Black Jack Volume 12

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Black Jack Volume 12 (Vertical, 2010).



I'll have to confess that either through a combination of the rapid release schedule or the identikit design of the books, the latest volume of Vertical's Black Jack library completely missed my attention. One hand evidently wasn't watching what the other was doing at Bizarro Wuxtry, the shop in Athens where I have a regular order for the series, and volume twelve didn't make it into my bag a few months. So it sat on the shelf until the next visit, when Devlin, the manager, asked whether I had it. Honestly, I was not sure. It was only because I remembered that I had the notion to do a little writeup here of every fourth volume in the series that I figured that I must have missed it. Who would have figured that my little conceit would make a difference?

Even paging through the first installment reprinted inside didn't help much; the patchy, mostly subplot-free nature of the episodes don't always make them extremely memorable for me. So it is that, twelve books in (of a projected seventeen), the small cracks in one of Osamu Tezuka's best-known series start to show. With so few recurring characters and only occasional hints of subplots, the art becomes the main thing that keeps me coming back to the comic.

Case in point, I finished this most recent volume a week ago, and this morning tried to remember which fourteen episodes appear in it. I failed. I can name fourteen Black Jack episodes easily, and when one of them features one of the most unusual examples of Tezuka's "star system" of rotating faces and characters from previous comics into his other series and lets Jungle Emperor Leo appear as a different lion cub, it's pretty simple to remember that one. It's in book twelve, and so is an interesting look back at the hero's youth and a classmate who will not stop laughing. Otherwise, this book is really more of the same. I certainly recommend that anybody who enjoys comics pick up a couple of Black Jack books, but twelve volumes in, I'm starting to wish that Vertical would release these a little more slowly and make them more special, and fill in the gaps in their schedule with some other Tezuka comics, like Princess Knight or Ambassador Magma.

Sorry to not sound as enthusiastic as I should - these are, despite my malaise, very good comics by one of the medium's masters - but if I understand correctly, with volume 12, we're fast approaching the point where Tezuka transitioned the series away from a regular, twice-monthly episode and only released a handful of installments a year. Black Jack is wonderful, and an occasionally sinful little treat, but even its creator seemed ready to move on to something new. Recommended with reservations.

Black Jack volume 8

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Black Jack volume 8 (Vertical, 2009)



They're coming thick and fast now, aren't they? It really does seem like just a few months ago that I was idly hoping, in the pages of Reprint This!, to one day see Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack collected in English, and here we are almost halfway through the series. Vertical's eighth volume (of a planned seventeen) was released a couple of months ago. The ninth is said to be out there already, but Diamond does not appear to have shipped it to comic stores yet. Then again, well, it is Diamond. It's wrong to expect miracles.

By this point, there is probably no particular reason to include regular reviews of Black Jack here at the Bookshelf beyond the fact that it's my darn blog and I'll write about what I want to. We're almost two years into the run; you've either bought in to one of comics' best treasures, a wonderfully clever mix of inventive stories and eye-poppingly good art, or you're totally out of the loop. But just in case you're still on the fence or haven't quite got around to trying out Black Jack, the series is told with minimal continuity in a collection of 20-odd page stories, so any book is a good starting place.

In the eighth volume, there's a terrific story about a desperate woman who switched babies in the maternity ward, and, years later, is blackmailed by a nurse who caught her in the act. Tezuka does a magnificent job in just a few panels capturing the dismissive cruelty of the blackmailer, leading up to a great courtroom scene that sees Black Jack appearing as a surprise witness to the proceedings and a fabulous twist ending. There's another good tale which puts Black Jack in the background and uses Pinocho, disobeying his orders and following him, as the central character. There are mobsters and yokels and utterly bizarre ailments and illnesses, and a masterfully-told story about a comic artist who, forced by illness to suspend his wildly popular story on a cliffhanger, hopes for just a few more hours to resume the series and satisfy his audience. It's a wonderful collection, and one your bookshelf should have, just like the rest of the series. Highly recommended.

Black Jack volume 4

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Black Jack vol. four (Vertical, 2009).



I haven't written anything about Osamu Tezuka in a little while (but stay tuned to my Reprint This! blog for more about him next month), and while I've elected against reviewing every book in a series, I did want to mention, for those six or seven of you out there who haven't signed on to the medical mysteries of Black Jack that Vertical is up to the fifth of their planned seventeen-volume series. Book five is due to ship to US stores in a week or so, but, eternally behind, I just finished the fourth collection and wanted to tell you how fun it is.

