The Push Man and Other Stories (Tatsumi Yoshihiro)

Not for the faint of heart, Tatsumi's work uses simplicity of line and expression to evoke the depths of human emotion.

And I mean depths.

Infanticide, rape, and fecal matter are par for the course in any Tatsumi compendium (those published by Drawn and Quarterly), although not requisite. For instance, the titular tale concerns a man whose job it is to push people onto the Japanese subways, to cram in as many passengers as possible. He begins to question the nature of his role in society, and loosens the bonds on his concept of conformity, with hauntingly poetic results.

Born at the beginning of the second world war Tatsumi grew up a witness of Japan's ugly side. But even by the time he was in his twenties he was disturbed by the morality of his people as it expressed itself in the cities. The stories in Push Man (as well as his other compendiums of shorts, Abandon the Old In Tokyo and Good-Bye) are all rooted in real things he'd witnessed, and in that way they're justifiably presented: entertainment as horrifying historical enlightenment.

If you can stomach putting your arm around Tatsumi's shoulder you might find it stuck there.

The Trial of Colonel Sweeto (Nick Gurewich)

Gurewich is the modern day Gary Larson, except Larson’s body of work far exceeds Gurewich’s, and Gurewich is way dirtier and crueler. Whereas Larson’s jungle explorers get picked off by giant insects and wave their arms frantically about staring eyes, Gurewich’s undetailed expressions are on one hand subtly menacing, mean-spirited, or malicious and on the other hand the opposite of all those three. Plus there’s a whole lot of fucking. The true genius to Gurewich, though, is his ability to snap between drawing styles seamlessly. One week it could be an Edward Gorey tribute, and the next week it’s a Bill Keane parody. I’m still most partial to Gurewich’s own style, but the breadth of his talent is staggering. AND HE’S ONLY 27!

The trial of Colonel Sweeto is the be-all-end-all collection of Gurewich's indefinitely hiatus'd webcomic, Perry Bible Fellowship. It's a shame that in today's market, the recognition of talent and genius is more often what causes artists to stop in their tracks, as opposed to being what spurs them on to create and create. I suppose it's a product of many artists using their successful medium as a portal to what they really want to show the world. Whether that's a singer turned actor. Or an actor turned photographer. Or what have you.

Dogs and Water (Nils Anders)

Another Scandinavian artist (like Jason) with a sense for simplicity. Dogs and Water tells the tale of a possibly post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where a man with a backpack is journeying. He runs into an assortment of characters in the wasteland, all of them out looking for different things, not finding them. He converses with his sole companion, a teddy bear. He eventually stumbles upon a crashed helicopter, lodged in the side of a massive pipeline. The pilot is dying, and lies on the ground beside the pipeline. He begs the backpacked man to shoot him. The story is about desperation, loss, confusion, desire, and ultimately solitude, all favourable themes in my book. The artist chooses not to use the traditional boxes to divide scenes, instead allowing the images and the words to float in space like debris.

Not for all tastes, although those who adore the book will find comparisons to David Lynch and Gus Van Sant.

Phoenix, Vol. 1 - 13 (Osamu Tezuka)

Unarguably the single greatest achievement in the career of the most influential mangaka (Manga cartoonist) in Japan's history, Phoenix rockets back and forth across the temporal plane from volume to volume, telling tales of future and past, that each get a little closer to the present as the volumes tick by. After only the first few volumes the greater design comes into focus: Tezuka is telling the history of the universe.

And what retelling of the history of time would be complete without a lot of rumination on the nature of time and man's mortal role in the universe (unless you're Larry Gonick)? While the phoenix (Hi no tori, in Japanese, meaning 'firebird') owns the name of the series, he/she/it and its many manifestations is mearly a backdrop, or a point of obsession for the real characters, stepping in only as a greek chorus to manipulate the characters, or a god descending from the ink, and Tezuka does not exhaust any one way of revising the reader's concept of what the phoenix is. In one volume the phoenix becomes puppeteer to a scientist who will be allowed to witness the universe as himself a god, in one volume the phoenix will remain an elusive shadow to an artist who seeks to represent the firebird's glory in a painting or else lose his life to a sinister, commissioning lord, and in another volume a red herring of a bird is captured and warred over by rivaling Japanese lords, as they vie for the phoenix's blood and eternal life.

My personal favourite story, Strange Beings (half of Vol. 9), does the old 'time flows backwards' trick to tell the story of life and the universe as a never-ending backwards loop, involving the life of a girl (raised as a boy by a murderous tyrant) who unintentionally becomes the universe's private, eternal mother Theresa.

The cultural effects of the Phoenix saga may have been even more far-reaching had Tezuka not perished before penning its conclusion, presumably set in the modern day. But maybe that's for his readers to accomplish.

This is a sculpture of the famous firebird, which sits just outside the Osamu Tezuka museum in Takarazuka, Japan (20km northwest from Osaka).