Kirby Kategory: "Other!"

Here's an odd Jack Kirby-related couple of books that I found in discount bins:



These were apparently part of an attempt by Topps Comics to establish a "Kirbyverse" in 1993, featuring various oddball characters created by Kirby, and also planning to incorporate his Captain Victory and Silver Star characters, because why not? Unfortunately, judging by this sample anyway, they function about as well as most Kirby Koncepts do when other creators attempt to take them on. Bombast #1 is written by Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich, doing more of an impression of Stan Lee than Kirby, and also throwing in Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon as a guest star. It starts with an earthquake in Chicago, which causes a fissure to open in "Grant's Park", and when a "young black junkie" falls in, he discovers what turns out to be a 15,000 year old guy just as he awakes from stasis, then stumbles around the city getting into awkward situations and random scuffles with people because he doesn't speak the language and can't understand the cold, lifeless machinery that everyone uses. Savage Dragon (who is a Chicago cop, I guess?) shows up to fight him for a while, but he runs away because he doesn't want to fight, even though he has super powers and his name is Bombast. He eventually meets up with some other refugees from the past, and maybe they team up to fight bad guys or something in future issues. Whatever.

The art is by Dick Ayers, but it's inked by John Severin, making for an interesting match, all gritty realism on top of Kirby-ish poses. It doesn't really work, but it does yield occasional bits of oddness, like the way images of which figures are floating in blank space are suddenly interrupted by a detailed panel of a guy lying in the street:



I do like this panel, which seems kind of Golden Age with its small figures:



But surely somebody must have realized how awkward this panel looks, as if Savage Dragon suddenly grew ten stories and grabbed Bombast by the ankles:

The art doesn't really matter when the writing is this embarrassing though. I would blame Roy Thomas for the ridiculous, silly dialogue, but Friedrich is credited for the script, so I guess he's responsible for terrible attempts at slang like: "Yo' momma! Who's that? Sure ain't no extra from a Spike Lee movie!", "Jump back, Jim! ...This dude's fast...and strong...and definitely baaad!", "We ain't exactly bro's, Moe! So I'm splittin', see?!",

It's really just a silly trifle though, with the cover being the best thing about it.

More interesting, however, is Satan's Six #1, probably just because it features eight pages of actual Kirby art (which were probably produced years earlier, maybe even back in the 70s), inked by a variety of comics people, including Kirby mainstay Mike Royer, Terry Austin, Steve Ditko, and, on the cover, Todd McFarlane. It seems like it was supposed to be a humorous series, about a team of souls from throughout history resurrected from limbo and sent to do Satan's bidding on earth, but they keep screwing up and accidentally doing good. That might have been the intent, anyway, but the comic that gets built around those pages is just horrible, with disgustingly ugly 90s art by John Cleary that looks like exaggerated Todd McFarlane proportions and expressions wedded to the elongated figures that Adam Kubert might use when depicting a psychedelic freakout:



It's also very obnoxiously written by Tony Isabella, with a "sexy" angel narrator speaking directly to the reader and making comments about the comic itself, along with lots of supposedly humorous dialogue screamed at each other by leering characters in every panel. Ugly, awful comics.

But the Kirby pages themselves are worth a look, especially to see the differences between the inkers' interpretations. Terry Austin, Mike Royer, and Joe Sinnott provide a classic Kirby look, and Steve Ditko works in some of his billowing clouds:



But most fascinating is this page by Frank Miller, which somehow meets Kirby halfway between their two styles, softening the edges of the lines and deepening the shadows:



I also like this Sinnott-inked page, but mostly because the "Hellicopter" depicted makes me think of a Kirby version of the Bullet Bills from Super Mario Bros.:



It might have been interesting to see where Kirby was planning on going with these characters, but being the 90s, it's even more awful than usual to see somebody else try to pick up where he left off. But was it worth 50 cents? Sure. You can't have too much Kirby art cluttering up the longboxes.

"This is Micro-Mark's hour! There's no need for intrigue or great strivings--the cosmos lies open to button-pushing babes!"

