Black Blizzard back

"The past is like quicksand, the harder you try to get out, the deeper you sink in. Every time I got thrown into jail, I'd swear to myself that I'd go straight when I got out. And believe me I tried... but it was useless. A total waste of time."

BLACK BLIZZARD is early Tatsumi from 1965 when he was just 21-years-old and, by his own admission in the fascinating interview at the end of the book, it has its flaws but it's certainly a very solid read. Bear in mind that at this point in time manga as we know it today didn't even really exist and Tatsumi along with a handful of others were working purely on their own instincts to try and create something entirely different - gegika manga (as detailed in his excellent autobiography A DRIFTING LIFE). The influences of post-World War II American films and pulp fiction, available to Japanese audiences for the first time, are abundantly apparent here as Tatsumi sought to radically restructure his writing and artwork in a manner fit to convey a gripping, longer form narrative in a dynamic fashion. Indeed the literal translation from Japanese of 'gegika' is dramatic pictures.

The story itself about two escaped prisoners of decidedly opposing morals is pretty good with a nice twist or three thrown in along the way, even if the dialogue seems a bit passé by today's standards, and as mentioned Tatsumi is still at this point in his career grappling with the then radical idea of dynamic composition. You can see that new ideas are literally occurring to him pretty much as he's going along in this work. His fans will whole heartedly approve, though, as will anyone who is interested in a sterling, early example of serious manga from its formative post-war years. There are a smattering of original colour pages too in this edition, which Tatsumi also comments upon in the afterword.