Category: Manga

By I-Huan, adapted by Sandra Mak (DrMaster)

ISBN: 978-1-59796-177-6

The extended saga of love and obligation in mythical China steps solidly into the arena of forbidden love in the latest volume of this captivating fantasy romance.

The Celestial Fox-Demons are nearly extinct. Only vixens remain and if they wish to survive as a race, they must propagate their kind at all costs. To add to their woes their beloved leader is also fading; her energies and lifespan almost exhausted. It was this Shifu who first stole the infant deity Cai-Sheng and trained her to transform into a male and sire another generation.

Her plan was exceedingly long-ranging and as centuries passed many Fox Demons grew impatient. Some, like Hui-Niang, renounced their powers and married mortals, whilst haughty Yu-Niang turned to the darkest paths of evil…

Little Cai-Sheng was a lonely child. On the day she escaped from her lessons and met two village children she formed an eternal bond with them. The girl Xiao-Que and boy Duo Xi saved the divine toddler from a dog attack (canines being the mortal enemies of foxes), suffering bloody wounds in her defence. Just in time guardian Hui-Niang appeared and killed the hound, and to thank the humans marked the boy’s torn forehead and the girl’s bitten hand with mystic tattoos. No matter how long, nor how many incarnations passed, their sacrifice would be rewarded.

Promising to meet again tomorrow, the children parted, but time is different for celestial beings and the humans never saw their new friend again. Two centuries passed and Cai-Sheng gained the ability to become a beautiful, magically powerful man at will, but the Chosen One never forgot her joyous day with mortal children, when she was briefly freed of duty and destiny. Reunited now with their current reincarnations – wealthy Su Ping and apprentice exorcist Han Yun-Shi – Cai-Sheng had determined to repay their kindness by acting as matchmaker for the pair.

Unfortunately Ping had seen Cai-Sheng’s male form Qin Cai-Sheng, and become enamoured with “him” whilst Yun-Shi had become smitten with Su Ping – but he also held inexplicable feelings for the “weird girl” Cai-Sheng.

The debased fox-demon Yu-Niang has become a creature of pure malice, haunting Cai-Sheng. She wants the power of Cai-Sheng’s male form and will prey relentlessly on the humans of the city until she gets it. Even though Yu-Niang’s cat familiar is torn between serving Yu-Niang and Cai-Sheng, and is playing a double-game, the wicked fox-demon’s schemes are nearing fruition.

To further complicate her life a Heavenly Envoy named Wei Zi-Qiu has been sent to retrieve and purify Cai-Sheng, or if she has shed mortal blood, to kill her. He too has fallen for her, and tries to cover up the fact that she has slain Yun-Shi’s teacher, the exorcist who killed her childhood guardian Hui-Niang…

We’re deep in soap opera territory in this volume with revelations and ultimata flying thick and fast. The ruthless Taoist exorcist Bai-Leng has shown Yun-Shi who killed his master and revealed that the youth has been marked by a demon for all his future incarnations, before entering into an uneasy alliance with diabolical Yu-Niang to gain his dubious ends. Both divine Zi-Qiu and mortal Yun-Shi have declared their love for Cai-Sheng, but the latter is unaware that she is secretly his very definition of a “monster”.

Zi-Qiu’s superior, Lady Peony, has declared her own love for him, and though he loves Cai-Sheng, the deity is preparing to kill his beloved to save him from himself. Su Ping, enthralled and in deadly danger from predatory Yu-Niang is offered a glimmer of salvation by Bai-Leng, and hapless Cai-Sheng, unable to choose between the her mortal and celestial suitors discovers the tragic origins of her cat-demon familiar Gu-Miao, and sees yet another side of love…

This enchanting shōjo tale of legendary China seems hell-bent on becoming a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions. I-Huan’s seamless blend of mythology and romantic melodrama is an increasingly complex web of intrigue and passion that appears incapable of a joyous resolution.

This easy combination of passion, comedy and action examines the big issue of Predestination and Free Will, with family expectation always at odds with personal desire. The beautiful, lyrical art perfectly captures this forgotten age as every character becomes a helpless victim of love and their worlds spiral towards a painful, disastrous collision. A lovely series for the fanciful and romantic, this latest volume further indicates that not every Ever After is Happy…

This book is produced in the traditional Japanese format and should be read from back to front and right to left.

© 2006 I-Huan/Tong Li Publishing Co. Ltd. English translation © 2009 DrMaster Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Kao Yung & Kuan-Ling, translated by Lobelia Cheng and Ailen Lujo (DrMaster)
ISBN: 978-1-59796-153-0 & 978-1-59796-154-7

For romantic comedy in comics form there’s no better place (actually no place at all outside the alternative and small press scenes) than the manga and manhwa marketplace and at least a lot of these stories are readily available in decent translations.