Welp, it's time for the final edition of Fourth World Panels, taken from The Hunger Dogs, Jack Kirby's graphic novel (as DC called their thick pamphlet format back in the 80s) "ending" to his most personal work:

The circumstances of this story are interesting; apparently Kirby created a single-issue ending to the Fourth World saga, which would have originally been published as the final issue of the New Gods reprint series, but it didn't really work at that length, so he got to expand it to a graphic novel. The seams do show a bit, at least as they are presented here in this collection, but he did manage to bring everything to a fairly satisfying close, while updating the story to reflect the decade that had passed since its last installment. That means that the main conflict is less about totalitarianism and oppression and more about the fear of destruction that came with the atomic age. Darkseid is less focused on Anti-life, having replaced much of his forces with automated machines, and his newest threat is something called Micro-Mark, which turns out to be the brainchild of Esak, who was the kid Metron was taking on tours of the galaxy in one of the early issues of New Gods, now deformed by accidents that occurred with experiments he performed, an experience which caused him to defect to Darkseid. Interestingly, Darkseid seems to be struggling to retain control over his domain, becoming eclipsed by the new technology that is beginning to render him obsolete:



Micro-Mark seems to be all about the fear of atomic annihilation, the power behind bombs that bring about the end of New Genesis (in what was probably one of the last examples of the incredible collages of the kind that Kirby did so well), but also threaten Apokolips in their instability. As with nuclear bombs, the existence of Micro-Mark is enough to assure mutual destruction, and that causes the eponymous Hunger Dogs, the poor, starving denizens of Apokolips, to rise up against their oppressors, although Darkseid's eventual return to full control is all but inevitable.



It's a nicely open-ended finish to Kirby's grand saga, and while it's a shame he didn't get to do the Shakespearean showdown between Darkseid and Orion that he had wanted to do to end his story (by this time, DC had appropriated the characters, started using them in other books, in the Super Friends cartoon, and as action figures, and thus they couldn't be killed off), it works as well as one could probably hope at this point in Kirby's career. He gets in plenty of good action, crazy visuals, and excellent dialogue:

"Drooling infant--! A new age is precisely the time--to settle old scores--!"
"Dance, Himon! Phase in and out like a dancing flea! But, in this new era--look for the shadow of my descending fist!"
"Then, let it be said that we must be the bravest among all who came before us! Let it be said that our wisdom is wed to the most terrifying risk ever taken!!"

He gives Orion a love interest in Himon's daughter Bekka, and Lightray gets to show up for a few fun scenes. It might not be the finale that we would liked to have seen, but it works for what it is, and there are plenty of great moments. I like this panel, in which Lightray zooms down from the caption onto the surface of Apokolips:



This splash page of a prisoner being led into a lab to act as an experiment subject is pretty chilling, a good example of the Holocaust imagery that Kirby occasionally used:



And this scene of pestilential creatures devouring New Genesis on a microscopic scale is pretty awesome:



I'll take whatever Kirby I can get, even if it's not ideal.

Next? I'm not sure. Kamandi? The Demon? Something else? We'll see!

"In the context of destruction, Orion transcends the term! To oppose him is to die! To survive him is life lived in fragmented form!"

Coming close to the big finish, here's today's Fourth World Panel, from the story "Even Gods Must Die!", which was published as the last issue of a series reprinting New Gods in 1984:

That full-page, full-bleed image is a pretty good sample of what this story contains; it's 48 pages of nonstop action, starting with Orion arriving on Apokalips via Boom Tube, then wrecking his way across the planet in an attempt to confront Darkseid and free his mother, Tigra. As awesome as it is, the art is occasionally a bit awkward, as Kirby's work tended to be at that point in his career. Darkseid, for one, looks like a heavy-browed neanderthal with a bucket on his head rather than the stony-faced, cold-hearted force of pure evil that he was in the earlier Fourth World issues:



And this super-deformed version of Granny Goodness makes me laugh:



And there's at least one silly bit, in which Lightray, who shows up to help Orion, creates a "light mirage" of a pile of bones to distract the giant dogs a group of bad guys are riding. And when the two of them part, they give each other an extremely dorky thumbs-up. It's distractingly dumb.

But there's also a huge amount of awesomely bombastic action, Orion smashing his way through page after page of machinery and wreckage, completely devastating everyone that gets in his way:



Look at that guy's head exploding! That's as savage as anything Orion ever did in this series. Kirby also goes all out with the crazy designs here, coming up with bizarre panel layouts and filling pages with weird Kirbytech:



He adds some real horror to the story too, like when Darkseid decides to resurrect Desaad:

 


Or when Lightray just cold drowns a guy in molten metal:



Maybe it was the increased crudeness of Kirby's style at this point, but that gaping mouth screaming out from a pool of flowing death is hauntingly awful.

