We'd brought plenty of inspiration. I had a stack of Marvels, so did my friend. And his friend had a book he wanted to share with us, a coverless copy of a pretty amazing Japanese comic.
I'd never been attracted to Japanese stuff previously. What little I'd seen reprinted in anthologies seemed either culturally distant or seemingly just mindless kung fu action.
This was immediately different. An android hero with a long-haired musician secret identity. The action did appear scattered and over-the-top. I had to kind of impress a story into it, the language barrier and crazy layouts making it tough to follow. But that was more than made up for by a great silent two-page sequence in which our hero makes his way to New York City by hitching a ride on the tail of a Pan Am airliner, strumming a mournful tune on his guitar while the jet whisks him aloft.
Brilliant, I thought. The scene seemed more Spider-Man than Spider-Man, the type of offhand inventive fun the American comics I was reading had been short on. What the heck was this? And where could I see more?
The next day, we were off to Chinatown. Because I am an idiot, and thought for sure Japanese comics would be available in Chinatown. Actually, today, side streets have their share of import shops that cater to both tourists and fanboys, but in the mid-seventies, there was nothing but a few scattered martial arts comics of the kind I was avoiding, on cheap newsprint and fluttering in the breeze from being clothespinned along the top of the newsstand kiosks on Canal Street. We went home well-fed, but empty-handed.
It wasn't until years later when I was taking a course in Asian Art at the School of Visual Arts that I asked the instructor where I could get some Japanese comics. "Sounds like you're really getting into manga," she said.
"I don't know about that," I said. "I just like Japanese comics."
She directed me to a store across from Bryant Park. It was called Zen Oriental, and it had a waist-high shelf of new releases. Later, they expanded to a full wall of new publications at the back of the store. It was there I first saw those fat, phone-book sized weekly comics, some with a plastic toy attached. In later years, I would swap stories at a convention with Dan Brereton, finding out we had similar experiences: it wasn't quite what we wanted, it wasn't exactly what we were looking for, we were just glad to have anything that was from Japan!
Zen moved to 57th Street and shortly shuttered, but by then I had gotten the bug. There was a great animated series on one of the UHF channels called Brave Raideen that I was amazed by. The hero would pilot his motorcycle into the center of a skyscraper-sized robot, shouting "Fade In," the way Johnny Storm might yell, "Flame On!" Then, just as Ben Grimm might shout, "It's Clobberin' Time!", our hero would intone, "God Bird Change!" The giant robot would become a bird-like jet. The only way to maintain reception of the UHF channel for the duration of the show was to point my set's rabbit ears just so, and stand southwest of the TV, a difficult position to keep while enjoying the show for half an hour.
Later, on our lunchtime excursions from the offices of DC Comics to Kinokuniya Bookstore (back when both were headquartered in and around Rockefeller Center), Scott McCloud would talk up the work of Shotaro Ishinomori. I knew he favored Osamu Tezuka, and as a result of listening to Scott, I had really warmed up to Tezuka's layouts, his storytelling, and his ability to have enough black and gray on the pages to achieve a perfect balance. I've often likened his pages to a well-marbled steak.
I wish I'd listened to Scott sooner on Ishinomori. His work is so loose and cartoony, that it makes the Disney-inspired Tezuka's characters seem like they're stiff and standing still by comparison. And also, Ishinomori's work was just what I'd been looking for all along. The book my high-school friend had was the original second volume of Kikaider. I think I finally figured that out accidentally after recognizing his guitar-toting hero in a book devoted to Ishinomori, after I snagged a few of his volumes of Cyborg 009.
I go back and forth now about whether I prefer the more formal Tezuka or the chaotic Ishinomori, but as I keep getting reminded about so many things in life, it's not a race. I can appreciate them both.