A great example is this brief (2 volume) tale of young Roxanne, a decent, hardworking “plain Jane” school girl in love with the class stud, Logan. Naturally this arrogant bad-boy treats her like dirt…

Her life is made even more miserable by the fact that her older sister recently grew from an ugly duckling to a pretty insufferable swan, and promptly left her behind and alone…

Roxanne’s life changes forever when she frees the Celestial hunk Baphalen from his godly imprisonment in an ancient wall-hanging and he proffers her heart’s desire if she can successfully complete the fantasy tests of Magic Lover’s Tower (a kind of eldritch full-immersion Virtual Reality game and flight simulator).

Should she win her life will change and everything she desires will become real: of course failure could mean death, or worse, make Logan hate her more…

There are the usual cultural barriers for western readers to cross: how people look (appearance and behaviour) is so terrifyingly important in these yarns, as is acceptance and family conformity (although here this does provide many of the better comedy moments), and of course cute and sassy magical animal thingies abound, but there’s also a strong undercurrent of rebellion, a powerful romantic triangle as the seemingly neutral Baphalen plays a hidden game and clever surprise that this grizzled old reviewer certainly didn’t see coming.

This mini-epic is beautifully illustrated and would make an ideal introduction to new readers who’ve long left comics behind but still need a little light fantasy in their lives (and yes, that does mean chicks in general, and your wife or girlfriend in particular,,,)

These books are printed in the traditional Asian front-to-back, right-to-left format.

© 2001 Kao Yung. English translation © 2008 DrMaster Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Osamu Tezuka translated by Camelia Nieh (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-56-9

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 the realm of medicine and created Burakku Jakku, a lone wolf surgeon living beyond society’s boundaries and rules: a scarred, seemingly heartless mercenary working miracles for the right price yet still a deeply human wounded soul who works his surgical wizardry from behind icy walls of cool indifference and casual hostility…

Born in Qsaka Prefecture on 3rd November 1928, Tezuka suffered from a childhood illness that made his arms swell. Inspired by the doctor who cured him to study medicine, he started his cartooning career at university, and although qualified as a doctor, when faced with a career crossroads, he followed his mother’s advice to do the thing that made him happiest. He never practiced medicine but the world gained 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 created, the Japanese anime industry.

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 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, himself) to win just one more victory: medicine as mythology, won by a Ronin with 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 García Márquez. But overall these are dramatic, highly addictive comics tales of heroism; and ones that that will stay with you forever.

The long overdue series of translated, collected adventures continues in this sixth volume with the bittersweet ‘Downpour’ as Black Jack finds himself trapped on an impoverished island helping a dedicated young doctor, fighting local government corruption and an epidemic, whilst in ‘A Body Turned to Stone’ morality and ethics war with base humanity and smug, religious complacency resulting in an uncommon tragedy.

There’s a message of hope in ‘The Old Man and the Tree’ as a desperate octogenarian battles City Hall to save his oldest friend from demolition, whilst in ‘Twice Dead’ the super-surgeon is called upon to save a criminal suicide so that the state can execute him, and compelled to invent an impossible cure or be imprisoned for practising medicine without a license in ‘Lion-Face Disease’.

The medical profession is held up to harsh scrutiny in ‘Con Man, Aspiring’ when a poor man, at the behest of a scheming doctor, deliberately writes Black Jack a cheque he cannot honour, whilst a rich Texan faces some unpleasant home truths when the surgical Ronin attempts to cure his son of ‘Brachydactyly’. ‘Amidst Fire and Ashes’ sees Black Jack reunite a father and son when he performs delicate surgery under an erupting volcano, ‘Revenge’ sees him outwit the united Medical Board of Japan when they put their wishes before the needs of a patient and even take on the Japanese railway system itself in the poignant yet heart-warming ‘Vibration’.

We enter the realm of pure science fiction as an animal experiment goes incredibly awry in ‘Nadare’ before seeing Black Jack outwit death whilst trapped in a elevator at the bottom of a collapsed building in ‘Three in a Box’, masquerade as one of his greatest rivals in ‘The Substitute’ and in ‘Terror Virus’ – the final tale of this tome – join old foe the euthanizing Dr. Kiriko when the Government embroils them both in a sordid, clandestine scheme involving stolen bio-weapons. As usual Black Jack has the final word…

Thrilling, heart-warming, bitterly insightful and utterly addictive, these incredible stories of a medical wizard in a crass, mundane and hostile world will blow your mind and 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 by Camelia Nieh and Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By I-Huan, translated and adapted by Lobelia Cheng & Sue Yang (DrMaster)
ISBN: 978-1-59796-176-9

Time is running out for the Celestial Fox-Demons. Only vixens remain and if they wish to advance their status, let alone survive as a race, they must propagate their kind at all costs. To add to their woes their beloved leader, the Shifu (teacher/leader) who devised the plan to steal the baby girl deity Cai-Sheng and train her to transform into a male and father another generation is fading; her energies and lifespan are almost exhausted.