Kirby gets in a little bit of commentary as well, with Darkseid's minions (especially that guy with the goofy moustache in the image above) convincing him to allow them to reanimate his dead minions Desaad, Kalibak, Steppenwolf, and Mantis, but they're nothing but personality-free shells of their former selves. That's something Kirby knew all about: having his creations continuing to plod along like zombies long after the life has been drained out of them.

As for the final confrontation between Orion and Darkseid, it's as exciting as one would expect, and it ends in a horrifying and brutal manner, setting up the final chapter of his saga perfectly. I'm not sure what to expect, but I'm hoping it all goes out with a big bang. No matter what happens, I'm sure it will be awesome.

Next: The Hunger Dogs!

"Thus, we turn a death trap into a life journey!"

It's all about love in the eighteenth and final issue of Mister Miracle, which gives us the obvious choice for this Fourth World Panel:

This issue has all the signs of a rushed finale, gathering a bunch of guest stars (just about the whole Fourth World cast that hasn't been exiled to some remote planet, with Granny Goodness, Virman Vundabar, Kanto, and Doctor Bedlam representing the bad guys, and Orion, Lightray, Highfather, and Metron saving the day from New Genesis, plus everyone fearing the eventual arrival of Darkseid) for the sudden wedding of Mister Miracle and Big Barda, then sending them off to keep fighting their eternal battle. It's all a bit rushed, as if Kirby's bringing back the gang for one last spin and jumping to the one plot point he wanted to get to, but there's some nice action and dialogue while it lasts. I especially like this image of Scott crushed into the ground by Granny Goodness's gravity weapon:



And Orion's sudden appearance in an explosion of destruction is a great reintroduction:




I also dig the way Darkseid arrives like a force of nature, his own followers fleeing in terror:




And his response to the wedding he failed to stop is classic:



That's a nice Kirby moment, a response to the cancellation of his magnum opus, yet an acknowledgement that he'll never give up. It took ten years, but he eventually came back to finish things. We'll see how that turned out.

Next: "Even gods must die!"

"Show the gentleman our--Inferno Room!"

It was hard choosing a quote for this post title, so here are a couple more from Mister Miracle #17: "This is 'endsville', baby! You won't bug us any more!", "Take me to my friends--and save all your teeth!" and "Goshamighty! It's a festival of felons!" As for today's Fourth World Panel(s), here are two demonstrations of why Shilo Norman was a cool addition to the series:

If the series was going to be stuck on Earth, with the heroes having adventures against criminals and mad scientists, Shilo seems like a decent replacement for Scott (and Barda), a normal human who is closer to the level of these bad guys than the god-powered heroes. Maybe that was the thinking, or maybe Kirby just wanted to keep creating more characters. It didn't really matter, since next issue is the last one, and it seems to bring back most of the old cast for a send-off, like a series finale should.

But for this penultimate installment, we've got a fun riff on the old plot where the heroes stay at a suspicious-looking inn that is probably haunted or booby trapped or something. That much is obvious from the get-go (which doesn't waste any time; the first page sees Scott, Barda, and Shilo knocking on the inn's door, dispensing with any broken down cars in the countryside or late-night stops overcome with exhaustion); just check out the moustache on the innkeeper:

Come on, nobody with that kind of facial hair can be anything less than dastardly.  Sure enough, he uses gas and "electro-jolts" and "inferno rooms" to try to kill them, but amusingly, it's not because of orders from Apokolips, but because he's confused them with a "Tricky Trio" of criminals that he was contracted to murder. That sets up a punch-em-up finale that lets Barda look as badass as usual with the following sequence:

 


Fun times, although having cosmic-level heroes routinely face off against gangsters and thugs (even ones armed with sci-fi death traps) is definitely not the best use of Kirby and the milieu he dreamed up. If this is what he was reduced to, I guess it's best that he ended it and moved on.

But while it lasts, I did want to note one aspect of his work that I like: the extreme close-ups. Kirby would throw these in in the middle of talky scenes, I suspect to liven up what could be a standard back and forth, but he did it with such flair, turning these panels into a sort of punctuated beat in the dialogue. For instance, here's the innkeeper looking sinister, his bad intentions conveyed by the angle of his face and the way his eyes peer up through the eyebrows:

In contrast, Scott's anger at the attempt on his life comes through in his narrowed eyes and the dark shadows across his face:

And this Barda panel makes me wonder how often the words "Kirby" and "fart joke" have been paired together:



Next: "Wild, Wild Wedding Guests!"

