It’s a scant two months until the debut of Black Jack, Volume 1, but fans are already jonesing for a taste of Tezuka’s famous surgeon and they want it now! Apparently, the aforementioned Vertical news item announcing the arrival of everyone’s favorite medical miracle worker has not gone unnoticed. Emails, phone calls, text messages and unannounced arrivals at Vertical central by fans clamoring for more info on the special promotional comic book have many a Vertical staffer updating their spam filters, screening their phone calls and using the freight elevator to surreptitiously leave the building at the end of the work day. What started as an innovative and innocent marketing attempt to generate buzz for the coming of Black Jack has erupted into a frenzy for the comic. Everyone wants a copy and they want to know where they can get one.
The Black Jack comic book sports a specially designed cover that is totally buck. Inside, for the first time ever in English, you’ll find “The First Storm of Spring,” a haunting tale about a curse that accompanied an eye transplant that presaged the central conceit of the 2002 Asian horror movie Gin Gwai, which inspired the 2008 U.S. remake, The Eye, starring Jessica Alba. The comic debuted at the 2008 BEA (Book Expo America), and has since been available at Anime Festival in Orlando, Florida; Forbidden Planet stores in the U.K.; Dr. Comics & Mr. Games in Oakland, California; and St. Mark’s Comics in New York City. It will also be available at the Comic Relief booth at ComicCon International in San Diego (July 24-27, 2008); and New York Is Book Country (September 21, 2008) and the New York Anime Festival (September 26-28, 2008), both in New York City. But whether you live in Dubuque or Des Moines, you still have the chance to score one of these one of a kind Tezuka collectibles. All subscribers to the Comics Buyer’s Guide will get a copy in their September 2008 issue. So simply subscribe to one of the most revered and venerable comic magazines in the world before September 2008 to ensure your snagging one. Now would you please stop following me?!
Vertical would like to welcome its new Art Director, Peter Mendelsund! Mendelsund is a multiple award-winning graphic designer who has designed book jackets for almost every major publisher in America and abroad. His design work appears in several permanent museum collections, has been featured in numerous magazines, and his editorial illustrations show up frequently in the New York Times and other publications. Mendelsund’s designs for the three-volume Osamu Tezuka epic Dororo were already garnering buzz on the internet months before the first volume’s debut and elicited more than a few Tex Avery-esque, eye-popping, tongue-dropping reactions from the fans who saw the cover to volume one in person at the recent New York Comic Con. His juxtaposition of character vignettes over a collage of internal organs and body parts cleverly references the main character’s quest to find the body parts his father gave to 48 demons when he was a baby. Mendelsund’s first full season of designs will appear in Fall 2008, including the much anticipated Tezuka classic, Black Jack. For more on Vertical’s latest design acquisition, check out the 
Vertical will once again be exhibiting at the 
Too long have us Vertical-ites been cooped up at the home office. We miss our adoring fans! Fortunately, 