Her plan was necessarily a very long-ranging one. Over the centuries the Fox Demons had grown impatient. Some, like Hui-Niang, renounced their powers in order to marry mortals, whilst bold Yu-Niang turned to the darkest paths and began to steal little boys as “offerings”…

Little Cai-Sheng was a lonely child. On the day she escaped from her lessons and met two village children she formed an eternal bond with them. The girl Xiao-Que and boy Duo Xi saved the divine toddler from a dog attack (canines are the mortal enemies of foxes), suffering bloody wounds in her defence. Just in time guardian Hui-Niang appeared and killed the hound, and to thank the humans marked the boy’s torn forehead and the girl’s bitten hand with mystic tattoos. No matter how long, nor how many incarnations passed, their sacrifice would be rewarded.

Promising to meet again tomorrow, the children parted, but time is different for celestial beings and the humans never saw their new friend again.

Two centuries passed. Cai-Sheng completed her training and gained the ability to become a beautiful man at will, but the Chosen One had never forgotten her joyous day with mortal children, where she learned of freedom from duty and destiny. Reunited now with their current reincarnations – wealthy Su Ping and apprentice exorcist Han Yun-Sh – she had determined to repay their kindness by acting as matchmaker for the pair.

Unfortunately Ping had seen Cai-Sheng’s male form Qin Cai-Sheng, and become enamoured with “him” whilst Yun-Shi had become smitten with Su Ping – but he also held inexplicable feelings for the “weird girl” Cai-Sheng.

The debased fox-demon Yu-Niang had haunted Cai-Sheng, grown strong on centuries of stolen blood. She also wants the power of Cai-Sheng’s male form and preys relentlessly on the humans of the city. Even though Yu-Niang’s cat familiar is torn between serving Yu-Niang and Cai-Sheng, and is playing a double-game, the wicked fox-demon’s schemes are nearing fruition.

To further complicate her life a Heavenly Envoy named Wei Zi-Qiu has been sent to retrieve and purify Cai-Sheng, or if she has shed mortal blood, to kill her. He too has fallen for her, and tries to cover up the fact that she has slain the exorcist that killed her childhood guardian Hui-Niang…

With volume 4 the plot rapidly advances when Yun-Shi finds a new and decidedly nastier Shifu to train him as an exorcist-priest, Su Ping is possessed by the evil of Yu-Niang, and is in danger of becoming her next murderous familiar, whilst Wei Zi-Qiu and Yun-Shi face-off as rivals and one of them proposes marriage to the bewildered Cai-Sheng…

As an aura of inescapable tragedy falls over this enchanting shōjo tale of legendary China, I-Huan’s flawless blend of mythology and soap-opera moves into high-gear. How this web of intrigue and passion could ever resolve into a happy ending is beyond me. Perhaps it won’t…

This easy combination of passion, comedy and action examines the big issue of Predestination and Free Will, with family expectation always at odds with personal desire. The beautiful, lyrical art perfectly captures a forgotten age as the eternal triangle enlarges to admit another victim of love and their worlds spiral towards a painful, disastrous collision. A lovely series for the fanciful and romantic, this latest volume seems to hint that not all Ever Afters are Happy…

This book is produced in the traditional Japanese format and should be read from back to front and right to left.

© 2003 I-Huan/Tong Li Publishing Co. Ltd. English translation © 2009 DrMaster Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Osamu Tezuka translated by Camelia Nieh (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-55-2

In a creative career that produced over 700 hundred different series and more than 150,000 pages (most of them still infuriatingly unavailable 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.

Volume 5 begins with a biting satire on medical ranks and hierarchies in Japan. ‘Hospital’ sees the Director’s chosen favourites (all from his old university) riding roughshod over other staff with no thought to the patients in their care. When a young surgeon is ordered to amputate a concert pianist’s arm, irrespective of objections or medical necessity, the harried neophyte consults the ronin Black Jack…

‘Quite a Tongue’ in a heart-warming parable about Japan’s attitude to disabilities set against the backdrop of children’s national abacus competitions, ‘Asking for Water’ poses some searching questions about family and the care of the elderly and ‘Yet False the Days’ tragically compares little Pinoko’s penchant for adopting strays with the outlaw surgeon’s frustrating attempts to cure a media star’s impossible quadriplegia. THREE TISSUE ALERT!: this story contains sick kittens…

A chance journey on ‘The Last Train’ finds Black Jack travelling with the woman called the Black Queen (see Black Jack volume 1). Married now, she faces an impossible quandary, but reckons without the renegade’s tendency to extreme and unpalatable solutions…

‘There was a Valve!’ is a superb nut-and-bolts medical mystery, featuring the return of the mercy-killing Dr. Kiriko (see ‘Two Dark Doctors’ in Black Jack volume 3) in a startling tale of ethics and conscience whilst the Blind Acupuncturist from volume 1 returns with more unwanted lessons for the maverick medic in ‘Two at the Baths’.

