Editor's Sidebar: Where we hear directly from VIZ editors about series they're working on.

Taiyo Matsumoto, the Eisner Award-winning author of Tekkonkinkreet, took his pen to paper for a very special and unique story told in his signature indie art style in the spring of 2011. This fall, the Eisner-nominated and Slate Cartoonist Studio Prize-winning series concludes.

What is Sunny? It’s a car.

It’s the power of imagination and hope to triumph over life’s serious challenges.

And when you are a kid in group foster care, struggling to find your place in a world where your family doesn’t look like what the world says it’s supposed to, there is nothing more powerful than the ability to make your own reality.

Whether Sunny’s focus is on troublemaker Haru, whose hair has gone an unnatural white from stress, and now turns his irrepressible spirit towards skipping school and terrorizing other kids…

…or new kid Sei, withdrawn and slowly slipping into desperation that his parents will never return for him…

…or orphan Megumu burdened with memories of a loving family and trying to be normal…

…or angry Kiko, bitter at the world but strong and defensive of her peers…

…or artistic and musically-inclined Junsuke, who can’t color inside the lines but safely guides his little brother…

…the children of Star Kids Home’s realistic and relatable struggle for ownership of their own lives reminds us all of the impossibility of human life without affection, love and family—no matter where you find it.

Fans of Tekkonkinkreet will find many common themes in Sunny: childhood, deep and soul-penetrating friendship, loss, yearning, innocence, imagination. But while Tekkonkinkreet is an exuberant and fantastical interpretation of these themes, Sunny is the contemplative return to them by someone with more distance and perspective.

Additionally, in Sunny, Matsumoto offers a broader spectrum of human experience, most notably fleshing out female friendships and exploring troubles faced by people at different ages and abilities. Because Matsumoto’s work is so original and true, the experience of reading Sunny is deeply personal and incredibly moving. You will cry while reading, I guarantee it. But you will also laugh and feel joy.

Sunny is more than a car. Sunny is childhood writ both large and small, and a tour-de-force read at any age.