. While most weekly series have a tankobon released every four months or so, because One Pound Gospel was published so sporadically it took much longer. For instance, while the first chapters of volume four were originally published in 1998, they were not collected into tankoban until 2007. Additionally the color pages that were initially published in Young Sunday are converted to gray scale in the tankobons. One Pound Gospel was collected into 4 tankobon volumes in total.

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Art Books

One Pound Gospel has never had an art book dedicated solely to it, however artwork from the series has appeared in two art books focusing on Takahashi's overall career. A number of artbooks have also been released that feature all of Rumiko Takahashi's work and are not focused solely on one series. Of those: Rumiko Takahashi Exhibition - It's a Rumic World (高橋留美子展 It's a Rumic World/Takahashi Rumiko Ten It's a Rumic World) was published in 2007 and sold at the gallery exhibition of her work that ran in Japan from July 30th - August 11th of that year. It features color artwork from Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, One Pound Gospel, Mermaid Saga and a number of her short stories. One of the best overall overviews of Takahashi's career is Rumic World 35 which is a three volume boxset comprising All Star, Showtime and the collected children's manga MOON, The Great Pet King. The first two volumes mentioned contain character profiles, items, locations and color art for all of her series up to Kyokai no Rinne to celebrate 35th anniversary of her debut.

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Foreign Editions

Rumiko Takahashi's works are published in a variety of languages. The American distribution rights are handled by Viz Media, one of the leading manga and anime companies in the United States. Viz is owned by Shogakukan and Shueisha. In America two chapters were published each month and then later collected into a graphic novel, which usually contains the same material as a tankoban, but in a larger format. Eventually Viz gave up on the monthly comic book format, and instead brought began bringing out the series every few months in a format much more similar to the Japanese tankoban releases. One Pound Gospel has also been published in Germany and Italy as well.

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