Princess Knight: Not the most feminist girls' comic, but still a lot of fun

Princess Knight, volume 1-2
By Osamu Tezuka
Published by Vertical

This series ended up being a bit different from what I was expecting, which was a Robin Hood-esque tale of the central character posing as a man and fighting evil while hiding as a princess. Instead, it's one of the most freewheeling, anything-can-happen comics I've read from manga master Osamu Tezuka (which is saying something), with a plot that starts from the silly supernatural contrivance of a princess being born with the heart of both a boy and a girl due to a mixup in heaven, and then proceeding from there in any direction that struck Tezuka's fancy. First, Sapphire poses as a prince so she can eventually take the throne (the laws of her kingdom only allow for male rulers), but is exposed and sent to prison early on, then escapes, falls in love with Prince Franz Charming from the neighboring kingdom, and has a crazy series of adventures that involve witches, magic, pirates, demons, swordfights, amnesia, treason, multiple assassination attempts, constant cross-dressing and warping of gender identification, people being turned to stone, gods and goddesses, and a literal battle of the sexes. It's totally nuts, with the reader never knowing where it will go next, but always entertained by Tezuka's cartoony energy and his mixture of goofy humor and poignant drama.

This series, which originally came out in 1953, is known as the starting point for manga for girls, but while it has a great female lead, it's not exactly a masterwork of feminist progressivism. The problematic elements start with the main character, who is brave and strong not due to her basic nature, but because she was accidentally given a boy's heart. This could have simply been a conceit to get the story started, but there are multiple points in which, through various plot contrivances, the boy heart is taken from her, and she becomes weak and unable to stand up for herself. It's kind of embarrassing, even if it does give Tezuka some chances to play with the ideas he created, like when she loses her girl heart and becomes a rude, brash fellow who spurns any offers of aid, or when her boy heart is given to the imbecilic, childlike puppet ruler who was placed on her throne, transforming him into a brave, honorable ruler. There is a definite push and pull between ideas of feminism (the law forbidding women to sit on the throne is repeatedly called misogynistic) and conformity to gender norms, with the latter even tainting some of the big moments of female empowerment, such as when the women of Sapphire's kingdom band behind her and stand up to the army to protect her from the duke who has taken over the throne and wants to have her executed for treason (it's a long story); unfortunately, this act of rebellion is seen as less of a threat than an inconvenience, since the men will now have to do all the cooking and the laundry. But most troubling is probably Sapphire's inability to solve her own problems; while she is strong and decisive, always taking positive actions to reach her goals, she is regularly reduced to the role of damsel in distress, with others fighting to control her destiny in her stead. It's frustrating, since Tezuka has created such a great character, but then regularly sidelines her to let others fight her battles for her. It's an unfortunate relic of the times in which the series was created, especially since the surroundings are so lively and innovative that it seems ahead of its time.

Luckily, even though the gender-based material is often troublesome, it can mostly be ignored in favor of everything else. The plot is incredibly enjoyable, never sitting still in one setting or conflict for long, but constantly rushing on to the next idea, whether it's a witch named Madame Hell scheming to steal Sapphire's girl heart in order to turn her obnoxious daughter into a lady worthy of marrying Prince Franz, a pirate captain aiding Sapphire and falling in love with her, Prince Franz being in love with Sapphire's alter ego "the flaxen-haired maiden" and considering Sapphire an enemy due to various misunderstandings, Sapphire being turned into a swan that Prince Franz still finds strangely familiar, or any number of other ridiculous twists, none of which seem out of place, since Tezuka establishes early on that anything can happen, and probably will. This unpredictability extends to the tone of the book itself, which can swerve unexpectedly from exciting action to slapstick humor to touching drama, leaving the reader believing that Sapphire will end up all right in the end, but ready to accept any new dangerous attacks or wacky situations that get thrown at her.

The wild, kinetic energy of Tezuka's art is already on display here, even in this earlier work (although it was apparently reworked and re-serialized in 1963, so this edition reflects some updates to his style since the original publication), with art full of cute, cartoony animals, rushing speed lines, dramatic angles, and nifty costume design. One definite treat is his depiction of swordfights, in which the blades move so fast that we see multiple images at once:



There are also some gorgeous fairy tale settings like castles, forests, and cottages, many of them filled with all manner of magical mayhem:




The various fantasy creatures are pretty great too, like this dragon (which seems to be a notable example of Tezuka's Disney influence):



Or the crazy collection of ghouls that attend a supernatural wedding:



It's also interesting to see some of the early shojo manga motifs being introduced, like the saucer eyes of Sapphire and some of the other female characters, or the flowers that occasionally fill the backgrounds or form the borders of panels:



It's a lovely comic, and while it's a bit too of its time to be an unimpeachable classic, it's still a wonderful read, full of adventure, romance, comedy, excellent art, weird Tezuka flourishes, and complete and utter unpredictability that keeps one turning pages up until the end, never sure what is in store for the Princess, but always ready to find out along with her. Nobody could make comics like Tezuka, but he broke enough ground and inspired enough people that we're all richer for the fact that so many keep trying to meet the standard that he set.
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Hyoutan-Tsugi watch:

I didn't spot the little bugger for much of the first volume, which made me wonder if he was more of a later tic of Tezuka's, but he started showing up pretty regularly in the back half of the series, whether as a guest at the demon wedding (hiding behind the king's cape):



A visualization of insulting dialogue:



A pirate ship figurehead:



Or just chilling with some animals:



Other Tezuka characters make cameos here and there, like Mr. Mustachio:



Dr. Ochanomizu and Inspector Tawashi:



This weird little guy (his name is Spider, according to Wikipedia, and his catchphrase is "At yer service!"):



And even Tezuka himself (in the upper left corner of this panel), also attending the evil wedding:

Pluto: Even a robot can cry. And also blow shit up

 Webcomics links: Check out Katie Cook's cute new monster webcomic, Gronk.  Did I mention that it was cute?

For something less cute and more badass, here's a robot action webcomic called Old City Blues, and it looks awesome.

For some essential comics background reading, I want to be sure to highlight this "interview" (really more of an essay) with Joshua Cotter, which confirms my theory that Driven By Lemons was all about mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder.  It's a pretty amazing bit of writing, as Cotter lays his soul bare regarding his insecurities about his work, his uncertainty about future comics, and his own struggles with depression.  If you're at all interested in Cotter's work, this is required reading.

Pluto, volume 8
By Naoki Urasawa

The rule of thumb when it comes to manga is generally that endings can be expected to be weak (and also that series often don't hit their stride until the second volume, but that's less pertinent to this discussion), and that was the fear with this series, that Naoki Urasawa wouldn't be able to bring his story home satisfactorily after such excellence in the series' first two thirds or so.  Those fears should be mitigated by the fact that he was able to wrap the eighteen-volume Monster up well, and Pluto is more of a self-contained work (adapting an already-complete story rather than continuing on as a serialization), but they still lurked, especially after the seventh volume, which was probably the weakest so far.  Of course, that one's faults, as they were, were mostly due to it being the penultimate installment, tasked with putting pieces in place for the final showdown, just barely beginning to answer some of the various ongoing mysteries while still saving the full revelations for the finale.  It wasn't a waste; there was some great action and a growing sense of hopelessness at the oncoming destruction, along with a few really memorable images, like Epsilon wrestling with a tornado, and a creepy-looking adoptive official managing to make himself seem cheerful and kind, only to turn out to be exactly as evil as that first impression indicated.  And best of all, a shot of Epsilon shooting his hands down from out of the sky to offer protection to one of his charges is one of the lasting images from a series that has featured many, many indelible pieces of artwork:

But while that volume was probably an essential bit of pacing and setup, it kind of seemed like stalling before the big finish.  Luckily, the final volume suffers from no such "problems", jumping right into excitement with the awakening of Atom and the subsequent confusion and fear that reigns among Dr. Ochanomizu and his scientific cohorts as they don't know what to expect from him.  Urasawa certainly passes that feeling on to the reader, giving Atom a wide-eyed, inhuman gaze that suggests a struggle to contain boiling internal emotion:

His penchant for scrawling the formula to a deadly bomb all over the walls of his holding cell doesn't help anything either.  But he does eventually get back to normal, just in time to go up against Pluto in a final battle for the fate of the world, with enough time taken in various expositional scenes both before and during the battle to explain exactly what has been going on for the whole series, how Pluto, Sahad, Abullah, Goji, and the mysterious Bora are all related, and what the big, secret plot and string of murders have been all about.  The interesting thing is, it all ends up making sense, but it almost becomes unimportant as the stakes increase, a bit of petty revenge that spirals out of control to threaten all life on Earth.