Vertical and Diamond have concluded their three-book run of variant, hardcover editions, and so now they're all paperbacks only. Book three, incidentally, included a wonderful little essay detailing the original publication history of the series and details of the twelve episodes of Black Jack that Tezuka declined to ever reprint, so trainspotters out there like myself definitely need to pick that one up. From the fourth book, it's paperback-only editions, each one reprinting more than a dozen episodes. You get the expected wonderful mix of artwork that rockets from vibrant and exaggerated to extremely detailed, unpredictable stories that take an already wild premise and run in crazy directions with it, and one of my favorite characters in comics: a self-assured, unbelievably talented, stoic but all-too-human doctor pitting his skills against far-out diseases and all-too common beauracracy and corporate greed. Sometimes it seems the done-in-one episodic nature feels a little constricting, but Tezuka was so darn talented that he could even have characters break the fourth wall and remind their fellows that this isn't a serial and they only have eight pages to finish, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

I realize I'm not saying much about Black Jack that hasn't already been said, but these really are some of the best comics ever, and your bookshelf is demanding them. Vertical definitely deserves your support for this wonderful series of releases, and I hope the market stays strong to keep it going 'til the end. Very highly recommended.

Nether World and Black Jack vol. 2

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, reviews of Nether World # 1 (Studio 407, 2009) and Black Jack volume two (Vertical, 2008).



Studio 407 seems to have been launched with a heady mix of ideas and aspirations, but if the first issue of Nether World is any indicator, these aspirations have more to do with motion picture royalties than making good comics. Chad Jones' story is not necessarily a bad one, if a little familiar - all life signs have vanished from a remote outpost, so a battalion of astronauts from all walks of life are ordered to investigate - and there's a satisfying twist which will leave readers curious what will happen next.

The problem is that Jones seems more interested in how his story will play as a feature film than as a comic. As the first twelve or thirteen minutes of a movie, this material might be passable, but in a comic book it is dull as can be imagined, just endless pages of good looking folks in form-fitting suits developing their characters by discussing their fears. If it's that important to get into his characters' heads before the plot starts, Jones could definitely find several lessons in the short-form work of, say, Alan Moore in how to make memorable characters that the reader cares about far more quickly than this. R.B. Silva's artwork is not at all bad, and I liked his design work, but he's up against an awful wall trying to make the first twenty pages of this comic in any way visually interesting, because it's just panel after panel of talking heads.

I'm curious about the comic's intent and target in light of what I've written. Perhaps it's too cynical to call the book out as nothing more than "something for Hollywood to option," but a comic has to work within its own confines, as a work that uses its medium well to tell a story that is first and foremost a comic. Nether World might well make a terrific movie, and I've no objection to the plot that Jones and Silva have developed, but what's seen here, in this format is deeply flawed to the point of being useless. Not recommended.

A copy of this title was provided for the purpose of review.



In light of the above, it's interesting to consider how Osamu Tezuka developed his supporting characters. Each weekly episode of Black Jack ran for only 16-20 pages, but each contained a memorable cast of background players, each of whom is present because they serve a function to the plot, and readers will remember them naturally as they recall each episode's storyline.

I love the strange morality in each Black Jack installment, where our titular hero is the only person who can be allowed the sin of greed. Anybody else who would put their pocketbook over the needs of the sick is shown to be wrong, but Dr. Black Jack can get away with anything, and sits in a strange poistion of ethical judgement over all others. Even when he's shown up by a blind acupuncturist who doesn't charge for his services, our hero just has to wait for the other guy to make a potentially fatal mistake.

The three-hundred-odd pages in the hardcover edition of this book, only available in comic stores serviced by the thrice-damned monopoly that is Diamond, includes an otherwise unavailable story featuring Black Jack's recurring nemesis Dr. Kiriko. Watching the stories unfold and finding the solution to the latest strange and desperate situation is one of the best treats available in comics today. Highly recommended, of course.

Black Jack: Two Fisted Surgeon

Here's how this works: I finish reading a comic collection, and I tell you about it, and I try not to go on too long.



I was telling you about Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack last month. This is the second and last volume of translations that Viz made available in that hybrid sorta-digest form they used to use. I got this from the same "buy one get three free sale" I mentioned; I've certainly no objection to spending $4 on almost 200 pages of Tezuka.

Volume two has more of the same utterly outlandish and captivating medical mysteries, but it also features an amazing story called "Assembly-Line Care" which, thirty years later, is every bit as important today. Our health care system has been manipulated and screwed with by greedy businessmen for an awfully long time. Highly recommended on many levels.

(Originally posted August 12 2007 at hipsterdad's LJ.)