By Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-61-3
There aren’t many Names in comics. Lots of creators; multi-disciplined or single focussed, who have contributed to the body of the art form, but we don’t have many Global Presences whose contributions have affected generations of readers and aspirants all over the World, like a Mozart or Michelangelo or Shakespeare. There’s just Hergé and Jack Kirby and Osamu Tezuka.
In a creative career that produced over 700 hundred different series and more than 150,000 pages (many of them only now finally becoming available to people who can’t read Japanese), Osamu Tezuka captivated generations of readers across the world with tales of history, fantasy, romance and startling adventure. Perhaps his most intriguing creation is Black Jack, who overcame horrendous injuries as a child, and although still carrying many scars within and without, roams the globe, curing any who can pay his deliberately daunting, exorbitant prices – usually cash, but sometimes in more exotic or metaphysical coin.
He is the ultimate loner, except for Pinoko, a little girl he literally built from the scraps of an early case. Unlicensed by any medical board on Earth, he holds himself to the highest ethical standards possible… his own. All the troubles and wonders of this world (and sometimes other ones) can be found in medical dramas, and here elements of rationalism, science-fiction, kitchen sink drama, spiritualism, criminality and human frailty are woven into an epic of Magical Realism that rivals the works of Fuentes and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez.
The powerful ‘What Lurks the Mountain’ kicks off this superb selection of medical miracles, as the surgical superman goes to the aid of a peasant family only to be bitten by the rabid dog that has brought them to the brink of death. When the mutt’s rich owner won’t play ball Black Jack concocts his own cure for arrogance…
‘Fits’ begins as a broadly comic duel between the doctor and his nigh-artificial protégé Pinoko, but takes an abrasive turn into psychosurgery whilst in ‘A Wrong Diagnosis’ an old med school mate wheedles and shames the rogue surgeon into correcting someone else’s big mistake.
‘The Tattooed Man’ is a tale that could only happen in Japan as the unlicensed doctor is summoned to a Yakuza lord’s house. The Oyabun is long-dead, but if Black Jack’s treatment damaged his tattoos, vengeance will reach out from beyond the grave…
‘Abnormal Pregnancy’ too is an eerily unique tale of honour and horror, and I’m not divulging anything about such a stunning saga of weird science.
When the surgeon is beaten and robbed in the Pyrenees fate makes fools of bandits and victim alike in ‘On the Way’ whilst ‘Cold Disdain’ sees our hero once more frustrating the arrogance and pride of the medical procession that scorns him, but when he receives ‘A Visit from a Killer’ he finds that he has far too much in common with the hitman who can only succeed if the miracle surgeon isn’t around to heal his intended target.
‘Accident’ is a heartbreaking tragedy of love lost and found, with the surgical outcast reduced to a walk-on part, ‘One Hour to Death’ features the bizarre alliance of Black Jack and the mercy-killer Dr. Kiriko, when a desperate child steals the euthanizer’s latest pain – and life – ending drug, and the secret surgeon has to solve an impossible mystery in ‘Random Killer’ as an Alaskan town is plagued with an outbreak of invisible decapitations!
‘Pinoko Goes West’ puts the spotlight on Black Jack’s young assistant as a failed procedure forces her beloved master to go on the run, ‘Swapped’ puts parental love and duty on trial and this volume concludes as we step into the realm of meta-fiction when the surgical samurai is compelled, against his previously sacrosanct medical judgement, to keep a writer alive long enough to complete his magnum opus in ‘Finish.’
This is an epic 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, experienced by a Ronin with a Gladstone bag.
An annoying sidebar I feel compelled to repeat here: For many years broad, purely visual racial stereotypes were common “shorthand†in Japanese comics – and ours, and everybody else’s. They crop up here, but please remember that even at the time these stories originated from they were not charged images; Tezuka’s depictions of native Japanese are just as broad and expressionistic. A simple reading of the text should dispel any notions of racism: but if you can’t get past these decades-old images, just put the book down. Don’t buy it. It’s your loss.
Thrilling, heart-warming, bitterly insightful and utterly addictive, these incredible stories of a medical wizard in a crass, pompous and hostile world will shake all your preconceptions of what storytelling can be…
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.