"With these controls I have brought humans down here to help me create a new species! 'Insecto-Sapiens!'"

Here's a cool Fourth World Panel, from Mister Miracle #16:

This issue is much more like it, at least until the lame "It was all a dream! (or was it?)" ending. Shilo Norman keeps seeing a weird bug creature, and then he gets zapped to tiny size and finds a scientist who is creating human-insect hybrids. Kirby gets to come up with some crazy designs, and moments like this response when a creature is asked, "What kind of man-bug are you?":



As fun as the weird adventure is, it tips over into some really unsettling Cronenbergian body horror when Shilo gets captured and the mad scientist decides to combine his "molecules" with an insect larva:



Resulting in the following abomination:



Good god, that "Nightmare!" chapter title isn't lying. That's some freaky shit.

It ends in a total cop-out though, as Shilo gets shaken awake by Mister Miracle, who tells him that he hit his head and dreamed the whole thing, then introduces him to a fellow escape artist who happens to look exactly like the evil Professor Egg. That's pretty dumb. Maybe this could've been revisited at some point, but the series ends two issues later, so we can forget about that, I think. It's too bad; Kirby could've come up with some real creepy stuff if he'd been able to continue in this vein.

Next: "Murder Lodge!"

"You jammed people who can jam right back, Mister Fez!"

I'm not sure why I took such a long break in doing these (it's been almost two and a half years!), but here's a Fourth World Panel, from Mister Miracle #15:

This issue is only so-so, perhaps reflecting Kirby's flagging interest as the series neared cancellation, but it does introduce Shilo Norman, a new cast member and protege of Scott Free. The panel above is a good introduction to him, but he also gets in a decent fight scene later. The plot is almost rudimentary, starting with a demonstration of an escape in which Barda attempts to crush Scott with a "giant nutcracker". After they take in Shilo, who is in hiding from the criminals who killed his brother, he runs off to get his own revenge, and Scott and Barda follow him and help him stop the bad guys just before they murder a hotel full of rich people and steal all their stuff. Not much in the way of cool Kirbytech, awesome action, or quotable dialogue, although I do like the bad guy's outfit:

I fear we're in the dregs of the Fourth World here, but I hold out hope that it ends well, eventually. If not, there's always Kamandi, right?

Next: "Shilo Norman, Super Trouble!"

Hero Tomorrow: Why not today?

Elsewhere: I reviewed the Jonathan Hickman-written SHIELD #1 for Comics Bulletin.  Pretty interesting. Also, I tried (and failed) to understand the psychotic Lars Von Trier movie Antichrist at The Factual Opinion. Cinematic!

Here's something I never knew existed: Tim Callahan posted a Frank Miller-illustrated New Gods story from Walt Simonson's run on Orion.  I'm rarely all that interested in follow-ups to that milieu by people other than Jack Kirby, but this is pretty cool, combining Kirby's bombast with the clipped, hard-boiled Miller style.  Maybe I should give Simonson's stuff a try sometime...

Webcomics links: John Kerschbaum has a new comic on Act-I-Vate called Cartoon Boy.  Sure to be funny.

Gabrielle Bell has been posting her autobiographical Lucky strips online for a while, but I wanted to point out the story that she is currently serializing which started out with her talking about attempting to adapt Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto to comics but has led to a story from her mom about how her friendship with Solanas led to a bizarre pot-selling incident in Japan.  It's pretty crazy and fascinating; check it out.

