My Favorite Explosion: An Akira Memoir

Tags

akira, anime, atomic power, Epic Comics, Katsuhiro Otomo, steve oliff

Akira kicks so much ass that everyone who reviews comic books and animated movies has already been there. But let me add a personal postscript, because Akira and I have a history.

The film version of this monstrous manga wasn’t released in every major theater at once. It opened in a few U.S. cities, then a few more, then a few more. In the pages of the original Epic printings of this translated and colorized version, the film showings were announced in each issue. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, without Internet or social media, this film became legend.

My friend Dave took me to see it at a theater in downtown St. Louis, Missouri in what must have been its first run in U.S. theaters. The venue was known for showing independent and avant garde films we didn’t see in the suburbs back then. I was 17 or 18 at the time, and 17 with an ID got you into the theater. I’m fairly certain this was the Tivoli Theater, which has since closed and re-opened. The old Tivoli showed some non-rated and NC-17 films such as The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but I never saw them. I was only there for Akira, and Akira fried my brain.

I didn’t even know what the hell to think when the credits rolled. I thought I kind of maybe understood… something? But I loved the experience.

Later, I watched Akira a second time on video and realized what was happening, and I’ve watched it about a half dozen times since. The crazy thing is that the original manga is way more complicated and drawn out than the film, and even more epic in scope.

In print, the series takes a while to pick up steam, but my favorite issue rolls around when all the tension is set to explode. It explodes in the form of a bullet that kills one of Akira’s freaky little friends. Until then, for hundreds of pages, Akira was hardly more than a MacGuffin in child form. He never had any agency since being introduced. Characters told us we should fear him, but we as readers had never been shown a reason to.

But when Akira’s buddy is shot in the head, the mysterious title character freaks the fuck out and sets off a massive explosion on the scale of a nuclear bomb.

And creator Katsuhiro Otomo gives Akira an entire issue to blow it up!

BOOM.

Collector’s Guide: From Akira #16, Epic Comics, 1990. Story and Art by Katsuhiro Otomo; Coloring by Steve Oliff.

You’ll never find the entire series in stock on MyComicShop, though you might get lucky and see it on eBay as a full run for about $150.

For $180, you could own the 35^th anniversary boxed set edition on Amazon. It isn’t fully colored like the Epic edition, but it restores the original back-to-front layout of the original Japanese editions.

If you prefer a digital and low-cost edition in English that reads front-to-back, Kindle in 2020 released the Akira series in a four-volume, black-and-white, “deluxe set” for about $16 ($4 per volume). Considering that the single issue featured in this post will cost you more than that in print, the digital edition is one hell of a buy and fun to read!

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The Atom – Servant of Man!

Tags

atomic power, National Social Welfare Assembly

Radioactive isotopes are fun and friendly to everyone. Eat toxic mutant tobacco plants grown with atomic fertilizer! It probably won’t mutate our kids and grandkids for generations before turning the earth into a charred and poisonous cinder.

Nuclear Fauna: Will Mutants Rule the Earth?

Tags

atomic power, Douglas Graham, mutant, mutant animals, South Bay Bessie, Swank

With its nuclear reactors and fiendish tentacles gripping a hapless couple, this artwork reminds us a lot of a romantic date we enjoyed in February.

Yesterday we looked at possible mutants of the future courtesy of Mad Magazine. Now we turn to the pages of Swank for even more informative science. That’s right: Swank. Who would have thought you could find a sweet article on mutants in that magazine?! Author Douglas Graham tells us about two-headed frogs in Missouri, mutant mushrooms in Voronezh, and the mysterious “South Bay Bessie” in Lake Erie.

We don’t know the name of the illustrator or the issue number here. Any detective work you can contribute to update this post will be appreciated !

Mad’s 21st Century Guide to American Wildlife!

Tags

atomic power, Indie Comics, Jack Davis, Mad Magazine, mutant animals

1982. We were 9 years old when this completely warped issue of Mad Magazine came to us hot off the magazine rack at the local drug store. It surely warped our young minds and affected our ideas about humor for years to come.

