Reprint This! Update on Black Jack

I finally had a chance to read the first of Vertical's new collections of Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka, and I am really pleased with the work they've done. If you've not been paying attention, this is one of Tezuka's best known series, an over-the-top but nevertheless very effective melodrama featuring a surgeon-for-hire called in to assist with the most bizarre medical cases on the planet. It originally appeared in the pages of Shonen Champion in an eleven-year run from 1973-1983.

In 1987, Tezuka's Japanese publisher compiled Black Jack in an incomplete series of seventeen oversized volumes. (This replaced an earlier, 20-odd volume collection; that's kind of standard operating procedure over there, but it makes tracking down books awful confusing. Mercifully I don't often indulge in that habit!) A handful of the episodes, I am not certain how many, were excised at Tezuka's request for various reasons. Well, the first of the new English-language editions was released in September. In paperback, as I understand it, this is a straight adaptation of the seventeen Japanese editions from Akita Shonen. But there's a bonus treat for people who'd like to support their local comic shops. The first three volumes will also be available in very limited edition hardcovers available to the direct market (1500 of the first book and 1200 of the next two) which each contain one of those otherwise unavailable episodes. So this isn't just their first English language appearance; it's their first reprint appearance ever.

At any rate, the publishing plan is for one new volume of Black Jack every other month from now until the summer of 2011. You can advance-order the first six from Amazon or stop by your local comic shop, who'd appreciate your bizness.

I'm very pleased with the quality of the collection. Vertical's run features the pages in the original orientation, with translator's footnotes to explain Tezuka's use of wordplay and puns in character names. Vertical's books simply look better than the comparatively cheap production of digests from other publishers, with better paper and cover stock. It looks like a quality production, and it certainly suits the classic material. Black Jack is really a great comic, full of inventive situations, wildly imagined diseases and bizarre, grisly accidents, and I strongly encourage readers to give it a try!

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Read more of what I've written about Tezuka at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of Black Jack:
David P. Welsh at Flipped
Jog the Blog
Dave Merrill at Let's Anime
Deb Aoki at About.com
Tangognat, Agent of L.I.B.R.A.R.Y.

Enter a contest to win the first two volumes of Black Jack at Precious Curmudgeon.

(Originally posted November 17, 2008, 15:02 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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! 5. Black Jack

UPDATE: Black Jack has been reprinted in 17 volumes by Vertical. Go, buy 'em all!

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 missing gem is BLACK JACK by Osamu Tezuka. Black Jack is a mysterious doctor, who specializes in bizarre medical mysteries, and who crosses paths with criminals and dangerous fugitives who are willing to pay any price for his service and his discretion...



Black Jack's format is one of 15-page episodes dealing with utterly messed up illnesses and ailments - the sort that would drive Hugh Laurie to the priesthood - and accidents that require the most unusual surgeries ever seen. It's not like it's unrealistic due to a lack of research - Tezuka held a medical degree - but rather, realism is deliberately thrown completely out the window in favor of using the format for parables about greed and the debt one owes society, built around outlandish grotesqueries that are completely captivating.

Just to tell you how nutty this gets, in one of the few stories available in English, Black Jack serves as a supporting character in a story about his favorite sushi chef, who loses both his arms in a freak traffic accident. The contrite driver devotes his life to making up for his crime, and trains under the chef to become his new "arms." Black Jack's services are needed years down the road, when the driver is killed in a later, grisly accident. You can tell where this is going, only if you turn off your common sense circuits and think "utterly insane."

As engrossing as the stories are, the art is its own draw. I've been reading comics for three decades, and Tezuka remains the only artist who has ever tricked my eyes into actually seeing motion on the page. I'm absolutely drawn into Tezuka's weird world of heavy lines, sumptuous detail and stumpy, cartoony-people, and then he pulls an optical illusion and I swear the character on the page just moved. And hey, I'm the sort of guy who drives eighty miles off the interstate to see a gravity hill, so you're damn right I want more Black Jack in print.

Black Jack originally appeared as a weekly series in the pages of Shonen Champion from 1973-1983. Most of Tezuka's enormous output (said to be more than 150,000 pages over a 43-year career) came from short stories or 50-week serials or periodic installments of much larger works, such as Phoenix 2772, which was never actually completed. Black Jack was one of Tezuka's handful of series to be published regularly over a several year period.

You'd think that since Black Jack requires no backstory and has almost no continuity that it would be ideal for repackaging in the US. But only a handful of episodes have been published in this country. Viz released two volumes of translations, in their old "neither-fish-nor-fowl" trade paperback format, which were taller, wider and had fewer pages (around 160) than standard Japanese digests, but shorter and narrower than everybody else's graphic novels, priced at a too-high $15.95, and with the artwork flipped so the book's spine is on the right. Viz has done right with some of its older properties, issuing them in the more common size and under $10, but Black Jack hasn't been seen again since they switched formats. We'd like to see the rest of the series, so how about it, Viz?



(Originally posted July 17, 2007, 08:13 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

(Update 10/07: Vertical has announced they have licensed the series for North American publication!!)

(Update 4/08: First look at Vertical's design for the series.)