Recommendation: Apollo's Song By Osamu Tezuka

Apollo's Song is the story of Shogo, a troubled young man who has no faith in love. When his misanthropy reaches its peak, he is met by the Goddess of Love, who condemns him to an eternity of heartbreak.

Story and art by Osamu Tezuka"

Apollo’s song is a well constructed story that deals with love on many level through different periods of time. The main character, Shogo, struggles with the traumatic experiences of being in a loveless relationship with his mother. He channels this anger through hatred and distain for affection of living creatures. There are several story broken down into mini-stories through "dream-like" experiences of love and lost, life and death that would eventually help cure him.

Apollo's Song's art and layout is very clear and the story is straightforward. Known for being an environmentalist, Tezuka raise warning of the destruction of nature and effect of polluting the earth, which is still relevant with today's global warming concern. However, a lot of the "I love you" emotions in this manga felt kind of force rather than being natural and the story have some bizarre moments when dealing with the future. Plus the ending can be overly dramatic but it leaves it up to the reader to draw his own conclusion. Overall it's still a great book and better than his some of his other work (lost world?). It's a good beginning Tezuka manga for those that have not read Buddha, Phoenix or Adolf.

Childhood Comic Book

I was a huge marvel fan as a kid. I love collecting marvel trading cards and comics. The superheroes and villain in the Marvel Universe were a lot more interesting than DC's. My favorite comic book at the time were X-Men's Age of apocalypse, Spider-man's Maximum Clonage saga, Silver Surfer series, Gambit series. Oh yeah can't forget Image's Spawn, I went to see the movie back in the 6th grade.