By Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-60-6
Black Jack is at once a lone wolf hero, troubled genius, passionate outsider and amoral humanitarian combining the indomitable will of Doc Savage with the intellect of Sherlock Holmes and ambivalent, intuitive drive of Dr. Gregory House. Hideously scarred as result of extensive childhood surgery, the unlicensed mercenary medic endures public condemnation and professional scorn, experiencing every genre of storytelling as he continually confronts the cutting edges of medicine.
His esteemed creator Osamu Tezuka was born in Qsaka Prefecture on 3rd November 1928, and as a child suffered from a severe illness that made his arms swell. The doctor who cured him inspired him to study medicine, and although the cartoonist began his professional drawing career while at university, he persevered with his studies and qualified as a doctor too.
Facing a career crossroads, Tezuka’s mother advised him to do the thing that made him happiest. He never practiced medicine but the world was gifted with such classic cartoon masterpieces as Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro-boy), Kimba the White Lion, Buddha, Adolf and literally hundreds of other graphic narratives. Along the way Tezuka incidentally pioneered, if not actually invented, the Japanese anime industry.
Equally able to speak to the hearts and minds of children and adults, Osamu Tezuka’s work ranges from the charming to the disturbing, even terrifying. In 1973 he turned his storyteller’s eye to his college studies and created Burakku Jakku, a lone wolf surgeon living beyond society’s boundaries and rules: a scarred, heartless mercenary miracle-worker if the price is right, yet still a deeply human wounded soul who works his surgical wizardry from behind icy walls of cool indifference and casual hostility…
One thing should always be remembered when reading these stories: despite all the scientific detail, all the frighteningly accurate terminology and trappings, Black Jack isn’t medical fiction; it is an exploration of ethics and morality with medicine raised to the level of magic… or perhaps duelling.
This is an epic of personal combats, a lone gunfighter battling hugely oppressive counter-forces (the Law, the System, casual human cruelty, himself) to win just one more victory: medicine as mythology, won by a Ronin with a fast car and a Gladstone bag. Elements of rationalism, science-fiction, kitchen sink drama, spiritualism and even the supernatural appear in this saga of Magical Realism that rivals the works of Fuentes and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez. But overall these are dramatic, highly addictive comics tales of heroism; and ones that that will stay with you forever.
Volume 7 begins with ‘Guys and Birds’ and pursues a favoured theme in Tezuka’s work: the moral superiority of animals to base humanity, as Black Jack operates on a small boy beloved by the bird of the marshlands. When crooked speculators try to kill the boy for the land rights his feathered friends fight even harder than the super-surgeon to save him…
‘The Gray Mansion’ is a classical gothic horror story which finds him attempting to fix a hideously malformed burns victim despite knowing that his insane patient intends to commit murder as soon as he is again able to grasp a weapon, and ‘A Cat and Shozo’ examines love and madness as the rogue surgeon heals a traumatised man who has replaced his dead family with a pack of devoted felines…
‘The Two Pinokos’ provides another glimpse of the doctor’s past as he sees once more the little girl who provided the template for his own assistant (rebuilt from leftover organs: see Black Jack volume 1 for details). What a shame she and her entire village are dying from toxic waste pollution… ‘Unexploded Bomb’ also looks back as the diagnostic ronin takes a dark revenge on the corrupt officials whose greed destroyed his mother and set him upon his lonely path, whilst ‘Younger Brother’ finds him masquerading as another man’s son, to provide a different kind of medical comfort.
‘High and Low’ is a delightful change of tone as, against all odds, human nature and past experience a lowly worker and a millionaire businessman honour their debts to each other, ‘Goribei of Senjogahara’ is a heart-jarring tale of survival and bestiality, featuring an ape gone rogue and a professional hunter and ‘The Kuroshio: a Memoir’ probes the nature of glory and debts not honoured when a celebrity danger-man puts his latest TV stunt ahead of common humanity…
‘Black and White’ again finds Black Jack caught between feuding gangsters, but this time he’s also competing against a decent young doctor who is everything he once aspired to be, ‘A Hill for One’ has him again champion the rights of a noble beast against repulsive men and in ‘Cloudy, Later Fair’ he has to operate on a mountainside where every move of his scalpel could call down a lethal lightning strike.
The book closes with ‘Hurricane’ as a dying millionaire’s family abandons surgeon and patient to a killer storm and ‘Timeout’ sees the doctor perform a medical miracle but still fail to win justice or peace for his patient…
For many modern readers the highly stylised semi-comical “cartoonish†illustration that Osamu Tezuka chose to work in has proved a conceptual hindrance, not only for these astounding adventures in medical meta-fiction, but for many other of his incredible stories of heroism and fantasy. But in these days of vast art-teams, computer enhancements and a zillion colour effects these carefully crafted black and white pages use a simple symbology, concise, almost diagrammatic illustration (for the graphic scenes of surgery – squeamish folk consider yourselves warned!) and deft design to tell tales that only the most sophisticated consumer can fully appreciate: not because they’re difficult or obscure, but because they hit home and hit hard every time…
The pictures may be soft, seductive and welcoming but the content – and intent – are as hard and uncompromising as a surgeon’s scalpel…
This book is printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2009 by Tezuka Productions. Translation © 2009 Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.