Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix Graphic Novels

Genre: Fantasy (Age Rating 13+)
Format: Graphic Novel, Partial Color
Author: Osamu Tezuka
Language: English Language
Release: Kodansha  

Availability : Pre Order Item - Not Yet Released

The defining masterpiece of modern manga - the series that "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka considered his life's work - is finally available in English once again, in a beautiful, cloth-bound hardcover featuring fully restored art and new introductions by translator and author Frederik L. Schodt (Manga! Manga!) and Hugo finalist Dr. Ada Palmer (Too Like the Lightning).

From the premiere of Astro Boy on television in 1963 to the release of Buddha, Princess Knight, Dororo, Black Jack, and many other English editions of manga in the 21st century, Americans have become familiar with the vast breadth of Osamu Tezuka's stunning career, over which he produced more than 150,000 pages of comics. Yet the most conspicuous omission from Tezuka's English catalog has long been the series he considered his magnum opus, one he worked on and reworked from the 1950s until his death in 1989: Phoenix. Known as Hi no tori ("firebird") in Japanese, this meta-series—inspired by Tezuka's omnivorous appetite for Asian folklore, American science fiction, Russian ballet and animation, and anything he he found fascinating from around the world—leaps through extremes of time and space, encompassing exciting action and experimental suspense, stark philosophy and intimate drama.

Tying it all together are the recurring "actors" of Tezuka's "Star System"; themes of mortality, legacy, love, and ego; and the titular bird herself: at times a mythical being living in a volcano, at others a spiritual presence in deep space, always a mystery.