What we didn’t realize at the time, even as young comic book fiends, was how many of the creators in the “usual gang of idiots” had worked at EC Comics. It would be several more decades before we discovered Angelo Torres work in EC’s science fiction books or his work for Warren’s Creepy, for example. This didn’t become clear until a couple months ago when our local comic book store sold us this nostalgic copy for a dollar. That’s right, the original cover price!

The issue has two features we will share with you today, along with the front and back covers. They focus on the effects of pollution and nuclear reactors. While presented as satire, they certainly seem entirely relevant today, hitting home so closely that they almost aren’t funny. After all, we have read several science journals about new species of micro-organisms that feast on industrial waste, and the nuclear disasters in the Soviet Union and Japan reveal the very real dangers of this power source. Without further ado, enjoy “A 21st Century Guide to American Wildlife” and “Six Minutes Looks at Nucelar Power.”

Collector’s Guide:– From Mad Magazine #233; September, 1982.

Atoman: Getting Nuked Is …Awesome?!

Tags

Atoman, atomic power, golden age, radiation, Spark Publications

YES! See Me Fly Through the Atmosphere Joyously as Destructive Atomic Forces are Released!

WHEEEEEEEEE! WOW. Hey – Wait a minute? Is a nuclear explosion really that fun? Here’s a bit of golden age propaganda for your critical review.

– featuring 6 pages and cover from Atoman #1, 1946, Spark Publications. Scans courtesy of the Digital Comic Museum.

Normally, we enjoy these kinds of hijinks. But pardon us if we must say a few words about Atoman.

Notice that the history of atomic science clearly ends in three cheers for the USA for nuking Japan. Three cheers for dropping nuclear explosives on civilian populations! If this were a work of fantasy, perhaps we could sit back and enjoy. But we have a history statement here, an educational function of the comic book. It serves a goal of cheering the American general public for the recent victory in World War II – the one we had after the War to End All Wars. We also plant a simple, compelling idea into a young person’s mind: we did a good thing nuking Japan. We won the war and we did it with atomic science.

While there’s a lot of historical truth in these statements, we may want to question the moral implications of dropping nuclear weapons on civilians, and then telling our children how great it was. We may want to view such an act of violence with sobriety and even regret. Young people today, born many years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a time of greater cultural exchange, have only to witness the recent nuclear disaster in Japan. There is clearly nothing to celebrate about such tragedies.

We may also, as a new generation, want to question the conventional History Channel ideology that we won the war and we were the good guys. Atoman glosses over moral gray areas such as American corporations making profits by selling goods to the Nazis. Atoman’s shiny red cape is draped over the atrocities committed by our “ally” Joseph Stalin. Atoman’s mask hides the twisted visage of civilian bodies amidst the wreckage of the Allied bombing of Dresden.

This glossy history lesson supports the next theme of the comic book: Now that we’ve got the atom, we will be the world’s vigilante police force for peace and justice. Don’t worry – we’ll only use it for good! Great. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that using it for peace and justice doesn’t involve any more mass slaughtering of civilians and non-combatants.

Atoman‘s message about atomic power: The atom is our friend. Look! Just by handling it, and getting a nasty bump on the head, Atoman gains atomic powers! Let’s not forget that radiation killed its discoverer, Madame Marie Curie, by giving her cancer. That’s usually what happens from radioactive substances, even if you wear a brightly colored costume. It would be a few years before comic books could handle such themes, most notably in The Death of Captain Marvel and Watchmen.

Normally here on Mars we like things like inexplicable atomic transformations. Captain Atom makes it look fun! However, the overt post-war propaganda messages presented as historical fact made us feel more than a little bit uneasy about Atoman.

Find out more about what atomic weapons do to people in Atomic Follies. Find more in depth examinations and displays of Propaganda in a remarkable series on Blog at the End of Time.