MW - Softcover

Tezuka, Osamu

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934287725 ISBN 13: 9781934287729

Publisher: Vertical Comics, 2010

Synopsis

Comics god Osamu Tezuka's darkest work, MW is a chilling picaresque of evil. Steering clear of the supernatural as well as the cuddly designs and slapstick humor that enliven many of Tezuka's better-known works, MW explores a stark modern reality where neither divine nor secular justice seems to prevail. This willfully "anti-Tezuka" achievement from the master's own pen nevertheless pulsates with his unique genius.
Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations.

During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island's inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness--one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate.

Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night--perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he's killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience.

There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki'ls past--and frequently his bed.
Serialized beginning in 1976 in Big Comic magazine, where Tezuka's trailblazing medical thriller Ode to Kirihito had appeared a few years earlier, MW probes the complexities of homoeroticism as well as the reality of extensive U.S. military presence in Japan. The result is as bracing today as it was thirty years ago.

“Darker than you think—than you want to think [...] MW took on the stuff of today’s headlines some thirty years ago.” —The Agony Column

“MW is the newest of those masterpieces to be translated into English, and like everything else with [Tezuka’s] name on it, you are cheating yourself out of one of the best graphic novels out right now if you don’t read it.” —Advanced Media Network

“Tezuka spins an entertaining, slightly preposterous yarn, serving up more plot twists, car chases, and gender-bending costume changes than Dressed to Kill and The Manchurian Candidate combined.” —popcultureshock

“You’ll stare at the page, eyes popping and muttering, ‘I cannot believe I just read that.’ But you did, and it worked, and you turn the page.” —David Welsh, Comic World News

About this title

About the Author

Osamu Tezuka ( 1928-89) is the godfather of Japanese manga comics. He originally intended to become a doctor and earned his degree before turning to what was still then considered a frivolous medium. His man early masterpieces include the series known in the U.S. a Astro Boy. With his sweeping vision, deftly intertwined plots, and indefatigable commitment to human dignity, Tezuka elevated manga to an art form. Other works available from Vertical include Apollo's Song, Ode to Kirihito and the eight-volume epic Buddha, winner of the Eisner and Harvey awards.

Review

"Verdict - 9.6
A diabolically epic story.
+ An anti-hero you can't take your eyes off of.
+ Osamu Tezuka. (Need we say more?)
- Possibly Tezuka's bleakest work yet." - Anime media network.

"Created during the period of 1976-1978 MW is a shocker, especially for it's time, both in terms of the potential for terrorism and the phsychological effects on the reader, who, in some cultures, might not easily adapt to this nature of storytelling (for example, what would Hollywood do with this plot?)" - www.anime.com

"MW is a story that will make you think, and will probably make you unhappy about a segment of mankind, and will thrill you in ways that feel uncomfortable. It’s a major graphic novel by a major creator, grappling with the nature of evil in a way that superhero comics only wish they could. And it’s presented in a form nearly transparent to Western readers. From what I’ve seen, Tezuka’s dark works of the ‘60s and ‘70s are easily his best, and MW is right up there." - ComicMix
"The author shrewdly reveals through these characters the vulnerability of human beings and the concept of latent "original sin" that lurks inside us." - Brian Cirulnick

About this edition

• Publisher: Vertical Comics
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1934287725
• ISBN 13: 9781934287729
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 584