By Osamu Tezuka translated by Camelia Nieh (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-28-6
God of Manga Osamu Tezuka died in 1989, but with the exploits of outlaw super-surgeon Black Jack he created a blend of lone wolf hero, troubled genius, passionate outsider and amoral humanitarian who is more contemporary now than he ever was in the 1970s when these tales first surfaced in Japan. Combining the indomitable will of Conan and Doc Savage with the intellect of Sherlock Holmes and ambivalent, if intuitive drive of Dr. Gregory House, the unlicensed mercenary medic endured public condemnation and professional scorn, experiencing every genre of storytelling as he smashed all those barriers at the frontier of medicine.
Horror, adventure, science-fiction and straight-out cops and robbers all play a major part in this second collection of tales which leads off with a breathtaking chase story as a broken instrument shard is lost in a patient’s bloodstream, and roaring through his arteries to an inevitable, lethal rendezvous with the heart. Even with all his legendary skill the scar-faced Ronin of the O.R. learns a salutary lesson from ‘Needle’…
‘Granny’ is a heart-rending depiction of family ingratitude and the power of obligations with Black Jack almost reduced to a subsidiary role whilst ‘The Ballad of the Killer Whale’ is a bleak peek into the tragic doctor’s early life that mixes dark reality with fairytale delights. A moment of kindness between two strangers and a catastrophic gas main explosion leads the lone doctor into a fragile truce with the police inspector who has arrested him for practising without a licence in the intriguing ‘To Each his Own’ but the resolute misanthrope within the ronin resurfaces when he is trapped in a new super-skyscraper’s ‘Emergency Shelter’ with a band of top financiers and social leaders. Anybody not read Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm?
‘Dirtjacked’ finds Black Jack trapped with a busload of kids in a collapsed tunnel under a mountain and forced to make an impossible decision. What’s truly terrifying is the apparent ease with which makes it…
‘Where art Thou, Friend?’ is another lesson in brotherhood and the effects of racism as more of the solitary surgeon’s past is revealed. When the boy Kuro’o suffered a horrendous accident, it necessitated vast reconstructive surgery and an extreme skin-grafts (as a result, the scarred, patchwork boy was mercilessly abused by his classmates for years). His schools friends were asked by the great surgeon Dr. Honma to donate small portions of skin for grafting but only the ostracised “mixed blood” boy Takashi was willing to endure the pain and loss of perfect skin.
Now Kuro’o has grown into Black Jack, and he has one final chance to see what became of the outcast who changed his life…
In ‘Kidnapping’ the outlaw is operating on the President of a Third World Republic when his little girl Pinoko is snatched by terrorists who demand that he stops… or else. As a Samurai of Surgery his code won’t allow him to comply with their orders; but can there possibly be a third alternative?
‘Assembly Line Care’ is a well-aimed pop at cut-rate, efficiency-driven medical care in a hospital operating on absolute time-and-motion principles. Yet even with all these inbuilt efficiencies Fukuroku Hospital is in a profits down-spiral. Their solution is to declare war on Black Jack, but when the Hospital Director’s daughter in run over does he have the courage of his conveyor-belt convictions or will he come crawling…?
When a dedicated young salary-man clears Black Jack of trumped-up charges in ‘Helping Each Other’ the renegade doctor acknowledges an eternal debt of honour, but soon has ample opportunity to repay it when the man’s bosses frame him for embezzlement and order him to commit suicide to save the company’s “Face.” When he refuses the Director’s help him along – until Black Jack intervenes….
‘Stradivarius’ finds a jet-full of travellers crashed in the Arctic, among them the World’s greatest violinist and the planet’s greatest outlaw surgeon. In a place where frostbite can take your fingers in an instant how could anybody risk their talents and their lives hunting for a lost violin? This compelling tale of obsession is followed by a bittersweet comedy as ‘Pinoko’s Challenge’ sees the semi-artificial lass risk her dignity – and life – to get a proper education.
Urban terrorism takes centre stage in ‘Hospital Jack’ as masked thugs invade and capture an entire medical centre, but in the explosive aftermath Black Jack must complete a complex operation without any power or light!
This incredible volume of startling emergency cases concludes with the introduction of an occasionally recurring character ‘The Blind Acupuncturist,’ whose entire way of life revolts the mercenary rationalist Black Jack. That doesn’t prevent him from learning another hard-won lesson about arrogance and rash judgement, however…
If you’re a lover of medical dramas you’ll never have seen anything quite like this before, and if you’re a fan of comics or manga… well, neither will you. Superbly gripping, subtly engaging and utterly absorbing: just take one of these and see how you see in the morning…
This book is printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2008 by Tezuka Productions. Translation © 2008 by Camelia Nieh and Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.