I just finished reading my new purchase of BLACKJACK Vol 5. Folks, you can’t read this manga soon enough.

Just finished up reading Vol. 2 and 3 of BLACK JACK the other day. It again solidified my love of the series as my FAVORITE MANGA OF ALL. Really wonderful stuff.

I enjoyed the TWO DARK DOCTORS story in the 2nd volume the best so far. It introduces Dr. Kiriko, a traveling euthanasia doctor, who has been hired to assist Black Jack’s patient with her suicide. Black Jack bets Kiriko 1,000,000 yen that his operation with succeed, and his assisted suicide would have been made while there was still hope. WHAT DRAMA!

I tried to render Kiriko as a Tom Waits with long white hair, but it really came out more like… KHAN! Again, I tried (more successfully this time) to render Black Jack as a young Toshiro Mifune. If there was anyway I could draw for an American version of Black Jack, I would jump at the chance!

Okay, it should be said that I love, LOVE, Osamu Tezuka’s work. Okay, I love it like I love Jack Kirby, maybe more in some ways. I like to think that if Tezuka and Kirby ever met in real life and touched one another, Elisha and Moses would have returned just to check out the second greatest thing to ever happen on earth. Haha. Yeah, I love comic, and I don’t care where they were made.

DORORO hits on some common themes that Tezuka can’t seem to stay away from. Again, it reminds me of Kirby, and how he plays with Life VS Antilife throughout his career, but never articulates it to his satisfaction. Tezuka has a fixation on artificial beings and rebirth after rejection. ASTRO BOY was a double of his inventor’s son. Pinnoco, from BLACK JACK, was a parasitic twin who was supposed to be thrown away with the rest of the bio waste. And then there is Hyakkimaru. The comic ran in a weekly magazine for THREE YEARS, so don’t pat yourselves on the back too much, DC.

DORORO is about a exiled prince whose body parts were sold by his father to the 48 Satans while he was still unborn. When he is born, the eyeless, armless, hopeless baby is floated down the river in a a basket by his mother to save him from having his head stomped in by the king. A kindly doctor finds the child and raises it to use his own soul to “feel” the world without his natural senses. When the boy is a teenager, his father crafts him wooden arms and legs so he can run from the Satans who have come for the rest of his body. Inside both of his arms are two legendary swords, which he uses to defend himself. He is exiled from his home again and given the name Hyakkimaru (which means 100 demons boy).

I get goose bumps just typing that! I just want to scream about how wonderful and profound this comic is. Nobody is born whole, and it’s only through loving one another than any of us can survive. Humanity exists as a society because it is the only way to fight the darkness within and without.

Do yourselves a service, Tino Titans, pick up DORORO vol. 1. You won’t regret it.