That's something that Urasawa does so well in this series: explore the basic emotions that humanity experiences, demonstrating how they can affect us in both good and bad ways, but often go unnoticed in the swirling complexity of internal and external stimuli that we all face.  The love for family is the emotion that gets the focus here, turning out to be the main impetus for Abullah's revenge as he sent Pluto to kill everyone even tangentially involved in starting the war that killed his family.  At the same time, we see Atom experiencing Gesicht's memories of starting his own family with his wife after struggling to comprehend the undying love a pair of human parents demonstrated toward a child hostage that he rescued:

His attempt to experience that kind of love for himself (and his wife) leads him to adopt a broken robot for himself and his wife, and Urasawa manages to capture a childlike love from him as he emulates the humans he observed:

It's moving stuff, reminding us that while we like to think that parents and families have maturity and intelligence, those strong emotions can often make us block out everything else, leading us to take actions that we wouldn't rationally consider in pursuit of protection or anger when our loved ones are threatened.  We're all robots on the inside, I guess.

This sort of examination of humanity is fascinating, but this being the final volume of the series, Urasawa doesn't do too much navel-gazing.  Instead, he closes things out with a bang, pitting Atom and Pluto against each other in a rage-and-hate-fueled battle that's harsh, violent, and destructive, with Atom possibly even coming off as the scarier of the two as he launches into a litany of Pluto's crimes and swears to kill him, anger written across his face as his blasts through the air and begins tearing off robotic body parts:

It's an amazing bit of action on Urasawa's part, with Atom successfully transforming from the vulnerable-seeming kid of earlier volumes to the high-flying, superheroic Astro Boy that we know and love, but with a dangerous edge that his sister Uran recognizes from thousands of miles away as something that could destroy his soul if he goes too far (why, he's almost like a certain righteous military superpower performing unspeakable deeds in the pursuit of "justice"!).  The fight might be cathartic, but it's not going to do anybody any good of the world gets destroyed in the process.

In the end, good manages to triumph over evil, as was a certainty from the beginning, but Urasawa makes it count, giving all parties the proper emotional release, and attempting to impart lessons about humanity in the process.  That's what Pluto has been all about, and it's been a fascinating, enlightening bit of fiction, something  to ponder on multiple levels, from the sci-fi ideas to the symbolic commentary on current events, from the excellently-developed characters to the gorgeous artwork that fully defined a complex futuristic world, from the small, emotional moments to the big, exciting action.  It's been a remarkable work of comics throughout, something that we're all lucky to be able to experience.  Now, who's up for translating Billy Bat?

Black Jack: More observations, less structure

Check this out: Connor Willumsen is posting his graphic-novel-in-progress, Everett, on his site as a webcomic.  I got a glimpse of this at MoCCA last year, and those first ten pages or so still blow me away.  I can't wait to see what he's got coming up.


Black Jack, volume 5
By Osamu Tezuka

This volume of Tezuka's "awesome surgeon" comic sees more along the same lines as the previous installments, and there are certainly some good stories, including return appearances by the proto-Kevorkian Dr. Kiriko (first planning to kill his own father, then later himself), the blind acupuncturist Biwamaru (he and BJ both go to one of those hermit-craftsmen to get their sharp implements forged), and the Black Queen, a female surgeon who can't quite manage to maintain our hero's aloof nature and devotion to medical excellence, perhaps due to all those pesky mood swings that women are prone to (women's lib apparently wasn't in full effect in 70s Japan).  There's an example of how dark Tezuka could be with a story of a "wolf girl" living in Communist Russia, and an especially weird story in which Black Jack operates on a ghost.  That's all well and good, but by this point, it's hard to find something unique to talk about with each new volume.  The stories are as good as ever, but it's a consistent level of goodness, so any commentary from the previous volumes would just be repeated.  So rather than reiterate previous praise for Tezuka's storytelling skills, I'll just point out a couple techniques that he uses that impress me.

For one, there's the anatomical cutaway.  Since there are often strange medical conditions that need to be explained to the reader, Tezuka will spend a page or two having Black Jack (or a disembodied narrator, which could be interpreted as Tezuka himself) describe whatever is going on with the patient, accompanied by an illustration:

But this being Tezuka, his cutaway illustrations are never dry diagrams, but rather cartoony bits of expressiveness, with the abstracted "model" often reacting in pain or disbelief to whatever is wrong with him:

As with everything he did, it's another chance for Tezuka to express himself and do something unique and unexpected in his stories.

I also like the simple, effective design of the main character.  The black cloak that he wears makes for a wonderful visual, often blowing around him dramatically as he makes a bold statement, observes some tragedy, confronts an opponent, or strikes some other dramatic pose:

It also makes for an excellent bit of iconography on which to end stories; the sight of Black Jack walking off into the sunset, having completed whatever monumental task was set before him this time, is often little more than a somewhat abstract black shape:

But with the readers having grown familiar with the sight, it's something recognizable and effective, a good bit of punctuation on which to end.

