During the traumatic recovery after World War II, Japanese children escaped into Osamu Tezuka’s Disney-inspired manga as the perfect pre-TV entertainment. Manga books were pricey, so people took to hiring them from pay libraries. It was through demands from older customers that a very different strain of much darker, more socially engaged comics developed, inspired by new realist cinema and literature.
Is there anything this man doesn’t know in the world of comics? Makes me proud to be British.