Hero Tomorrow
2007, directed by Ted Sikora

Apparently, the superhero has penetrated the modern psyche to the point that even indie movies about supposedly lovable losers can be all about the costumed freaks who wander around beating people up.  This particular example is an especially acerbic take on the genre, the Watchmen (in terms of cynicism towards the genre, if not innovative structure, compelling characters, or impressive visuals) of low-budget superhero movies.  It seems pointedly self-aware, with its main character being a wannabe comics artist named David with a girlfriend who works in a comics shop.  In a non-shocking twist, he starts dressing up as his own character, Apama (a terribly-designed mystery man supposedly derived from Native American mythology, although his creator states that he doesn't really care about specific tribes or anything), and fighting the lamest of crimes (pumpkin-smashing, candy-stealing teens, those dastards!), when he's not just wandering around the woods striking poses or hiding in bushes and peeping at women in their underwear.  And he's not any more inspiring out of his costume either, sleepwalking his way through a landscaping job for a friend and crashing in that same friend's basement, then mooching their food and spending all his money on comics.  He's a total loser, and not one of the lovable variety; it's hard to see what his girlfriend sees in him, although a late-film twist might reveal something along those lines.  It seems like pretty misanthropic stuff, although it's hard to tell if this is the filmmakers' intent, since everything is filmed with a light enough touch that it might all be intended as comedy and goofy fun-times.

To make matters worse, that intent toward comedy doesn't often pay off; while the situations seem as though they should be amusing in their pathetic-ness, there aren't many laughs to be had.  It's mostly a wallow in ugliness, from the horrific gray-brown, mohawked costume, to David's ridiculous dreadlocks, to his fairly poor, unfinished artwork.  Luckily, there are flashes of brilliance here and there, as in a dinnertime conversation between David and his girlfriend's mom, who asks reasonable questions about the origins of his poorly-defined character and gets screamed at by her daughter for caring.  And the highlight is probably a lengthy dream sequence in which David imagines attending some sort of play in which a squid leaves the ocean, begins living life in the city, and promptly gets beat up by Apama for no reason.  It's weird and surreal, with some impressively expressive puppeteering on the squid and rhyming narration intoned by a Christopher Lee lookalike in a wig.  Definitely the highlight of the film.

A certain degree of latitude must be given to low-budget productions like this; on some level, it's impressive just that they got made and are at all watchable.  In that respect, this film certainly succeeds, and even manages to shine here and there, but compared to the kind of storytelling available in many other mediums, especially the comics from which it seems to take inspiration, it comes up short.  Interestingly, while several scenes take place in a comics shop, the only actual comics mentioned (apart from David trying to pitch Apama to a publisher as "the next Wolverine") are Frankenstein Mobster and Astro City, and an on-screen appearance by Hip Flask.  Not exactly the cream of the superhero crop there, or even titles or characters which most people will recognize.  If the filmmakers were aware of much beyond the most basic of superhero tropes, they don't really make that apparent in the film itself.  They might have come up with a somewhat interesting take on the dysfunction necessary to dress up in a costume and thwart evil, but they didn't really succeed at crafting an especially good film around the idea.  Maybe next time.
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If you're still interested in the film (and considering that it has received acclaim at various film festivals, you probably shouldn't take my word for it), the official site can be found here.

Manga Mania Month: Black Jack provides more expertise and cynicism

Elsewhere: I reviewed the final episode of Dollhouse over at The Factual Opinion.  I'll miss that show, as flawed as it was.

Link: Graphic NYC is doing a Kirby-themed week this week, and so far, Mike Cavallaro has a nice post about they way his style basically became subconscious.  Nice.

On a personal note, I would have had this up this past weekend, but my scanner died.  I'll hopefully have a solution soon, but this goes up now thanks to the help of Tucker Stone, who generously offered to do the work for me.  What a stand-up guy.


Black Jack, volume 2
By Osamu Tezuka

With this second volume of the series-spanning collection of one of Osamu Tezuka's most famous works, it becomes obvious that it's going to be a bit spotty, sometimes brilliant and sometimes kind of rote.  With chapters that jump around in the series chronology (as it were), it's not really possible to witness any sort of thematic development, but one can tease out ideas that Tezuka would return to, such as the need for human interaction and empathy when treating patients, and Black Jack's code of honor that compels him to do everything he can to save a patient once he's started treating them, or keep his word no matter the cost.  There's a bit of loneliness caused by lack of human interaction as well, along with a forced misanthropy that comes with it.  He's certainly an interesting character, and while Tezuka doesn't really develop him as the series progresses, he does reveal depths and layers, allowing us to see the man underneath the scarred surface.

