By Osamu Tezuka translated by Camelia Nieh (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-41-5
This third volume of the collected series featuring a super-surgeon operating outside the rules of civilised law contains fifteen of the very best sagas blending science, adventure, the supernatural, comedy and even a little romance into its searing incisions into the nature and practice of the healing arts in the modern world.
Black Jack overcame horrendous injuries as a child, and although still carrying many scars within and without, travels the globe, curing any who can pay his exorbitant prices – usually in cash but sometimes with more exotic or metaphysical coin. He is the ultimate loner, except for Pinoko, a small girl he literally built from the remnants of a previous case. Unlicensed by any medical board on Earth, he holds himself to the highest ethical standards possible… his own.
The book commences with ‘Disowned Son’ a heart-warming tragedy richly redolent of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Read this with ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ (preferably the Harry Chapin version) playing softly in the background…
Medicine meets Sci Fi in an eerie thriller as a famine-ravaged region of Africa throws up an even worse horror: a disease that causes the victims to compress and lose body-mass. The race to find a cure is breakneck since all the doctors – including Black Jack – are also fatally ‘Shrinking’ …
There’s more globetrotting in ‘Dingoes’, as well as a baffling medical mystery when an unknown disease ravages the Outback and our lone hero, but the (ecological) moral of this tale is positively subdued compared to the bitter tale of malpractice, nepotism and outright villainy in ‘Your Mistake’ wherein a spoiled young doctor frames a nurse to cover his own negligence. As the doctor’s dad is the Hospital’s Chief of Medicine the nurse’s case seems hopeless. …Paging Dr. Black Jack…
It doesn’t matter how big or strong you are. Some things nobody can fight. ‘The Robin and the Boy’ tells how a little boy’s kindness to a wounded bird can have miraculous consequences. And you will cry. No “ifs”, “buts” or “maybes”.
‘The Boy Who Came From the Sky’ drops a critical case straight into the surgical samurai’s lap when a defecting Soviet pilot lands his stolen prototype super-fighter in Black Jack’s backyard. Also aboard are the pilot’s wife and their young son, who is in urgent need of the doctor’s skills. Tense and gripping, this classy tale demonstrates just what Men of Honour will do for Family if not for Country, and what they are prepared to pay…
It had to happen eventually but ‘Black Jack in Hospital’ is anything but predictable as a car smash puts the renegade surgeon on someone else’s operating table: a doctor who loathes everything the outcast represents and stands for. But this antagonist’s sister is so very pretty and doesn’t every hospital stay result in a little romance?
‘A Woman’s Case’ begins with an emergency operation on a gold-digging social climber in a train station waiting-room and ends with a highly revealing insight as to how the renegade healer calculates debts and obligations whilst ‘Two Dark Doctors’ introduces the equally outcast and reviled Doctor Kiriko: at once cruelly similar and a polar opposite of Black Jack. But whereas once a fee is settled the surgical ronin will move Heaven and Earth to preserve life, Kiriko’s fees generally ensure a swift and pain-free release from all suffering…
Tezuka famously studied medicine but never practiced, and in ‘The Residents’ highlights the struggle between impatient young doctors and their hide-bound pompous self-aggrandizing superiors in a sharp and unpredictable fable that will surprise even the most jaded and experienced reader.
‘Recollections of a Spinster’ jumps into “Tharg’s Future Shocks” territory with a moody reminiscence about a scar-faced outlaw surgeon who inserted himself into a budgeting and resources row at a big American hospital – and consequently changed the Fate of a Nation, whilst ‘Pinoko Loves You’ is a disturbing tale of a chiselling, cheapskate client who thinks more about the cost than the patient – once the surgery’s completed. This harrowing yarn, more than any other yet seen, defines the unique relationship between Black Jack and his DIY “daughter.”
‘Tenacity’ is another heart-breaker of a story, following the tragic Yamanobe as he struggles to pass the National Medical Exam and become a licensed Medical Practitioner. Cherishing everything Black Jack despises, the idealist young man would give his very last breath to prove the outlaw’s way was wrong…
Another tale of personal honour, ‘An Odd Relationship’ throws a thief and a dedicated cop into Black Jack’s lap. The hunter and hunted become ward-buddies, unaware that each is the other’s nemesis, and this volume closes with ‘Baby Blues’, a shocking tale of wayward schoolgirls and a newborn baby stuffed into a railway station locker.
As always, you only think you know what the author is saying here: the actual tale will still leave you breathless with amazement…
Always remember when reading: despite all the scientific detail, all the frighteningly accurate terminology and trappings. Black Jack isn’t medical fiction; they’re fables of morality with medicine replacing magic… or perhaps duelling. This is a saga of personal combat, with the lone gunfighter battling hugely oppressive counter-forces (the Law, the System, himself) to win just one more victory: medicine as mythology, experiences by Ronin with a Gladstone bag.
These are some of the best ethical thought puzzles mind of man can conceive, beautifully told and stylishly illustrated: and they’re also great stories you’ll find impossible to forget.
This book is printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2009 by Tezuka Productions. Translation © 2009 by Camelia Nieh and Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.