Despite only being 26 episodes (and a movie), Cowboy Bebop is one of the most loved anime of all time, at least in the West. Fans can easily find themselves wanting more, though, and for those most dedicated of fans, there's still a Cowboy Bebop manga to check out.
Most anime series are based on a manga which was written before, but Cowboy Bebop was always intended to be an anime first. Bebop actually did have a manga shortly before the release of the anime, known as Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star, although it's very much its own thing. More importantly, there's a second manga which is probably more what fans are looking for: additional one-off stories, just like episodes of the series, which feature the crew interacting and doing their thing.
The Cowboy Bebop manga began in October 1998, and ran until February 2000, starting after the series debuted and ending well after the series ended. Written by Yutaka Nanten, each chapter tells a stand-alone tale of Cowboy Bebop's heroes hunting down a new bounty head, often focusing on one character. Stories in these chapters include a jailbreak, a reporter embedding herself with the Bebop, and a run-in with an old partner of Faye's. The art style is a bit different from that of the series; the manga actually ran in the magazine Monthly Asuka Fantasy DX, a shojo (young girls) manga magazine, and thus has a style more like that of other shojo series, like Sailor Moon. The differences are most pronounced with Cowboy Bebop's Faye, but aren't so major that they should disrupt anyone's ability to enjoy the manga.
Is the Cowboy Bebop Manga Any Good?
The Cowboy Bebop manga was collected into 3 volumes of 11 chapters. The entire cast is present for most chapters, suggesting these stories are set after Edward joined Bebop crew in episode 9, "Jamming with Edward." The quality of the chapters is a bit lower than that of the main series; for example, one story deals with a modified playing card taken from a casino and Jet's past as a cop, essentially mixing the plot of "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Ganymede Elegy." Another features a rather unfortunate bit of Gay Panic, as Spike discovers his jailbreak target dresses like a woman and wants to be called Marilyn. In that way, the manga feels more dated than the anime, although the dialog seems to capture the spirit of the characters quite well. As with many manga from the late 90s and early 2000s, Cowboy Bebop has been out of print for a long time, and is extremely expensive to acquire as a result. Given its quality and that difficulty, it's probably not worth it for most people to try to track down the manga.
For those most dedicated fans, however, the Cowboy Bebop manga represents a rarely seen corner of the Cowboy Bebop franchise, and that just might make it worth a look on its own.