Finally, there's the occasional expressive flourish that Tezuka was so good at throwing into his stories, often to illustrate some emotional state or other.  He was always stretching himself to come up with new ways of depicting mental states, and one in particular is probably my favorite image in this volume, and one that caught the attention of the designer, since it ends up on both the back cover and the spine of this edition.  It's in a story about an actress/singer who was paralyzed in a car accident, and while Black Jack manages to operate on her spine and heal her, she still doesn't seem to be able to move:

It turns out that she was suicidal, feeling trapped in a demanding life of celebrity and exhausted by the constant demands heaped upon her by her fans and bosses.  That bit of information is what makes the image so striking; she's not just physically paralyzed, but emotionally as well, held down into a life that she doesn't want and unable to escape.  That distortion of her body and the "bonds" holding her down emphasize that, but the solid black of her image and her face make the oppression clear, and the shapes in the background suggest that it feels like something that is affecting her at a basic, cellular level.  It's a portrait of tragedy, and Tezuka sums it up incredibly effectively in this single image.

And that's what makes this series work so well: Tezuka's inventiveness and willingness to try anything.  The episodic structure gives him free reign to go in any direction he wishes, and if there's anything Tezuka wasn't afraid of, it was the blank page.  His stories might seem somewhat simplistic, but on closer look, there's plenty to get out of them, and each person will probably come away with something different.  Luckily, he produced so much content, we'll never run out of material to interpret.
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Bonus: funny Pinoko faces!

These always crack me up.

Black Jack: I apparently can't make this flow together very well

Hey, I'm still alive!

Elsewhere: In my absence of posting, I did manage to finish some writing, reviewing PunisherMAX #5 and Siege #3 for Comics Bulletin.

Links: I thought this story that the Same Hat! guys posted from Epic Illustrated by Keiichi Koike was pretty great.

Hey look, Salgood Sam has a webcomic called Dream Life.  It's purty.

I'm not really all that interested in Savage Dragon, but this announcement of a indie-creator-focused series of stories along the lines of Marvel's Strange Tales or DC's Bizarro Comics interests me.  We'll see if I ever read any of them.

If I was anywhere near New York, I would definitely try to make it to the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art for their NeoIntegrity exhibit, which Connor Willumsen informed me about.  It contains work by over 200 incredible comics artists, mostly of the indie variety.  Damn, that looks like something to see.

And now, some fairly unfocused thoughts on the two most recent volumes of Black Jack that I read.

Black Jack, volume 3 and 4
By Osamu Tezuka

Black Jack: still badass - Volume 3 has what might be the most famous example of our awesome surgeon's skill, as he ends up performing surgery on himself in the middle of the Australian Outback, while fighting off attacking dingoes at the same time.  Holy crap.  There's also a story in which he replaces the skin of a dying man as a favor to a lost love (the guy wanted to get rid of a tattoo; it's a long story).  And he gets to explain why he charges patients so much in a typically pompous statement (which gets undercut by his kindness in the same story):

And check out how he manages to chase off some gangsters who want to kill one of his patients:

Ha ha, guts are stinky.

Tezuka: still a weirdo - Man, Tezuka could sure come up with some crazy stuff, including a case in which an African country is struck with a plague that makes people and animals physically shrink until they end up dying at the size of babies:



Or a boy who has a heart condition that Black Jack solves by surgically connecting him to his mother until an organ donor can be found:



And there's plenty of other acts of medicinal awesomeness, but at some point, the parade of amputations and reattachments, open heart surgeries, and who knows what else starts to blur together.  But then something will stand out again, like a chapter in which BJ has to cut Pinoko open to remove a poisonous pill from her intestines before it dissolves.  It's pretty amazing how Tezuka could make this all seem fresh, over and over again.

Black Jack gets a nemesis - Volume 3 sees the introduction of Dr. Kiriko, a sort of opposite number to our hero, who functions as a proto-Kevorkian, offering patients a high-priced, painless suicide rather than curing them.  He's a good character, with a similarly dark appearance, sporting long white hair and an eye patch.  The two of them end up fighting over a seemingly doomed patient:



It's a pretty cool idea, and hopefully he'll show up again.

The Star System works - The regular Tezuka "actors" show up in these volumes as always (with an especially good one being Acetylene Lamp as a good-hearted bandit in a sort of Western-themed story), but perhaps the best use yet is one chapter that features a cop and pickpocket who both frequent a Tokyo train line and have had a long, adversarial relationship over the years.  They're "played" by Acetylene Lamp and Mr. Mustachio:



Which gives them instant characterization, painting the cop as the mean persecutor and the pickpocket as a sort of lovable scamp.  As of their first appearance, they seem fully realized, and their long history as Tezuka characters lends weight to their history together.  It's pretty impressive that Tezuka could make this work, and it's a technique that he used incredibly well, something that few others have even attempted.  The story itself ends up being pretty good too, with Mustachio injured and Lamp blackmailing Black Jack into healing him so he can go on to pick pockets another day.  Ah, bromance.

