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Here’s a list of my complete series on Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix (1967-88) (Translation in 11 volumes: Viz, 2003-2008).
Starting overview of the series
Volume 1: Dawn
Volume 2: Future
Volume 3: Yamato
Volume 3: Space
Volume 4: Karma
Volume 5: Resurrection
Volume 8: Robe of Feathers
Volume 6: Nostalgia
Volume 7 and 8: Civil War
Volume 9: Life
Volume 9: Strange Beings
Volume 10 and 11: Sun
Also an [...]
After a little delay I’ve reached the last Phoenix story: “Sun”. This story was published between 1986 and 1988 with Tezuka dying early in 1989. It was one of his last works, and the last completed in this series. That is not to say this is the ending of the series. It is said Tezuka planned to continue these stories so that the past and future time lines converged at some point in the present. In this regard, “Sun” is an aptly fitting place for the series to stop, as the story incorporates both a past and a future timeline into the same story.
I finished up my reading of Lone Wolf and Cub. I’m not going to post about the whole series, it’s just too much to deal with right now. Suffice to say, I really enjoyed the series, and do recommend it highly. It is both narratively and visually engaging with strong historical and thematic material too.
I [...]
“The detective is a true son of the murderer Oedipus, not only because he solves a riddle, but also because he kills the man to whom he owes his title, without whom he would not exist in that capacity (without crimes, without mysterious crimes, what would he be?) because this murder was foretold for him [...]
I missed MoCCA last year, partially out of laziness, but this year my wife and I made the trip up to NYC for the weekend. Our trip up was a bit disrupted by Penn Station temporarily stopping all trains inbound/outbound trains. I wanted to see Charles Hatfield’s 11am talk about Kirby, and it was looking [...]
As something to hand out to people I meet (or buy stuff from) at the festival, I made a small zine of comics criticism. If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, it’ll all be familiar pieces, but I hope they are ones worth revisiting.
I’ve quickly become a big fan of Jason Overby’s most unusual comics. You can now read the whole of his Solipsist’s Doodles in pdf form. I reviewed the minicomic form back in December.
And when I say you “can now” read it, I mean “go read it, now!”
I’ll be at MoCCA in NYC on Saturday. Say hi, if you see me. I’m not the best conversationalist, but I can at least give you a copy of the comics criticism zine I made for the show.
I’m hoping to be at Charles Hatfield’s and Isaac Cates’ talk on Jack Kirby, 11am Saturday.
For reference, here’s [...]
“Strange Beings” is another short Phoenix story that takes place in the past (1468 AD). This one features a young woman, Sakon No Suke, who has been raised as a man by her warrior father. When her father gets a cancerous growth on his nose (like the oft-appearing Saruta), a female monk from a nearby temple is called for and claims that she will heal the man. Sakon goes with her manservant to the temple to kill the nun before she can go back and heal her father because Sakon wants her father to die so she can live as a woman.
Besides my ongoing reading/blogging on Tezuka’s Phoenix, I’ve also been making my way through two other “classic” manga series: Koike and Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub and Otomo’s Akira. These three works are very different creatures on many levels, but primarily for me in my changing and opposite reactions to re/reading them.
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