(JUAN.of.a.KIND)

Hey, Read This: Tezuka’s Black Jack

joekeatinge:

Reviewed by: Joe Keatinge / Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack, published by Vertical

In Comics, less is almost always more.

There are very few writers who can make a large amount of exposition work. There are very few artists who can successfully render the hell out of their figures and still maintain clear storytelling. You can tell what takes movies hours within a single issue. It’s possible to cover what a novel does in a hundred pages within twenty-two. Nobody proved this more often than Japan’s ‘Godfather of Anime,’ Osamu Tezuka.

Tezuka’s bound to be a name familiar with a lot of people, whether they’re into comics or not. If you’re reading this in San Francisco, you’ll probably remember his God of Manga exposition at the Asian Art Museum. If you’re not, you’ll definitely know one of his works, whether it’s Kimba the White Lion (the basis for Disney’s The Lion King), his reinterpretation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, telling the life story of Buddha or quite arguably his greatest creation, Astro Boy.

The name of his exposition in San Francisco wasn’t hyperbole; Tezuka is responsible for skyrocketing Japanese comics and animation to where it was today. Without him there’s no Katsuhiro Otomo, Masmune Shirow or even Hayao Miyazaki. Sure, those three names in particular ended up creating huge legacies for themselves, but Tezuka built the medium they went on to master.

Building the Japanese comics medium wasn’t an easy task. Tezuka did so by being insanely productive, having produced over seven hundred volumes of manga on his own (well, ‘on his own’ with a good amount of assistants), comprising almost 150,000 hand drawn pages. It’s a lot of comics.

Recently interest in his work stateside has heavily increased due to a number of reprint projects, especially by New York based publisher, Vertical. For the past few years, they have reintroduced the creator stateside with a number of reprint projects showcasing the wide variety of genres Tezuka was capable of. They’ve released his comedic samurai tale, Dororo, a frightening murder mystery, MW, the epic love story, Apollo’s Song, and all eight volumes of the aforementioned Buddha.

Vertical’s most ambitious project has been Tezuka’s long running story of an unlicensed renegade surgeon, Black Jack, with eleven volumes of a proposed seventeen released to date. Each volume covers roughly three hundred pages of material proving the point of less being more.

The proof goes beyond the obvious: Tezuka’s natural style is very selective when it comes to linework and any given story runs about an average of fifteen to twenty pages encompassing a very wide variety of subjects and genres. Throughout the eleven available volumes, Tezuka shows time and time again he’s a master of the worldwide comics medium.

When the series begins, you don’t know how Black Jack became the greatest surgeon in the world or why he refuses to get his license. All you’re aware of is he’s the only doctor people rich enough to pay his exuberant fees go to when all else fails. As time goes on, you discover more of his background, but it’s the individual episodes, which enticed me the most.

More often than not, Black Jack is the focus, but there’s a good amount of time when he’s relegated to the background, acting behind the scenes to other character’s drama. Sometimes the stories are uproariously hilarious, other times they’re absolutely frightening. All and all, it’s one of the best values on the comics market today. Each edition is a master class in how to create a comic in just about any genre imaginable.

All eleven volumes are currently in print in softcover. Additionally, Vertical produced some very limited edition hardcovers for the first three, which also include bonus stories not available anywhere else, even the Japanese editions. Tezuka had a small amount of stories he refused to have printed due to content concerns, but Vertical made it happen for the first time anywhere in the world.

I can’t implore you enough to give any of these volumes a look. Whether you’re well versed in comics or someone trying them for the first time, there’s not a better series to see a master cartoonist playing with everything the comics medium is capable of and recreating the craft along the way.

A superb review of one of the master’s greatest works. MW and Buddha are also quite amazing. And of course, Astro Boy is an icon among icons.