Continuity creeps in - These chapters are all stand-alone, functioning as single units that don't flow together as a serial story.  But it's interesting to see the continuing elements that show up from time to time, like recurring characters or mentions of past cases.  Notable examples here include a sailor who shows up having fallen for Black Jack's lost love, a woman whose reproductive system he removed due to cancer, taking away her femininity.  And a man carrying a valuable package in the subway gets bumped by a familiar face:

Of course, the way these stories are presented out of the order in which they are published does have the opposite effect at times.  Pinoko's status is kind of in constant flux; at one point she'll show up as Black Jack's capable assistant (he even says she's a doctor herself at one point), then a couple chapters later she'll be a child attending elementary school.  It's an odd consequence of the presentation, but it's certainly no dealbreaker.

Tezuka guest stars - Tezuka inserted himself in his comics pretty regularly, usually as a gag or cameo, but there's one story in volume 3 that sees him show up as a regular character, a doctor that Black Jack encounters:



It's another case in which the Star System works, since Tezuka was a doctor himself, and he had developed a sort of persona as a kind person, so he works perfectly in the story.  It also gives him a chance to do something funny with the pimples he would always draw on his nose:

It's yet another fun use of his regular techniques.

Metafiction is fun - And speaking of enjoyable techniques, the fourth wall-breaking gags that Tezuka often used are another thing he did really well, whether it's characters commenting on how many pages are left in the story, people smashing through panel borders:

Or the occasional wacky joke/self-insertion:



Those always crack me up.

Car crash watch - There isn't a huge amount of vehicular damage in these two volumes, with the automotive wreckage limited to a standard pedestrian run-down:



And a car chase that includes another moment of tossed-off silliness:



So in lieu of automotive damage, how about an awesome plane crash?



Awesome art: still in effect - As great an artist at Tezuka was, his techniques could begin to feel almost rote simply through sheer volume.  So it's always great to see something new that makes you realize all over again how incredible he was.  For just two examples here is a scene of an earthquake interrupting an operation that's startling in its jostling intensity:



And a description of the circulation problems caused by gigantism that's demonstrated by a remarkably effective image of a tiny heart in a big body:

That's the mark of an amazing artist there, and there's always something to grab onto with Tezuka, some astonishing flourish that makes you excited to be reading his comics.

The smaller, sweeter stories are often the best - As much fun as it is to see all the goofy jokes, gruesome surgeries, and awesome ideas that Tezuka would throw into the series, the stories that really stick in the memory are the ones that establish well-drawn characters and situations that tug at the heartstrings, which is yet another thing Tezuka did so well.  A girl with a beautiful voice nearly loses it, but Black Jack manages to cure her after insisting that she remain completely silent for a full year.  A mother makes a connection with her disowned son, who cares for her more than the other children she is so proud of.  A young boy who once helped nurse a bird back to help is in turn saved when the bird keeps delivering money to Black Jack for his medical treatment.  A cancer-stricken medical student strives to save just one fellow cancer patient while he has the strength.  Every story has something fascinating about it, but these tales where Tezuka put together simple situations and characters that feel like real people struggling to survive are the ones that really stand out, and make me want to keep coming back for more.

Manga Mania Month: Tezuka likes his twisted metal

Maybe it's just me, but it sure seems like Osamu Tezuka took every chance he could get to include car crashes in Black Jack.  Maybe they're a good source of mangled bodies to operate on, or maybe it's the opportunity to partake in some of the loud action that stands in opposition to the careful, precise work of surgery.  Whatever the case, it's as awesome as one would expect to see Tezuka unleash his dynamic sensibilities on the subject, starting with the very first pages of the first story:

Just look at those coursing streams of speed lines, and their resulting explosion.  That's how you start a goddamn comic book!  It certainly doesn't end there though.  People get wrecked, giving Black Jack the opportunity to reattach limbs:

Children get run over:

A guy gets vaporized by a train:

Even the doctor himself gets in on the action, using his car to take out some punks:

And sometimes we don't even see the crash, but just get to witness the gruesome results:

It's pretty crazy, a great example of Tezuka's ability to work cool stuff to draw into stories and make them exciting.  It will certainly be something to watch for in future volumes.