Books: Black Jack Vol. #4

There is no one best thing about Vertical, Inc.’s ongoing reissues of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack. It’s a panopoly of good and best things. Not only are we getting a pivotal manga title in English, it’s one from a man without whose work we probably wouldn’t have manga as we know it. It also serves as a crash course in old-school / roots manga reading — if you like this, there’s lots more to like in the same vein, and not just from this author — and, before I get too swamped in what sounds like an academic discussion, it’s fun. If the story of a black-market surgeon who gets paid in suitcases full of banknotes and heals the parts others doctors do not reach doesn’t turn your head, then go get yourself checked out; you’ve probably stopped breathing.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Black Jack by now, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly — even if some of those fools come in the form of his paying patients. Or, as is the case at least as often, patients who don’t pay, but whom he treats out of his burgeoning sense of duty. It’s easier for him to say that seeing someone in pain offends his sensibilities than to admit he’s an idealist. Consider “Lost and Found”, the episode where Black Jack uses a little under-the-table emotional manipulation to insure one of his patients pays up — although it’s more for the sake of convincing the other man about what’s really most important in his life. Or “From Afar”, where Black Jack uses competition between surgeons as a ruse to save an innocent boy’s life.

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.