A look behind the scenes

Ongoing Serial: a series of episodes, published over a span of weeks/months/years where the story plot is connected from chapter to chapter and must be read in chronological order for it to be understood properly.
Chapter Serial: a series of episodes, published over a span of weeks/months/years where the story plot is self-contained to a single chapter. There may be an overarching plot, but the stories can generally be read in any order and be understood
Book: an all-in-one self contained story published as a one-off.
Supplement: an an all-in-one self contained story published as a stand-alone supplement to a regular weekly/monthly periodical.
Short Story: an all-in-one, self contained story that was published in a regular weekly/monthly periodical
Anthology: a collection of all-in-one, self contained stories that were published in a regular weekly/monthly periodical but are generally grouped together.

Ever wondered why Chad Cactus had his shirt off when he was dunking his wife in a tub of milk? Well, chances are, you never even thought twice about that memorable little scene from Tezuka’s Mr. Cactus (1951-54).

Osamu Tezuka loved to tinker with his stories, and putting together the Osamu Tezuka Complete Manga Works editions provided him with a golden opportunity to do just that. In many cases, Tezuka’s edits are simply expanding, adding or trimming panels here and there to improve the story pacing, however it’s fascinating to find the telltale signs of an edit – usually only visible when you know what’s missing.

If you compare the two page layouts in the first image set above you’ll notice that Tezuka decided against having Mrs. Cactus hang her husband out to dry, but his quick escape by slipping out of his shirt still leaves him half naked in the final edition.

Tezuka was also a master at re-purposing his artwork. In the second image set, you can see how Tezuka uses the existing landscape formatted splash page artwork from the Mr. Cactus, Get Your Gun! supplement to the September 1952 edition of Shonen Illustrated [少年画報] to create a new portrait formatted page for the 1980 Complete Works edition.

If you’d like to read Tezuka’s Mr. Cactus (1951-54), you’re in luck! The digital ebook version is now on sale at DMP’s emanga.com site.

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