Those character pieces are probably when the series is at its best, with a pair of chapters standing out here in the way they demonstrate an aspect of Mr. Jack's personality.  The loneliness and longing for understanding come to the fore in a flashback story that sees him befriending a killer whale that keeps showing up in a cove near his seaside house.  It always seems to get injured, so Black Jack nurses it back to health, sometimes performing surgery, accepting pearls as payment.  But it turns out that the whale is a menace to the local fishermen, always disrupting their business, and eventually overturning a boat and killing somebody, so even though it comes to him and begs, Black Jack is forced to refuse to treat it, making for a surprisingly emotional scene:

It's a good look at the nicer aspects of Black Jack's character, the softness that hides underneath the tough exterior.  But he can still reveal depth through his scary facade, as in a story that sees him chance upon a family on the road and give them a ride, then meet the man's mother, an old woman who compares him to another famous talented (and high-priced) surgeon.  The mother constantly badgers her son and his wife for money, and it turns out that she was paying off a lifelong debt to that other doctor, who saved her son as a child and charged her an exorbitant fee.  In a tidy bit of dramatic irony, right after finally paying off the debt, she suffers a stroke, and the son begs Black Jack to save her.  He agrees to do so, although the son will end up with a similarly hefty debt.  Or will he?  Maybe Black Jack was just testing him to make sure he loved and cherished his mother as much as she did him.  The chapter ends without revealing whether Black Jack will hold him to his debt; our hero might actually be as mean as he seems, you never know.

This chapter also sees a nice bit of artistic work on Tezuka's part, as he originally depicts the old woman as cranky and cantankerous, with a hunched demeanor and pinched face, not a very likeable person:

But when the reasons behind her money-grubbing are revealed, we see a series of flashbacks that suddenly soften her, depicting her at earlier points in her life in which she is obviously the same person, but younger and more sympathetic:

It's a nice reversal, perfectly executed by Tezuka.  He does a nice job on the layout too, with the panels looking like memories splashing and dripping across the page.  That's the kind of thing he seems to toss out effortlessly; it's as though had an almost instinctive flair for storytelling.

Some other regular themes pop up here: the mysteries and wonder of the human body (Black Jack is unable to retrieve a broken needle from a patient's body, but it flows through his veins and miraculously comes back out the original injection point), the need for human caring in medical care (a hospital which operates on an assembly-line-like system nearly breaks down when the head doctor's daughter needs treatment and he tries to give her priority), Black Jack's sense of honor (he goes to great lengths and spends ridiculous amounts of money to save the life of a man who saved his own life), his combative nature when it comes to rivals who seek glory (a skilled acupuncturist who roams the countryside treating patients for free gets brushed off with "I can't abide showy do-gooders!"), and, of course, his general awesomeness (he performs dozens of surgeries at the same time in order to relieve the burden of the aforementioned assembly line hospital, he memorizes the layout of a boy's intestines while being held hostage so he can operate on him in the dark).

There's plenty of other good material here, as in the story in which we see the origin of the patch of differently-colored skin on Black Jack's face.  It came from a fellow student of his who was of mixed race, and the story sees Doc Jack try to locate him as an adult, following clues across the globe before coming up short, although Tezuka does get to work in an environmental message.  It's always interesting to see our hero fail, which happens in this story (although it's not a surgical failure) and other places, or get shown up, which happens in the story with the acupuncturist (who is blind, by the way, making for a cute reference).  And another striking thing Tezuka does is unflinchingly depict the injury and even deaths of children:

Threats to children can be notoriously empty in fiction, but when it comes to medicine, it's a fact that not everybody can be saved, and what better way to make that hit home than to depict it happening to the most innocent?  It certainly works, in a way that leaves the images lingering in the mind.

That's a testament to Tezuka's artistic skill, as are the dynamic bit of action that he throws in.  Most arresting might be this two-page spread of a tunnel collapsing on top of a school bus:

I love the plunging speed lines, falling rocks, and chunky sound effects crashing across the page.  It's a pretty incredible image, and only one of the many that Tezuka pulls off with aplomb.  I'm still finding this to be a lesser example of his work, but it's sure enjoyable, full of interesting ideas and weird Tezuka flourishes.  Maybe my opinion will change upon experiencing more of this series, but at the moment, it's simply quite good, rather than great.
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Recurring character watch:

More of the regulars show up here, but putting aside the ones already spotlighted in the first volume, we also see Dr. Tenma:

Astro Boy's Inspector Tawashi:

Melmo (as both an adult and a child):

And Hyoutan-Tsugi is always worth pointing out, as in this whack-a-mole bit:

Or when he plays a newscaster:

That Tezuka, he rarely passed up a joke, did he?