Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack is exactly the sort of manga that got me hooked on the whole medium. It’s the twisted story of an outlaw doctor who performs bizarre operations on patients with unheard-of conditions. Brain transplants, face transplants, assembling bits and pieces into a real girl—all in a days’ work for the good doctor. His operations are always successful, but seldom in the way you would think.
Vertical is publishing a new, high-quality edition of Black Jack in hardcover and paperback, and each volume of the hardcover edition features an extra story from a group that were withheld from publication in the U.S. and Japan. And now it can be yours!
Over the next few days, MangaBlog will be giving away three sets of volumes 1 and 2 of the hardcover edition of Black Jack and one set of all three volumes—volume 3 won’t be published until January, so the lucky winner will have to wait a bit for that one.
To enter, simply comment to this post. To make it interesting, tell me what was your favorite new manga of 2008 and what you liked about it; I’ll compile those answers in a separate post. The deadline for entering is midnight on November 10, after which I will pick the winners by a random drawing.
Black Jack is kinda heavy stuff, so I won’t be sending these to anyone under 18. Also, overseas shipping is out, so you have to live in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico to be eligible to win. So send in those comments!
I just started reading The Drifting Classroom. Also, I picked up a compendium of old Speed Racer stories while I was in Japan. It was tied to the movie somehow. It’s in Japanese though, so I haven’t started reading it yet.
[...] Jack to a few lucky winners who will be randomly chosen from her blog. To enter, leave a comment in this entry, telling her about your favorite new manga in 2008. I left my own comment there yesterday, and as I [...]
My favorite new manga of 2008 was Tezuka’s Dororo. It’s got all the fun of an adventure story along with the drama of Tezuka’s post-Astro Boy work.
Eek! I can only choose one?!?!
How ’bout I cheat just a little here, and say I love Kitchen Princess because it’s so much about cooking (and in our household, we all cook, including our 14-year-old son). But for great, fantastic storytelling, I think I have to choose Real. It’s a powerful story with fascinating, flawed, real characters, and Inoue manages to make wheelchair basketball interesting to this almost total non-sports fan.
I’m gonna take a ride back in the time machine and pick a manga that’s definitely new to me, but not new to 2008: Kaiji Kawaguchi’s Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President. Even thought it’s about 10 years since the series first started in Japan, it’s still recommended reading during such a historic election cycle. Though Sequential Tart deservedly poked a lot of holes in Kawaguchi’s depiction of the political process, it’s fascinating to see how closely Kawaguchi’s work ran to parts of the election (especially the Hillary/Ellery parallels).
And for all its flaws, Eagle still moves me during decidedly undramatic moments, like their frantic get out the vote efforts; and beyond that, it makes me wish I could have seen those moments played live at the DNC in Colorado and local Democratic Headquarters across the nation. Barring that, I’ll have to settle for Kawaguchi’s dramatic renderings.
I think the ONLY manga I’ve read this year is M.P.D. PSYCHO Vol. 1. (Man, I knew I’d had to cut back on comics buying this year, but that’s… sad.) Although, like most new manga, the drawing is rather stiff and the storytelling a bit too dialogue-heavy, I was impressed overall. I will definitely read more – when I can afford it.
No wait, I’ve also caught up on a few volumes of MONSTER – but for someone who used to DEVOUR manga, this sure isn’t much reading for me. Here’s hoping I win the BLACKJACK volumes so I can have some more quality manga reading in my near future – Tezuka is one of my all-time favorite cartoonists, anywhere!
Just finished vol.1 and I have to say I was blown away! I work at a small public library and have just started letting me create an Adult Graphic Novel collection. Suffice to say, Vol.2 will be purchased!
Fantastic art combined with powerful stories makes this a must read!
So exciting! I love “Black Jack”! My favorite manga of 2008 would have to be the new “NANA” releases. This series is so good! It is probably the best shojo manga I’ve ever read. Publish faster Viz!
Thanks for the awesome contest Brigid!
[...] over at MangaBlog is giving away three copies of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack. Just leave a comment with your [...]
I’m closer to rachel c. than to most other people here and can’t comment on any new manga, preferring literature as I do. However, I do have a soft spot for Rurouni Kenshin and enjoy the gorgeous art (though not the violence & explicit sex) of Vagabond. Thanks for the giveaway offer!
Well, my ability to tell you about my “new” manga purchases may be a bit impaired, depending on how liberal you are with “new”. So can i (maybe) cheat on the answer a wee bit?
In 2008 i bought:
Barefoot Gen volumes 5 and 6
Buddha 7 and 8
Yotsuba & ! 5
Yotsuba is always wonderful – but i am in the right target audience, i expect. A father of two (4.75 and 1.5) who, of late, seems to have rather elevated estrogen levels. I mean, jeez, should a grown man get misty about Clifford the Big Red Dog getting an appropriately-sized doghouse from the community?
Buddha, though it may be sacrilege, i thought rather limped to an end. I was, as always, impressed by the cartooning/art, but the story skipped and jumped a bit too much in these books; lost its way.
Barefoot Gen thrills me because… well, because it is a window into a period of history i know little of. And even less about the very personal stories that people fought through after the bomb. It is frightening and still uplifting. I wish i didn’t have to see so much melting skin, though.
