context: comics > Osamu Tezuka

Phoenix

This is a hard piece of work to explain. Tezuka considered it his life's work, and kept with it, slowly, from 1954 until his death, as a labour of love alongside the vast amounts of work he turned out. It runs to over 3,000 pages, but was not finished. It's a series of more or less self-contained stories, all involving the legendary bird, running from ancient history to millions of years in the future. It's a colossally ambitious work in artistic and philosophical terms, and feels like an attempt by an artistic mind of the very highest calibre - and try to ignore the low reputation of the comics form when you read those words - to show and tell you everything he knows and believes about the artform, humanity and the world. Even incomplete, and it's hard to imagine what kind of conclusion there could be though there was a sense of convergence towards the present day, it stands as a titanic achievement.

backwards: Astro Boy

forwards: Princess Knight