‘Pinoko’s Mystery’ is a delightful comedy of errors featuring a mad bomber, whilst more secrets from Black Jack’s sordid past resurface in the gangster thriller ‘Imprint’ and then he’s placed in an impossible situation by Dr. Kiriko in the tense viral-killer thriller ‘99% Water’.

An aged doctor being forced out of his job comes seeking assistance in ‘The Helper’ whilst in ‘Country Clinic’ Tezuka shows us a different side of the profession through the inspired works of a simple rural practitioner – but of course there’s a sting in this tale too…

‘Wolf Girl’ finds the O.R. outlaw trapped behind the Iron Curtain (remember that?), and rescued by a hideously deformed outcast. Fixing her face proved far simpler than remedying her soul, and in Black Jack’s world far too often no good deed goes unpunished…

‘On a Snowy Night’ ends these tales with an out-and-out yarn of supernatural wonderment, as the renegade doctors performs the greatest achievement of his life, and one nobody will ever know of.

All the troubles and wonders of this world (and sometimes other ones) can be found in medical dramas, and in Black Jack 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 García Márquez. But above all else these dramatic, addictive tales of heroism are pure unadorned entertainment that that will stay with you for the all the days of your life.

This book is printed in the Japanese right to left, back to front format and also contains a superb 12 page teaser for Tezuka’s classic fantasy of alienation Dororo.

© 2008 by Tezuka Productions. Translation © 2008 by Camelia Nieh and Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Osamu Tezuka translated by Camelia Nieh (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-934287-43-9

Unfortunately, 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 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…

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.

Volume 4 begins with ‘False Image’ wherein an uncharacteristic visit to a school reunion leads to shocking revelations about Black Jack’s most beloved childhood inspiration, whilst in ‘The Scream’ he teaches a cruel lesson to a wilful schoolgirl whose throat surgery means she must utter no sounds for a year…

Next is a touching and fanciful romance wherein the medical maverick stumbles across a severely wounded bandit in a wind-blown shanty and plays grisly cupid for the ‘Drifter in a Ghost Town’, and then saves his assistant’s newest friend from a unique birth defect in the charming mystery ‘Pinoko Love Story’.

A particularly vicious and spectacular crime leads to a grim mission of mercy in ‘The Sewer Way’, an old friend returns in a new light when a two-fisted sailor demands outrageous skin surgery in the heart wrenching ‘The Seas Smell of Romance’ and a rather jolly cat and mouse duel between a pickpocket and a cop turns deadly serious and nauseatingly nasty when the Yakuza get involved in the tale of ‘Tetsu of the Yamanote Line’.

‘Titles’ finds Black Jack at the heart of an international incident when a visiting Emperor demands to observe Japan’s most persona non grata doctor in action – and won’t take “no” for an answer – whilst a profound tragedy of far more humble folk drives the desperate father in ‘Lost and Found’. He scrapes together every penny he can to pay Black Jack for his wife’s operation – only to lose it all in the city’s accumulated garbage. The “accommodation” they come to will shock you…

An exploding car and a brutally burned little boy drives a loving Yakuza father to incredible sacrifices in a bitter parable of pride and appearance in ‘Burned Doll’, paternal disappointment and childhood dreams taint the tragic lives of an entire family in ‘The Heart of a Giant’ and there’s breathtaking excitement in ‘Gas’ when the outlaw doctor has to race against time – and peristalsis – to retrieve a lethal cyanide capsule from Pinoko’s stomach before it dissolves. Unbelievably, this little gem is as funny as it thrilling!

The overweening pride of top doctors is exposed in ‘From Afar’ as the famed Dr. Bandai ignores true need to pursue celebrity cases: however for Black Jack puncturing such pride is more valuable than money and this book ends with another blend of hilarity and tearful tragedy as Pinoko adopts a revolting and unwelcome ‘Thieving Dog’.

Thrilling, heart-warming, bitterly insightful and utterly addictive, these incredible stories of a medical wizard in a crass, mundane world will blow your mind and 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 by Camelia Nieh and Vertical, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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.

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.