Mysterious Underground Men, The (PictureBox)

The Mysterious Underground Men (PictureBox)

English Title: Mysterious Underground Men
Japanese Title: 地底国の怪人
Publication Date: 2013
Publisher: PictureBox
No. of Volumes: 1
In Print: ✘
Digital: ✘

From the Publisher

While Tezuka Osamu’s New Treasure Island (1946-47) was the first major hit for the “god of manga,” the artist himself regarded a later book the first of his signature “story manga.” Originally published in Osaka in 1948, The Mysterious Underground Men tells the story of Mimio the talking rabbit, as he struggles to prove his humanity while helping his friends save earth from an invasion of angry humanoid ants. Inspired by Bernhard Kellermann’s Der Tunnel (1913) and drawing widely on European and American science fiction, as well as Milt Gross’ own pioneering “graphic novel,” He Done Her Wrong (1930), this full-color edition of The Mysterious Underground Men will not only introduce to English-language readers a founding monument in modern Japanese comics. It will also offer a rare glimpse at the wide-ranging Western cultural sources that made up young Tezuka’s world.

What you should know

Part of PictureBox‘s “Ten Cent Manga” imprint, The Mysterious Underground Men was published as a 160-page hardcover book in October 2013.  Although not a true replica edition, it reproduces the look of age and wear one would expect from a work originally published in 1948.

The book also features a supplemental essay by noted manga historian Ryan Holmberg, which details how the story of  how Tezuka’s The Mysterious Underground Men (1948) was influenced not only by Japanese science-fiction of the time, but also by the American sci-fi comic strip Flash Gordon (1934), and German sci-fi novel, Der Tunnel (1913).

An award winner, in 2014 The Mysterious Underground Men received the Eisner Award in the category of Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Asia.