His ideas rival those of Walt Disney, Alan Moore and Stan Lee plus those who got less credit for certain character creations than Lee did , and his innovations in art are equal to the combined talents of Eisner, Kirby, and Steranko.
In other words, he had an impact on popular culture at the level of Walt Disney and Stan Lee, but he also created high concept comics as does Moore; and his artistic techniques influenced future manga artists as much as Disney, Eisner, Kirby, and Steranko combined influenced comics in the United States.
Teruzka has even won an Eisner for his works translated into English! However, these extensive artistic innovations are best understood if we are aware of what an incredibly productive genius he was: During and after getting his doctorate in medicine, a profession he did not pursue, he published over , pages of comics! In addition, he acted as animator on and producer of countless films as well as writing numerous essays on every topic imaginable, from comics to art to popular culture to society in general.
He had other projects, too, but I think you get the idea: Tezuka was a creative genius with an incredibly high artistic output. Only a fraction of those works have been translated and published in English. In Maus , Spiegelman uses animals to tell the story of the Holocaust, to make it so we can bear reading about an unbearable, horrific historical event that must not be forgotten. Tezuka does the same thing: Lest his readers avert their eyes from his dark tales, he presents his stories with a semblance of lightness.
As he becomes more and more emotionally and mentally unhinged, he finally is captured and placed into a mental institution under the care of a kindly doctor. The doctor tells the boy he is not truly one of the lost ones because he is young and there is still hope for him to learn to love.
