What's your take on Tezuka?
I will admit that I am not a gekiga or alternative manga expert, nor even an aficionado; I revived this subreddit primarily because 1) I have experience building communities and 2) I want to learn from enthusiasts as I delve deeper into the medium. I'm going to be reading and doing my best to review two books per week, though that seems a bit of a lofty goal this summer!
To the point: I came across several works by Osama Tezuka in a local shop, who from what I understand is the "godfather of manga" in the sense that he was one of the "founding fathers" of the medium and helped popularize it. That being said, I've gathered in my cursory research of the man and his work that a significant portion of it is only worth reading if you're seriously studying the development of manga and not for actual enjoyment. What Tezuka would lay the groundwork for other cartoonists would take and run with in far more exciting, interesting, and frankly better directions that hold up well today for reflection, study, and interrogation.
One of the reasons that I ask for your takes on Osama Tezuka is because I was under the impression that Astro Boy is a landmark work, but it has been confined to out of print Dark Horse paperback omnibuses for years now without a hardcover deluxe treatment in sight. I'm surprised by this. So much of Tezuka is in print from Kodansha. So, I began to research and came across a lot of people disappointed when they did a deep dive into Tezuka's corpus, feeling underwhelmed by the majority of it.
I am interested in actually studying how manga developed over time, so something being "underwhelming" does not put me off, but I'll admit that I would rather start with some of the man's greatest hits rather than his weaker ones.
What would you say are some of your favorites? Your least favorites? What do you think of Tezuka in general?