by Osamu Tezuka. Translated by Camellia Nieh. Vertical, publisher. $16.95.
I'm on record that Tezuka gives me nightmares, Black Jack in particular. What a pleasure it is to see a new and more thorough English edition of this jaw-dropping serial masterwork.
Black Jack is a long string of short, self-contained medical thrillers about a dashingly Byronic outlaw surgeon, with the requisite mysterious past and a slashing stitch-mark scar from brow to left cheek:
The Black Jack series, reported to be Tezuka's most popular among adult readers in Japan, perfectly distills what I've come to expect from him: a volatile, superheated mashup of melodrama, moral fable, philosophical problem-posing, and jouncing, unexpected humor; a rough mix of chain-jerking sentimentality, lancing cruelty, jolting plot twists, occasional raw horror, and broad, broad cartooning.
Black Jack, Vol. 1 offers, as bonus, offhandedly graphic evidence of Tezuka's medical training, in the form of shockingly clinical surgical images,
as well as a lightning trip through various engrafted genres, from crime drama to romance to SF to künstlerroman to the kind of mastery narrative (I will make the best sushi in Japan, etc.) one has come to expect of manga. In sum, Black Jack is a rattling fine example of that kind of Pop narrative that Tezuka, like his early idol Walt Disney at his best, practiced with perfect unself-consciousness: brazenly populist, shameless in its bluntly melodramatic appeal, yet unguardedly personal at its roots, testifying to the artist's entire commitment of self to the project.
What is so extraordinary about Tezuka is that, on the one hand, he was so successful as to set down the generic commercial blueprint -- more profoundly, the basic storytelling idiom -- for modern-day story-manga, and yet, on the other hand, his work retains a peculiar rawness, capacity for shock, and probing philosophical urgency that never leave the reader in doubt that he is reading the personal work of Osamu Tezuka.
I remember my son Nick reading through one of the Tezuka volumes I gave him (Phoenix: Dawn, was it?) and saying to me afterward, "But he killed the characters! He can't do that!" I remember similar responses from my students when they read Tezuka's Buddha, Vol. 1; many were shocked, and some also delighted, by Tezuka's juxtaposing of loopy, self-referential humor and flat-out brutality, low comedy and stark tragedy. And I still often get that prickling-at-the-back-of-the-neck feeling when I read his work.
Cases in point here would include the Frankensteinian horror of "The Teratoid Cystoma,"
which abruptly lurches into slapstick;
the revolting body horror of "The Face Sore" (which, ironically, turns out to be a lesson in the folly of judging by appearances);
and a raft of other examples, such as the SF scenario of "U-18 Knew," in which Black Jack cures a sentient computer; the slapdown of hubris in "Sometimes Like Pearls," in which Black Jack fails to save the very man who saved him; and the troubling of gender in "Confluence," in which Black Jack saves his love from uterine cancer by turning her into a man.
In sum, the twelves stories in Black Jack, Vol. 1 are likely to get a rise even out of even the most jaded of readers. Offsetting the stories' steady formula (typically, the superhumanly gifted Black Jack is called to perform some outrageous surgery that entails an ethical or psychological dilemma) are the sheer volatility of tone, the vaulting restlessness of Tezuka's imagination, the nonstop genre-splicing, and a searching philosophical outlook. Frightfully great stuff.
These last few paragraphs are probably for completists and design buffs:
Vertical's Black Jack, Vol. 1 is the first release in an ambitious reprint project, promised to last three years and to consist of seventeen bimonthly volumes reprinting all (or as nearly all as we could ever expect) of Tezuka's series. Black Jack reportedly totals 243 episodes (originally serialized in the Weekly Shonen Champion between 1973 and 1983), and Vertical aims to reprint nearly all of these.
For thoroughness' sake, we should note that Vertical's is not the first effort by a US-based publisher to translate Black Jack into English. That distinction goes to VIZ, who published a short-lived series circa 1998-99, translated by Yuji Oniki. VIZ released Black Jack first in serial form (in the Manga Vizion magazine and, I believe, in two comic book one-shots) and then as two roughly 200-page volumes:
VIZ's Vol. 1, which I also have here in front of me, included eight episodes. Vertical's Vol. 1, which is about 100 pages longer, includes twelve episodes. The two editions have six episodes in common. (The remaining stories in VIZ Vol. 1 can be found, I think, in Vertical Vol. 2. Are you keeping this straight?) Vertical is following the order of episodes set down in the Akita Bunkouban edition, that is, the so-called "deluxe" edition planned out by Tezuka himself before his death in 1989. (Thanks are due once again to that invaluable resource, Tezuka in English.)
Comparing Vertical to VIZ, I find no substantial changes between the two, other than Vertical's decision to retain the Japanese original's right-to-left order. In either edition, the translations are serviceable, and each has moments of English that are felicitous as well as moments that are less so. Translator Camelliah Nieh has done good work for Vertical, rendering into English what I assume was often idiomatic or quirky Japanese (as well as babytalk by Black Jack's handmade assistant, the doll-like Pinoko). The liveliness and shock of these stories comes through in either edition. Vertical's edition, though, is by far the better-designed and -printed. It's crisper and handsomer, also slightly wider and with ampler margins, giving the images more breathing room. At the same time, the Vertical look is strikingly austere, conveying a certain sought-after "seriousness." The cover design (by Peter Mendelsund) foregoes the title character, instead blowing up obscure details from the stories within. A plain Courier/typewriter font dominates. The cover -- and this is also true of the volumes to come -- mimics surgery, with "flaps," like flaps of skin, retracted to expose fine graphic details in a debossed window:
This all seems designed to impress on readers an appreciation of Tezuka as auteur as well as of Black Jack as an "adult" work. Fair enough, but Black Jack is still Pop, and still ambiguous in terms of the audience it seeks to address. I imagine that plenty of Japanese children as well as adults have read these stories. Why not? Think of the salutary shocks this stuff could bring to impressionable young minds!
Quibbling aside, the reappearance of Black Jack on the US market, in such a quality edition and with so many more promised, was certainly one of the highlights of my 2008.
(BTW, if you're interested in Tezuka, you owe it to yourself to read Jog's review of Black Jack, Vol. 1. You'll come away with plenty to think about. And I proudly refer you to Hats' House for my son Coleman's review of Black Jack as well!)
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