Reprint This Update on Black Jack

Tezuka's Black Jack Returns

By Kai-Ming Cha -- Publishers Weekly, 10/29/2007 1:54:00 PM

Japanese pulp fiction and classic manga publisher Vertical Inc. announced plans to publish Black Jack, legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka’s popular series about a genius surgeon, in its entirety beginning in fall 2008.

Black Jack originally ran in Japanese publisher Akita Shoten’s magazine, Weekly Shonen Champion,from 1973 to 1978. The series is approximately 12 volumes. According to Ada Palmer, founder of the Web site Tezuka in English, which is devoted to introducing Tezuka to an English speaking audience, Viz Media published the first two volumes before licensing conflicts with Tezuka Productions forced Viz to cancel the series. A new Black Jack anime—which included the collaboration of Tezuka’s son—recently finished airing on Japanese television after a two-year run. An older version of the Black Jack anime, originally created in the 1980s, was made available unofficially by fans over the Internet and is now available on iTunes.



The series stars title character Black Jack, an unlicensed but gifted surgeon who saves peoples lives, often against all odds. The series is a childhood favorite of Vertical editorial director Ioannis Mentzas. "[Black Jack] is probably the most influential book of my early years,” explained Mentzas, “and I've heard that sentiment from many Japanese." Mentzas added that the character’s appeal lies in its psychology. "Black Jack reflects the glory and squalor of early adulthood,” he said. Mentzas believes that the series will draw an audience in the late teens to early 20s. "I think any high school or 20-something person of the slightest intellectual bent will identify with BJ."

According to Palmer, founder of the Web site Tezuka in English, which is devoted to introducing Tezuka to an English speaking audience, Black Jack is the second most popular character in Japan. "Black Jack is Tezuka's most exciting adult character,” Palmer said, citing the Japanese medical and technology company Hitachi, which recently licensed the Black Jack character to be the spokesman for its medical equipment.

Palmer, whose site attracts an international crowd, said that most English-speaking anime and manga fans don't read Tezuka and aren't usually familiar with works like Buddha, which were formerly marketed to the Japanese literature-reading audience. Because of Viz’s earlier release of the Black Jack manga and the circulation of the anime series, Palmer said that Black Jack is better known among American manga and anime fans and has the potential to broaden his appeal.

"Black Jack is clearly the one that will sell the best in the U.S.,” Palmer said. "This is the title that will make or break his reputation in the U.S."

I first wrote about Black Jack in July. Good work, publishers! What is next?

(Originally posted October 31, 2007, 13:11 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

The Black Jack entry

Reprint This! 15. Oh, Wicked Wanda!

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One of the most memorable comic strips I've ever run across was Frederick Mullally and the late Ron Embleton's OH, WICKED WANDA!, which detailed the machinations of a domineering, super-rich European heiress and her schemes of global domination. It's a strip most of you might have seen glimpses of once or twice, but very few people actually read, what with all the glorious amounts of sex and nudity to distract you from the storyline...



Around 1982 or 1983, I was in middle school and discreetly reading my dad's quarter-century run of Playboy when a formidable stack of new material made its way into the house. Dad had taken on a co-worker's collection of 1970s Penthouse mags when his new bride demanded that he dump them. Well, it didn't take long at all to determine that Penthouse was not in any way appealing, in pictures or in words, except for this remarkable, mind-blowing eight-page comic in the back of most of the issues.

Oh, Wicked Wanda! debuted in 1973 and spent the next eight years engaging in a savage satire of seventies politics and sexual conquests. Our heroine, Wanda von Kreesus, a brunette Amazon who was most often seen in a leather outfit with red thigh-highs and a riding crop, had inherited a Swiss bank in which most of the world's governments had deposited vital secrets. The series involved her various manipulations and schemes to take over the world, assisted by her young lover Candyfloss and a small military strike force made up of lesbians from many nations.

Wanda's adventures put her up against various world politicians, along with media celebrities, who were depicted in savage caricature and odd pseudonyms. Most commonly and mercilessly mocked was Ted Kennedy, who seemed to pop up every month standing in a swimming pool or a pond or a puddle and holding a steering wheel. After OPEC's actions triggered international inflation during the 1973 oil crisis, Wanda was often at work playing Ford and Brehznev against each other before the backdrop of Middle East politics.



