By Osamu Tezuka
Publisher: Vertical
ISBN: 1-932234-83-7
I wish I'd discovered Osamu Tezuka years ago. He proves there's a lot more to comics than caped beefcakes beating seven barrels out of each other. MW is the story of an island of the coast of Japan that experiences a dangerous gas leak (the poison gas is the MW from the title) from a foreign military base stationed there. The leak kills just about every living thing apart from two individuals holed up in a cave (I shan't spoil the why). Fifteen years later the elder of the two has turned to the church to atone for past sins while the younger has begun to experience increasingly dangerous episodes of a psychotic nature that me attributes to exposure from the gas, but the episodes are carefully concealed from watching eyes. These incidents take nastier and nastier turns, drawing in the priest and others, and mercilessly cutting down anyone in the way, be it for pleasure or profit. It's a very dark – and sometimes chilling – work, and often surprising too, but whether this is due to my expectations being conditioned to western storytelling or not I can't say. Either way it's a fabulous read.
And if you liked that: Try Buddha by the same author
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