Tops: Yotsuba! To steal and paraphrase badly: if you don’t love Yotsuba, you don’t love life.
Cheers,
Darren
I have never read manga but will give it a shot if I win.
The first Osamu Tezuka I read was “Ode to Kirihito” about a year ago. I was immediately won over and picked up his Buddha series which I read over three days. I only put it down to go to class. I’ve been studying abroad in Singapore, but I’ve been reading his “Phoenix” series and will be purchasing MW in the near future.
This year, I probably haven’t been picking up any new series except for Otomen. Instead, I’ve been getting into old manga series and was fortunate enough to read the french edition of “Rose of Versailles” (My French is abysmal, and it took awhile to read, but it’s so worth it)
I’ve also been reading Doreamon since they have bilingual chinese/english editions available.
Most of the manga in Singapore is very cheap if you get the CY Manga english or chinese editions, but if you want the American Viz/Tokyo Pop, etc editions, they cost twice as much as the US.
The Blackjack manga would be an awesome gift once I go back to the US after this semester.
I read Black Jack ages ago, and I loved it because it was so damn weird yet so relatable, even to my 14-year-old self.
The manga I’ve read lately has been xxxHOLiC and Antique Bakery, although I’m not updated on the former. xxxHOLiC’s creepy factor is great for anyone who likes a bit of spookiness with their comedy. CLAMP has a knack for dramedy, making you laugh and then awkward in the next panel. As for Antique Bakery, I would have to say that it was one of the most “realistic” manga I’ve read to date: everyone had valid problems, even those of which seem like they could never happen to us (Ono’s violent French pastry mentor following him to Japan, for ex.).
Thanks for posting this giveaway!
My fav new manga this year is probably my guilty pleasure — High School Debut. I can’t help it but I love how it turns all the traditional shoujo tropes on their heads!
I found Dororo to be very enjoyable and it spurred me to read the other Tezuka works. Buddha was especially heart-warming and epic. I really did marvel at it’s grandiosity. Very special books.
The best thing for me this year has been the emergence of Yen Plus magazine. I like it for the exposure it gives me to some more spohisticated manga
While I enjoyed Tekkonkinkreet a great deal–love that oversized tpb, it’s great to have everything in one place with a story like that–Yuichi Yokoyama’s Travel really knocked my socks off. Maybe it’s the amount of time I myself have spent on trains, but there was truly something magical about it.
Holy cow, Brigid — I don’t envy your task of trying to pick winners from all of these wonderful responses. As always, the thing I love most about threads like this is it gives me so many ideas for future reading material.
For my own pick, I’ll cheat a bit and go with a series whose first volume came out in late 2007 but which I first read a couple months ago (it did have two more volumes published this year that I still have to read, so I guess technically the series did come out in 2008) — With The Light.
I’m actually surprised by my own pick, because when I was reviewing the best manga of 2008 at the mid-year mark, With The Light wasn’t even on my radar. And when I finally got around to reading the book, I was initially put off by how melodramatic everything was and how annoyingly passive the mom was. But as the first volume progressed, I became completely engrossed in the drama of everyday events. Yes, Hikaru has autism, so that adds another level of intensity to the family’s problems, but the overall issues the family faces are familiar to anyone who has children: Panicking because you’ve lost sight of them for a moment; worrying about their mental, emotional, and social development; bristling at rude or insensitive comments from onlookers. Creator Keiko Tobe does an excellent job crafting a moving story that is gripping yet grounded in reality.
Great, great stuff. And it also appeals to the bargain hunter side of me that loves thick manga: Over 500 pages for only fifteen bucks! Whoo-hoo!!!
Dororo was my favorite. I only wish it were longer.
My favorite titles that are still currently being published in the US are Afterschool Nightmare and Nodame Cantabile. The recent volumes of Afterschool have been slowing down (I feel like this could have been condensed somewhat), but I really like Setona Mizushiro’s cinematic and dramatic pacing.
I like Nodame Cantabile for almost opposite reasons. It’s very slow and doesn’t contain too much explicit drama, but the characters are so fleshed out that you get drawn into their lives anyhow. I could compare this to Nana, which is not as good of a josei series in my opinion. Too much crying, haha.
[...] have until midnight tonight — Monday, Nov. 10 — to enter a Black Jack giveaway being sponsored by Brigid Alverson at MangaBlog.) For a more conventional, saintly portrayal of an outlaw physician, I’d strongly recommend Naoki [...]
Wow…tough question. There have been some great titles. DORORO is great. GANTZ is awesome…but I am going to go with TOKYO ZOMBIE.
It’s 10:30 where I am, so I just made it.
It’s hard to say which one I like most that came out this year. I’d say it’s a toss up between Black Jack and With the Light. Black Jack has such an interesting character study. It also has that dark edge to it that somehow makes it more real.
With the Light is something I’d never come across in manga, a story just about a boy with autism and how his family and world is affected by it and since I have highly functional autism, the manga’s story is very near and dear to me.
[...] conducted by my three-year-old niece, we have determined the winners of the Black Jack contest. Joe, David, and Ben Y. won two-volume hardcover sets of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack, and Debbie won [...]