Little of this, of course, made much sense to a thirteen year-old whose eye was first caught by Ron Embleton's artwork, and the gorgeous naked women on display. But I was curious enough to start learning what the hell was going on in the 1970s to make everybody act so crazy, and if you're familar enough with the news and events of that decade, then Oh, Wicked Wanda! genuinely shines as a brilliant piece of satire, easily on par with such period gems as Howard the Duck and the Doonesbury of the day. The typical panel composition, with little sidebar conversations among bystanders or Hollywood celebs or the writer and the artist, also evokes Jack Davis or Mort Drucker's work for Mad.

The strange thing is that Wanda is probably so easily dismissed as a sex strip that the remarkable humor, in equal parts bawdy, political and subtle, is completely overlooked. But the sex probably works against any possible reprint value the strip might have, even among publishers who specialize in adult material. Wanda and Candyfloss were probably the first lesbian couple that thousands of people ever read about, and it was arguably just as many people's first exposure to a BDSM lifestyle, but by modern standards, the series is far too tame to have any mileage as a "top-shelf book." Sure, there is full frontal nudity, but nothing explicit, and characters are always seen just before or after they've done the dirty, so a publisher like Eros Comix wouldn't see any value in it. On the other hand, there's more nudity and adult content in Wanda than any non-porn series outside of Playboy's Little Annie Fanny (the success of which certainly inspired Penthouse to commission an ongoing strip of some kind), and it's impossible to claim that the content is incidental to any reader's enjoyment of the comedy and the politics. There's also the problem that the original artwork is long since gone, and from what I understand, Penthouse's archives are in nowhere near the good shape that Playboy's are.

Looking back, it really did feel like an awkward fit in Penthouse even when it was running. Even from today's perspective, the magazine, in the 70s, just felt sleazy, dark, intense and secretive and totally lacking the joie de vivre that a healthy sex life brings. Oh, Wicked Wanda! was vibrant and silly and playful; the adult overtones are masked by the same veil of fun that you see in Bettie Page's smile. That suggests to me that Dark Horse, who have published a few collections of Page photographs by Jim Silke and her other fans, might be the right publisher for the series. Dark Horse also compiled the complete Little Annie Fanny in two volumes, though I expect they did so because of the sales potential of Annie's celebrated creators and artists (Kurtzman, Elder, Jaffee, Davis, etc) as much as the desire to have Annie back in print. It's certainly worth looking into again, and I hope somebody does!



(Originally posted October 26, 2007, 11:01 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 14. Marvelman

UPDATE: Marvel Comics have obtained the rights and are reissuing the series, with new coloring, as both periodicals and collected hardback editions.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that is near the top of everybody's reprint wish list is the lawsuit-laden, litigation-heavy story of MARVELMAN. This series, originated by Alan Moore and Garry Leach, originally appeared in the black and white British anthology title Warrior before evolving into a color American comic. But it was based on a much older property, and the companies that published Marvelman in the 1980s have all had their assets and intellectual property rights divided among so many squabbling parties that this, of the 25 series I propose in the Reprint This! feature, may be the least likely of them all to ever reappear, despite the public desire to see it again...



The character of Marvelman was created in late 1953 by Mick Anglo, a writer for a British publishing company called L. Miller & Son. They had been repackaging American comic stories of Captain Marvel - the superhero who shouts "Shazam!" - for the British market, but found themselves in a fix when Captain Marvel's original publisher, Fawcett, shut down. Anglo devised Marvelman and some associates as quick replacement characters for the popular feature, and their new adventures, in a variety of comic titles, continued through the 1950s, with reprints continuing the titles until their cancellation in 1963.

Twenty years later, a revamped, modernized Marvelman was included among the offerings in the first issue of Warrior. Written by Alan Moore and with art by Garry Leach and Alan Davis, the new series appeared in the comic's first 21 issues. This is the series that everybody wants to read again. Placing larger-than-life characters into something like the real world and considering the ramifications of their superpowered struggles has since become almost old hat in superhero fiction, but Marvelman did it first and arguably did it better than anybody since.

Detailing the left turns and road blocks in this series would take too long, and it is all laid out in other sites like Wikipedia. Suffice it to say that, for a number of reasons, Marvelman ceased appearing in Warrior after its 21st issue. At the same time, the rights for an American reprint book, retitled Miracleman to avoid even more litigation from a certain US publisher, were purchased by Eclipse Comics. They reprinted - if I understand correctly - 20 of the Warrior episodes, colorized and shrunk to fit the smaller US page size. When they completed the available episodes, Alan Moore, with new artists Chuck Austen and John Totleben, resumed the series for their new American publisher. Miracleman was a huge hit for Eclipse, and reached a natural end with its sixteenth issue. It was revived in the early 1990s by Neil Gaiman - to whom Moore transferred his share of the rights - and Mark Buckingham, but the closure of Eclipse Comics in 1993 left the story incomplete, and a flurry of lawsuits from contesting parties making claims on the property has meant that the celebrated series can only be found in back issue boxes.

