GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Ode to Kirihito
Osamu Tezuka is generally billed as “the godfather of Japanese comics,” which implies a capo di tutti capi and a whole network of manga-kas rubbing each other out that I’m not entirely comfortable with. But I think that means that the Japanese comics industry isn’t quite sure whether to call him a god or their father, so they split the difference. His position in Japan isn’t comparable to anyone in the US; it’s as if Siegel and Shuster, Will Eisner, and Walt Disney were all one person.
Tezuka was also apparently extremely prolific over that period; Wikipedia’s page about him claims that his collected works in Japan stretch to over 400 volumes, which collect less than half of the 170,000 pages he created in his lifetime. And that doesn’t count his extensive animation work, either – the man was amazingly prolific. Some of his work has been published here – particularly Astro Boy, his best-known creation in the English-speaking world – but most of it is still a mystery to those of us who read only English. Luckily, the current manga boom is bringing more and more of his work to our shores, so we can check it out, book by book, for ourselves.
Vertical is a small publishing house dedicated to English translations of Japanese novels and manga, usually with a very refined and exciting design sense. (That’s no surprise, since Chip Kidd, the foremost book designer of our age, is associated with Vertical.) Vertical have published several of Tezuka’s works in English – most notably the eight-volume Buddha series – and seem to be concentrating on his later, more literarily and artistically ambitious works. Vertical aims at general readers, not established manga fans, so their works are in larger formats than typical for manga collections, and are also photographically reversed to read from left-to-right, as Western readers are used to. Ode to Kirihito is a handsome trade paperback, with French flaps and a sliding panel on the front, to obscure one half of the cover art or the other; it’s also well-bound, so reading its immense bulk with a bit of care will leave the spine intact.
Wordless comics are usually considered “kids stuff,” but not in this case. I hope inattentive parents aren’t buying 
Doctor Impossible is a supervillain; Fatale is a superheroine. They fight, and you know who wins. The end.
