Blackjack Vol. 1

Grade:

Blackjack is one of the last creations of Osamu Tezuka before his death. Osamu is, who the Japanese call the God of Comics, a very skilled creator who made childrens stories like Astroboy, to complex political stories like Adolf. Osamu's Blackjack is another excellent piece of his legacy.

There are 8 stories collected in this book, many have some sort of ironic twist or unique perspective on life in each. One of the best is when Blackjack fails to save the man who had saved his life when he was a child. The idea of doctors not being gods and when they try to be, failure will occur is very well told. Most of the stories are quite good, but a few lack any punch. The last story, about greedy suits, is fairly obvious in its message, and the drama that carries the first 7 stories before it is missing.

Overall the collection is a very good introduction to Tezuka. It shows off his storytelling style, without requiring any other books to complete the story. Adolf is an excellent book, but there are 5 books in the series, running you 80.00 to collect them all. I recomend this book fully, if you can look past the somewhat high price, 15.95 for 182 pages. Also, the book is a fairly quick read, but you will probably read it over and over again, so thats not really a problem.