So on the face of it, a Marvelman/Miracleman reprint would be the simplest thing ever: one book containing all of the episodes from Warrior in their original black and white, a second book containing Miracleman # 7-16, and a third containing Neil Gaiman's run. With back issue prices just this side of ridiculous, there's clearly demand. But the lawsuits to which I keep referring have shut this series down. There isn't anybody who wouldn't like to see Marvelman again and read what all the fuss is about, and enjoy rare work by Moore and Gaiman, two of modern comics' most celebrated writers, but many of those anybodies suggest that they have a claim towards sharing in the profits of such an enterprise.

Just to further complicate matters, the original series briefly included an appearance by a British super-agent called Big Ben, created by Warrior's publisher, Dez Skinn with the intention of debuting in Marvelman before being spun off into his own series...



Just this month, a promotional image for a proposed Big Ben television cartoon made the rounds of the comic blogs. If that takes off, how's that going to affect any Marvelman volume that features the character, I wonder?

(Originally posted October 17, 2007, 11:43 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 13. Major Eazy

UPDATE: Titan released a hardcover collection of the first 30 episodes in 2012.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Carlos Ezquerra's excellent artwork was first noticed as one of the anonymous contributors to DC Thomson's Warlord in the early 1970s. Recognizing him as a talent worth tracking down, the editors of IPC's Battle Picture Weekly found his English agent and gave him some work. Ezquerra's commitments to DCT kept him from taking on a long-term series for a few more months, but when he was free, Battle had the perfect strip for him: the battlefield exploits of a rule-breaking iconoclast called MAJOR EAZY.



Major Eazy was a laid-back, longhaired, scruffy tactical genius and crack shot who drove his Bentley around Italy in 1944, in charge of a small platoon and constantly rubbing his commanding officers and various American sergeants the wrong way, yet always getting the better of everybody by way of his refusal to do anything "by the book." Eazy had a very strong sense of morality, honor and justice, and treated his enemies with more respect than his comrades would.

After 35 episodes, the story flashed back to North Africa in 1941 and presented tales of Eazy's earlier days. There was also a celebrated thirteen-week crossover with another Battle series, Rat Pack, in which Eazy took over that unit while their commanding officer was recuperating. Eazy's laconic approach to the war was a huge hit with many readers, but his popularity was not unanimous. The editors of Battle occasionally printed grouchy letters from uptight point-missing kids who complained that an unshaven, rule-breaking fellow like Eazy wouldn't really have got very far in the British army, and his behavior was sometimes jolly disgraceful!

Objectively, Charley's War was the best of all the strips to appear in Battle, and Johnny Red might have been the most popular, but Major Eazy is certainly my favorite. Certainly, there's an element of repetition - Alan Barnes, editor of Judge Dredd Megazine, is said to have ruled out reprinting Eazy in that comic because "if you've read one Major Eazy, you've read them all." I certainly don't agree with that, although the early days of the strip certainly would have benefitted from longer, multi-part stories instead of one-offs. But even when the plot feels familiar, there's always an exciting, witty payoff to Eazy's latest idea. Plus, the artwork is just fantastic. I could look at these pages for days.

A reprint of Major Eazy would be complicated by its format. The first twelve episodes were told in three-page episodes, starting with a color double-page centerspread. There's no way to compile this in print without using a pin-up or cover on every fourth page, which certainly won't please any graphics novel editor . But Titan has certainly proven itself able to handle odd formats and color images with their Charley's War editions. Including the 13 episode crossover with Rat Pack, there are 91 episodes of the series, so call it no more than 364 pages. That could certainly be done in three of their nice hardcover volumes with room for background and creator interviews. So how about it, Titan?



For more information on Battle and Major Eazy, including some story scans (from which a couple of these images were cropped), be sure to visit Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle.



(Originally posted October 09, 2007, 06:07 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

---

Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!

Edited to add: (8/2/10) Titan has solicited the first Major Eazy hardback in the August 2010 edition of Previews for release in October.